Florida Land Acquisition: Disney secretly bought 27,443 acres; deal reshaped Walt Disney World

Walt Disney’s plan for what would become Walt Disney World began with a remarkably quiet real-estate operation. According to Disney’s D23 archives, the Florida Historical Society and the Walt Disney Company, Disney Productions spent about 18 months secretly assembling more than 27,000 acres in Central Florida before publicly acknowledging that it was behind the purchases. The operation was designed around a simple concern: If landowners discovered that Disney was buying the property, prices could soar before the company had secured enough acreage.The man tasked with avoiding that outcome was Robert Price “Bob” Foster, a lawyer who had joined Walt Disney Productions after working on Disneyland. In late 1963, Walt and his brother Roy Disney selected Foster to lead the Florida land acquisition effort, which was internally known as “Project X.” Foster initially expected to acquire somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 acres. Instead, the project ultimately grew into a massive 43-square-mile land assembly.Beginning in 1964, Disney representatives purchased properties through a collection of seemingly unrelated companies. Florida Memory identifies nine front companies used in the acquisitio...