Celebration Florida: A Not So Perfect Town From Disney
Hey everybody today, we're going to cover 10, not so common facts about celebration Florida. Let's get started.
Hey there, Jared Jones and this old video, we're going to talk about the top 10 interesting facts that I'll bet you didn't know about celebration Florida. The number one and often unknown fact is that Disney company created this master plan village. Back in the 1980s, Disney charged a few department heads to start working on a village community pattern after Disney. Now they were very skeptical at the time because Disney had about 27,000 available acres, which yes, is a lot of land, but they wanted to make sure that they still had room for the rest of the park's demands. So in the end, they decided to establish a community within about 4,900 acres on the Southernmost portion of the park, which is literally within a mile of Disney property. Number two, Disney sold its stake in 2004. That's right. Disney, no longer found that it was best to have its interests align with this community and allowed a private hedge fund investment group to buy its stake.
In 2004, Disney was embroiled in a lot of challenges. I mean, there were times when the school's PTA never found agreement on anything. There were random issues with construction. And obviously, if you're trying to run theme parks and movies and everything else, this is obviously not in their best interest to try and manage a neighborhood as well. So they let it go. Number three, it was 14 years before someone would be murdered in celebration. Now by itself, that is a statistic that is unrivaled for any American town but modeled after an idyllic vision of a small-town America, it still came as a shock over Thanksgiving weekend in 2010 transient David Israel Marilla then 28, allegedly attacked a 50-year-old retired schoolteacher named Mateo Giovanditto with an ax and then strangled him with a shoelace in Giovanditto celebration. Condo Morello at the time said the victim got what he deserved.
He claimed that Giovanni DDO hired him to wash his car, then drugged Marilla his beer and tried to sexually assault him after the death of this teacher, Giovanditto. There were many claims of folks that came out that said he had molested them or had done things to them that were inappropriate lending to claims of what the murder had said. The story goes, the Giovanditto moved from school to school throughout the eighties, consistently developing close relationships with male students, taking them on trips. Often the Disney theme parks Marilla was found guilty of the murder in 2013 and is sentenced to prison for life where he sits to this day. Number four, are you aware that this almost wasn't named celebration Florida? That's right in the late eighties, early nineties, Osceola County starts to pressure Disney to come up with a name for the project, which was previously unnamed Disney's legal team and their research teams known for polling and mass came up with 264 potential names and they were all getting frustrated over the process because certain names couldn't be used because of marks and branding and things of that nature.
But the final names lists that came down were horizons. New Vista dimensions AmeriTowne in celebration. And obviously, the winner was the ladder. Number five. Did you know that celebration, Florida houses, one of the most remarkable residential Christmas light displays in the entire state of Florida? That's right. There's a street in the town of celebration that features 11 homes with some of the most Christmasy people you'll ever meet. They decorate this entire street with dazzling, Christmas lights, fully synchronized music, projections, and even visits from Santa and other characters. They start this process every Christmas season, usually towards the end of November and the last night runs till December 31st. Now I visited this area. The street is so amazing. The Jeter Ben lights are best viewed. If you park up the celebration app and you walk up and down Jeter, Ben drives so much to do. The atmosphere is wonderful and there's this falling snow. And there's a super cool bubble effect is just a great time. During Christmas. Number six celebration was rumored to be the experimental prototype community of tomorrow Epcot in October 1966, just days before being diagnosed with lung cancer in a few weeks before his death, while Disney made a film about what he called Epcot, the experimental prototype community of tomorrow. And this was to be part of the 43,000 acres of land.
You think the need is for starting from scratch on virgin land and building a special kind of new community. So that's what Epcot is an experimental prototype community. And we'll always be in a state of becoming, it will never cease to be a living blueprint of the future where people actually live a life. They can't find it anywhere else in the world. Everything in Epcot will be dedicated to the happiness of the people who will live, work, and play here. And those who come here from all around the world to visit our living showcase.
Although his plans for Disney world came to fruition when the parks opened in 1971, Epcot was put on the back burner for a while. And of course, we have a theme park called Epcot center opened in the early 1980s, but it was nothing like Walt's description of Epcot being a community where people live. It was still just a theme park with a theme of education. But in the early 1990s, the Disney development company began on this Truman show-like town, where everybody could live, work, play, and have state-of-the-art everything. Number seven, there's a myth that wildlife in celebration is audio-animatronic. The fact is all the animals of celebration are real. And as a visitor here, you'll often spot birds, turtles, fish, deer, and even alligators. Number eight celebration is home to one of the finest luxury home markets in the area featuring multimillion-dollar mansions.
Don't let the common Truman show S streets full you. There's some large real estate available in celebration for the home buyer with exquisite taste, 1207 Aquilla loop and celebration was the highest resale in the area. It was a $6.3 million sale, seven bedrooms, 10 full bathrooms with a private pool, and 14,368 square feet of living space. The house has almost half an acre under roof, and it was a masterpiece in every regard and one of the finest homes in the celebration marketplace, but on the streets surrounding it, there are many more options with a luxury appeal for the upper-end home buyer. Number nine, it's not as expensive as you think to own a home here. Homes in celebration, Florida have been raging in price, but you can get into a single-family home in the celebration area in the four twenties. Now homes in this price range will be anywhere from 14 to 2000 square feet to start.
And even if you're looking at the entry market condominiums in the celebration area range between 150 and $250,000, and you can get a beautiful location in the same area. Obviously, I can help whether you're in the luxury market or the entry market, reach out to your Disney home expert, the Jones group, we'll be happy to help you out. Number 10, the entire town of celebration started out of a preview center. That's right. As Disney started to pre-sell this new town they were developing. They chose to create a preview center, a building with facades surrounding for ready-made lease trailers, and a prominent field near the town entrance. And from this preview center, you could see it from the main road at one 92 and the office block, which was very visible from the main road at the time. And the building's design was to be a combination gateway and a billboard.
The irony was that the preview center had nothing to preview. The town infrastructure was nearly complete, but there were no homes to inspect. Now, this would be true for 18 months of the temporary center. The trailers here were surrounded by full-size and large amounts of watercolor renderings of some typical celebration, home styles, and a drive-through modern-day celebration prove that they got the preview center's facade pretty accurate. That's it. Thanks for watching help out our channel by giving this video a thumbs up and please share buying or selling a home in central Florida is expensive.
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