Disney World in Palm Beach Gardens? It came close to happening when Disney, MacArthur met
As visitors all over the world take planes, trains and cars to get to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Palm Beach County residents can only imagine what life would be like today if the Mouse had decided to settle in South Florida.
It's a story many in Palm Beach County already know but it may be news to others: Walt Disney actually had a deal to build his theme park in Palm Beach Gardens.
The deal eventually fell apart, but here's the story:
John D. MacArthur, known as the "father of Palm Beach Gardens," had a handshake deal with Walt Disney to build the park on 320 acres along PGA Boulevard.
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The deal came not long after Disney created Disneyland, which was built on a former orange grove in Anaheim, California, in 1955. The park had a disastrous opening but it recovered in a few years and Disney thought the time was right to build another park east of the Mississippi.
He came to Palm Beach Gardens not long after McArthur, an insurance billionaire, created the city in June 1959. Disney met with MacArthur and television executives and the two men shook hands on the deal.
The agreement called for Walt Disney to provide the entertainment and MacArthur the land and the financing. The two clicked.
Walt Disney's brother Roy reportedly killed the deal
But Walt Disney’s brother, Roy, handled the business side, and he didn’t want the new park’s neighbors making money off its success. His attempt to negotiate for more land provoked MacArthur’s wrath, effectively killing the deal.
Disney World eventually went to Orlando. As it turned out, the slice of land MacArthur offered was a fraction of the roughly 27,000 acres Disney World occupies now.
RELATED: TV show 'Gentle Ben' was partially shot in Palm Beach Gardens
MacArthur, by the way, didn't give up on utilizing Gardens space.
In the 1960s, he found a way to get producers of the movie and CBS television series about a gentle bear who lived in the wilds of Florida, to film parts of the shows on MacArthur property. The movie was called "Gentle Giant," and the show "Gentle Ben."
Details of Disney's trip to Palm Beach Gardens and the deal that fell apart
Sherman Adler, of Palm Beach Gardens, was an ad sales executive at NBC when, in his 20s, he found himself driving around rural Palm Beach County in a dusty old pickup truck with John D. MacArthur and Walt Disney.
But it wasn't until he watched the two American titans of industry and entertainment strip down to their boxer shorts and splash one another in the Intracoastal Waterway one afternoon that he knew he had witnessed something he would never forget.
"They were like two peas in a pod. Both creative. They loved nature," Adler told The Palm Beach Post in 2011. Adler died in 2017.
Adler was part of a three-day scouting trip that Disney took with MacArthur of his vast north county properties more than 40 years ago — a trip that, if it had gone another way, might have brought Disney World here instead of Orlando.
After the success of Disneyland in Anaheim, Disney looked east.
"He learned in California that you want to own everything as far as the eye can see," Adler told the Post.
Disney almost settled on St. Louis, but beer sales killed the deal
So Disney set off to find a site for a new Disney World, closer to the East Coast, so it would not draw dollars from Disneyland. At first, it looked like he had settled on St. Louis, where a contract was being drawn up in partnership with Augustus Busch, the patriarch of the Anheuser-Busch beer company.
Everything seemed poised to place Mickey ears under the Arch when Busch made a comment about selling his beer at Disney World.
Although Disney was no teetotaler, he believed beer had no place in the wholesome image he was trying to create in the "happiest place on earth." So the deal fell through. To this day, alcohol is only sold at table service restaurants in the Magic Kingdom, the first of the Disney World parks.
Disney is out of St. Louis, and into Florida
Word of that blowup reached the ear of MacArthur, who invited Disney to take a look at more than 320 acres he owned in north Palm Beach County, along what is now PGA Boulevard and PGA National.
Disney called Adler, who for years had been trying to convince Disney he should take his entertainment business to the East Coast, where the time zone made doing business easier, and to Florida, in particular, a right-to-work state.
"What do you know about this 'Black Jack' MacArthur?" Disney asked him, and went on to invite him to join Disney and MacArthur for their meeting.
Adler was set to take a two-week vacation to Alaska that August for salmon fishing. But without his bosses at NBC knowing, he took a flight to West Palm Beach.
Walt Disney and John D. MacArthur were kindred spirits
There, he saw two kindred spirits immediately hit it off: Disney, who had grown up on a farm in Missouri, and MacArthur, who had grown up poor, the son of a Baptist preacher. MacArthur was rooted to his past and still lived in a two-bedroom "shotgun shack," Adler told The Post.
They were also highly driven, competitive spirits. On a tour of the Intracoastal, near what was Layton's Fish Camp and Bait shop in Riviera Beach, after having cold drinks at the surfside, MacArthur asked Disney if he liked to swim. MacArthur then stripped down to his boxers and jumped into the ocean.
"Walt, not to be outdone by this so-called naturalist, takes off all his clothes except his shorts and jumps in," Adler said.
The men ended that weekend with a handshake deal to bring Disney World to Palm Beach County. But later, Disney confided in Adler, "Sherman, I'm not sure I trust him."
And on a subsequent visit to hammer out the details, Roy Disney, Walt's brother who ran the business side, angered MacArthur by insisting he wanted to buy more land — much more — to control all of the areas around Disney World.
"I have to get the hell out of here, or I'll hit that goddamn beagle right in the nose," MacArthur told his real estate adviser Jerome Kelly when he abruptly left the dinner table.
But Adler always feared the two big personalities would clash. Plus, Disney wanted much more land than was available in Palm Beach County. Adler said it was MacArthur (who owned more than 100,000 acres in Florida) who pointed Disney north to Orlando, where he owned — and eventually sold — a large chunk of land to Disney as part of its purchase of nearly 30,000 acres.
"He loved making the deals, the wheeling and dealing," Kriplen said.
So Disney may not have ended up in Palm Beach County. But in some minds, MacArthur was the reason Walt Disney World eventually came to Florida.
"He wouldn't have come to Florida otherwise," Adler told The Post. "He brought Disney down here."
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Walt Disney, John D. MacArthur almost OK'd bringing Disney to Gardens