Disney is developing planned communities for fans who never want to leave its clutches

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/16/22937210/disney-residential-communities-storyliving-cotino-planned-town?utm_campaign=theverge&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

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Disney is developing planned communities for fans who never want to leave its clutches​

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Live, breathe (and die?) Disney
By James Vincent Feb 16, 2022, 11:20am EST
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View attachment 37cabed38a7d45a84a409a8323b8503c83d118c0.webp
concept art for Disney’s first planned “Storyliving” community: Cotino, California. Image: Disney
Disney has launched a new business for fans who can’t bear to leave the pristine, family-friendly world the corporation has nurtured through its theme parks and media ventures.
“Storyliving by Disney” will operate as part of the company’s theme parks division, developing a series of master-planned communities for residential living, designed by Disney’s creative staff and offering the same pampered tranquility found in its resorts.

DISNEY’S NEW PLANNED COMMUNITIES WILL BE AS PAMPERED AND PRISTINE AS ITS RESORTS
“Picture an energetic community with the warmth and charm of a small town and the beauty of a resort,” said Disney Parks, Experiences and Products exec Helen Pak in a promotional video.
Only one location has been announced so far: a community of 1,900 housing units named Cotino that will be built in the city of Rancho Mirage in California’s Coachella Valley (a location where Walt Disney himself once lived).
Concept art for Cotino shows villas, condos, and housing complexes clustered around a 24-acre “grand oasis,” which Disney says will offer “clear turquoise waters” powered by the Crystal Lagoons technology deployed at its resorts. Amenities will include “shopping, dining, and entertainment,” as well as a beachfront hotel and clubhouse hosting “Disney programming, entertainment and activities throughout the year.”
Members of the public will be able to visit Cotino by purchasing day passes, while a section of the development will be set aside for residents aged 55 and up. Prices for accommodation and financing options have not been announced, and Disney has also yet to share when construction will begin or when residents might be able to move in.

As reported by USA Today, although Disney is branding and marketing these communities, it will not own, build, or sell the homes. Instead, it will be partnering with third-party developers to carry out this work.
Cotino, for example, is being built by DMB Development, a company that’s constructed a number of luxury communities in the US and abroad. These include Silverleaf, Arizona (“a private haven of rare grace and refinement”) and Kukuiʻula in Hawaii (“a place for discerning families who seek to balance luxury with the laid-back lifestyle and awe-inspiring beauty of our island home”).
It’s also not the first time Disney has explored residential developments like this. In 1996, it opened the gates of Celebration, Florida, a master-planned community near Walt Disney World Resort, and in 2011 opened its luxury Golden Oak resort in the same state, where prices for homes originally started at $1.6 million. And famously, Walt Disney himself wanted to develop a utopian “city of the future” named Epcot (standing for “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow”).
GRID VIEW

Not all of these communities have been successes, though. The hugely ambitious original plans for Epcot were never fulfilled (though the concept’s legacy lives on in various ways in Disney’s resorts and parks), while Celebration, Florida, suffers all sorts of mundane and un-magical problems like leaks and mold (Disney itself is not responsible for maintenance).
With this latest venture, Disney apparently wants to revisit its residential dreams while focusing on the vague and eternally sunny concept of “storytelling.” As the company’s chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, Josh D’Amaro, puts it in a blog post, its new communities are all about “expanding storytelling to storyliving” (hence the name.)
What exactly that means in practice isn’t clear. Is “storytelling” just the company’s way of saying “you’ll have a really nice life if you pay us a lot of money,” or is it planning something nearer to the brand of lightweight immersive theater deployed in its parks and themed hotels? A report from USA Today hints at something more than just immaculate service:

“Every single element of these communities will be steeped in a story,” D’Amaro notes. The residents, he says, will be active participants in the stories.

Maybe, instead of being drawn into skits with hosts dressed up as Goofy or Elsa, Disney’s “Storyliving” residents will be able to take part in more grounded adventures, as staff who never break character help them navigate mid-life crises and suburban ennui. Why pay for therapy if you can turn your life into theater? A happy ending can be written for you.

 

[XYZpdq]

Thing is though, it's not like I haven't met Brazilian people before. They're just not interesting enough by themselves to make me care. Like they'd shoot me for typing this but to your average American the difference between a Brazilian and an Ecuadoria or whatever is pretty much nill.

Blasting terrible music at all hours of the night is unfortunately not a Brazilian thing but just a straight up latin America in general thing. I honestly don't ever want to go to San Juan, I'd probably be fucking deaf by the end of the first day.

My white neighbors aren't blasting Tom Petty at 3AM. I lived in a building that was mostly people from Jamaica and Haiti, they just hung out on the sidewalk and listened to Reggae during the day and went to bed at normal hours. But I've lived in like 3 different buildings where at least one Latin family is going to play the same shitty Reggaetón song at a volume so loud it is impossible for me to believe they are enjoying themselves. Every single night. Like how the fuck do you even speak in that room? It's that loud. They must just be getting wasted and not talking for 6 hours.

I don't actually know it's the same song, but it sure fucking sounds like it.

Better than their folk music at least, now THAT shit is awful. Latino folk music is the worst music I've ever heard. Literally just men screaming over accordion sounds. I've listened to fucking Merzbow and I still think it's better than that.

There used to be these guys at the end of my block who had the typical ghetto "how did they afford that, oh right" sports car setup. But they modded them so when they popped the trunk it was always a huge PA system that folded out. No shit they'd be there every saturday making my entire block shake. There was no reason. None whatsoever. This wasn't a party, this was nothing. It was literally 3 guys hanging out on the sidewalk next to a fucking construction site, and they're doing this. I can only assume my spanish neighbors have damaged their hearing so bad they couldn't hear this shit.

Eh, at least it was only on saturdays.

yeah it's not like, a rando who thinks Coffin Joe is spoop af, it's when you get a dozen plus or so together and they start going full HUE

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

How interesting you'll have to pay for food with Disney bucks
They send you to the camps if you get into debt

 

[Game master arino]

The future is turning into Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, we already have the Metaverse, now this is almost literally a "Burbclave", it's eerie as hell to see.

The whole cult like climate surrounding corporations these days is creepy as hell, people no longer identify with nationalities but corporations and people thought the whole "New World Order" thing was just a conspiracy theory.

A burbclave has has its own set of laws and private police. This is just Disney selling houses to mindless consumers. Wouldn't be surprised if they try to micromanage ever aspect of their residents lives though.

 

[A Useless Fish]

If this somehow works, then in another fifty years we're going to be getting Temples erected to the worship of Mickey fucking Mouse.

 

[Seora]

Good, now they can all move away from me and into the nearest designated Disney camp then Disney can partner with a funeral company and give them a big fuck off autism send off.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

So it's not even as cool, dystopian or brutalist as EPCOT, and it somehow manages to be creepier by making itself look super ideal rather than EPCOT's cold, impersonal efficiency.

 

[Positron]

 

[neverendingmidi]

A burbclave has has its own set of laws and private police. This is just Disney selling houses to mindless consumers. Wouldn't be surprised if they try to micromanage ever aspect of their residents lives though.

The HOA is probably going to make the worst Stasi-level asshole in any other HOA look like Mr. Rogers.

 

[TowinKarz]

View attachment 2990195

Yeah, the "Company Town" is the future, not an antiquated and obsolete relic that came and went in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries..... which is a shame because they worked so well. (at keeping the ghouls in their place)

 

[Stoneheart]

if we dont look at the disney aspect, isnt this kind of project very close to that deadly sea they have in CA?

 

[Had]

I'm sad it's not star wars themed, missed opportunity.

 

[Meat Target]

See I'm just thinking what a weird thing that is to hate. Why Brazilians specifically? Like I live in a place where I half expect to run into fucking Fieval from American Tale whenever I put down a mouse trap, and I still have never given the Brazilians of all people much thought. I've heard complaints about the Puerto Ricans, the Chinese, the Russians, the Muslims, the Polish, whatever but the fuckin' Brazilians? Who the fuck talks about the Brazilians enough to hate them in America? In the Lexicon of American bigotry I've yet to hear the Brazilians get more then a passing mention.

Like you gotta put some effort into hating Brazilians. How many Brazilians this bitch actually encounter? No, she had to SEEK OUT that kind of dislike. I can't think of a single natural path in which a white woman comes into enough contact with the people of Brazil to hate them.

Like what, is she sitting around seething about Bolsanaro and the rainforest or what? What's happening here? What caused this?

I can't even think of a meaningful stereotype about brazilians. They like soccer and butts I guess. But is that I reason to hate anybody!?

Their language is a hideous, gutteral monkey-speak. They can't speak Spanish like a respectable Third World country.

 

[Toolbox]

View attachment 2990195

So, moviebob thinks that his space utopia involves giant lifestyle brand companies controlling all the land and manufacturing a faux fantasy existence? I guess I shouldn't have expected him to say anything else.

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

Disney is attempting not only to recast itself as a "lifestyle brand," but in the last 10 years it's made huge strides toward a "luxury brand" rebrand.

Admission prices are nuts and don't cover as much as what they used to. Disney food used to come in huge, shareable portions that were often above-par for theme park food and made the concession prices easier to swallow. Now it's overpriced and comes in small portions of inferior product. You used to be able to skip a few lines a day, now no more of that unless you pay extra per person per day, or for the more oversubscribed rides, pay for each individual ride to skip the line. Hotels on Disney property now cost much more than ever before. Rides are breaking more frequently. Lines have never been longer, because now making the lines longer makes people more likely to shell out extra for the skip-the-line passes.

As more evidence toward the luxury brand phenomenon, they're trying hard to open a 2-day fake "cruise ship" in a theme park in the form of a Star Wars vehicle, but they can't get anyone to staff the restaurant because it's no-tipping and the customers are going to be the ultimate entitled assholes, since they've just paid $6000 for 2 nights of a hotel room and some "alien food" in bright colors with some lightsaber lessons.

They can't say it out loud without causing outrage and sacrificing some customer base, so they won't, but Disney doesn't give a fuck about middle class dollars any more. The reason they're making so much about their theme park annoying and nickel-and-dimey is that if you really have money, you buy a VIP tour guide at $450-800+ per hour for your group of up to 10 people (plus park admission costs, naturally), and the tour guide gets you to the front of the line at every ride you want to ride, at every park you want to visit. A lot of rich people who never felt the need to spend $5k per day on this kind of thing before will now do exactly that, because of the piled-high inconveniences that impact the merely comfortable rather than fabulously wealthy.

If you're in the middle class, Disney's message to you is clear: Universal's just down the road, or maybe try Legoland for the little kids. We don't need you, we just tolerate you.

Luxury developments in California are just another part of bringing this shift out into the light. Celebration is a luxury development that didn't really market itself as one. It's for people who want to pretend their lifestyle is family values, apple pie, and small towns.

This is a country club setting with no pretense of down-home authenticity, just money on display everywhere.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

View attachment 2990195

He's not wrong, look at all the national level real estate corporations that are already here and keep in mind that the ultra rich endlessly buy land.

 

[Cousin It]

View attachment 2990195

The worst part is that he's not wrong, but that he likely thinks it's a good thing.

 

[Ingmar Aspergman]

inb4

 

[JambledUpWords]

Disney is attempting not only to recast itself as a "lifestyle brand," but in the last 10 years it's made huge strides toward a "luxury brand" rebrand.

Admission prices are nuts and don't cover as much as what they used to. Disney food used to come in huge, shareable portions that were often above-par for theme park food and made the concession prices easier to swallow. Now it's overpriced and comes in small portions of inferior product. You used to be able to skip a few lines a day, now no more of that unless you pay extra per person per day, or for the more oversubscribed rides, pay for each individual ride to skip the line. Hotels on Disney property now cost much more than ever before. Rides are breaking more frequently. Lines have never been longer, because now making the lines longer makes people more likely to shell out extra for the skip-the-line passes.

As more evidence toward the luxury brand phenomenon, they're trying hard to open a 2-day fake "cruise ship" in a theme park in the form of a Star Wars vehicle, but they can't get anyone to staff the restaurant because it's no-tipping and the customers are going to be the ultimate entitled assholes, since they've just paid $6000 for 2 nights of a hotel room and some "alien food" in bright colors with some lightsaber lessons.

They can't say it out loud without causing outrage and sacrificing some customer base, so they won't, but Disney doesn't give a fuck about middle class dollars any more. The reason they're making so much about their theme park annoying and nickel-and-dimey is that if you really have money, you buy a VIP tour guide at $450-800+ per hour for your group of up to 10 people (plus park admission costs, naturally), and the tour guide gets you to the front of the line at every ride you want to ride, at every park you want to visit. A lot of rich people who never felt the need to spend $5k per day on this kind of thing before will now do exactly that, because of the piled-high inconveniences that impact the merely comfortable rather than fabulously wealthy.

If you're in the middle class, Disney's message to you is clear: Universal's just down the road, or maybe try Legoland for the little kids. We don't need you, we just tolerate you.

Luxury developments in California are just another part of bringing this shift out into the light. Celebration is a luxury development that didn't really market itself as one. It's for people who want to pretend their lifestyle is family values, apple pie, and small towns.

This is a country club setting with no pretense of down-home authenticity, just money on display everywhere.

I don’t get why Disney is trying to pander to the rich with the way they operate their theme parks and other places. Sure, individually, rich people have more money to throw around, but the very wealthy are more likely to go to a private island for a vacation instead of rubbing elbows with commoners at a place like Disneyworld. Middle class vacations are very different than the upper class vacations in that the upper class will pay a lot extra to have more privacy, which is where I think most of the major price difference comes from, aside from the wealthy being able to take more vacations per year. The more they keep making things a ripoff for people, the more people that will probably skip it altogether and go for cheaper entertainment like county/state fairs. I really think this is a bad business move overall for Disney to shift this direction, but I’m not surprised to see it because the mouse is greedy.

 

[naaaaiiiiillllll!!!]

I was eating breakfast at Denny's the other day and heard two grown men debating what 3 super powers they would pick if they could, and this conversation went on for the whole time I was there.

In their defense, I once had an extended conversation with a classmate who was convinced invisibility was the best superpower. Besides being clearly wrong, I had to find out why you would pick that instead of something like flying or Dr. Strange-esque space-time manipulation. Turns out social anxiety is a big thing…

Discussing hypothetical superpowers might sound stupid (because it is), but I’ve found it’s a good way to learn a lot about a person (especially if they’re a nerd).

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

I’ve found it’s a good way to learn a lot about a person (especially if they’re a nerd).

It's a good way to learn that someone is perpetually 12 years old, that's for sure.

Unless, of course, this happened when you were in fact in junior high and not college like I assumed.