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Re: [HOE] Gamers Beware! A word of warning!!!
On Tuesday, November 5, 2002, at 12:35 PM, PEGShane@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 11/5/2002 12:31:07 PM Eastern Standard Time, zacharin@pluto.dsu.edu writes:
follows. Disney wanted to build a new theme park in Virginia called Disney
America. This wouldn't necessarily have been so bad except for the fact that
they wanted to build it over a Civil War battlefield (I can't remember which
one). Needless to say, the locals didn't like that one bit, so they took
Disney to court. After a long- and hard-fought battle, the locals won. When
asked for comment, Disney's lawyer's response amounted to a "this isn't
over" statement. People wonder why I hate Disney. I cite this as one of the
reasons.
It wasn't going to be built on a battlefield, and probably cost our state easily 1 billion dollars per year or more--in a state with a severe budget shortfall and rising unemployment. (Hey, who needs to eat, right?) Not to mention might have turned on millions of kids to history.
This was a HUGE tragedy.
Don't punish success.
I lived near Mannassas at the time this was going on (Faquier County, if I;m spelling that right) and it was a major issue. Cut very cleanly across the lines of the middle and lower class (who wanted it) and the upper class and 'occasional' residents (who didn't).
The area in question may have possibly had some historic value. A good chunk of Virginia does, in some sense, and I fully support the efforts to maintain those sites with actual merit, but in this case a theme park would have been better use of land than an empty field with no visitor facilities that doesn't have any real use at this point (besides the value of a nice field) as the theme park would have provided a lot of different things.... Tourism, jobs for locals (especially the teenagers who had very few options) and similar.
Now, if they had attempted to pave Gettysburg, up in PA, there'd have been some definite reasons to complain. Gettysburg has good facilities to get people interested and explain the events that went on there. I'm sure Virginia has some good sites like this as well.
Sorry to go off on a rant here.