The Celebration Chronicles : Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property Values in Disney's New Town [Hardcover]

Andrew Ross Ph.D. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 3, 1999

"Planned with impeccably correct intentions, built with improperly low-wage labor, and sold on the basis of improbably lavish guarantees, Celebration would be put to the test time and time again. . . . True to the ethos of the blockbuster box-office hit, would this town deliver on the promise of its business plan or its community plan? Or would it sidestep all expectations and play by a different script?"

Scholar and iconoclast Andrew Ross set out to answer these questions by spending a year living in the much scrutinized, and often demonized, Celebration--the picture-perfect town that Disney is building for 20,000 people in the swamp and scrub of central Florida. Lavishly planned with a downtown center and newly-minted antique homes, and front-loaded with an ultra-progressive school, hospital, and high-tech infrastructure, Celebration would be yet another fresh start in a word gone wrong. Yet behind the picket fences, gleaming facades, and "Kodak moment" streetscapes, Ross discovered genuine, complex, and often surprising truths.

In this compelling, eye-opening account, based on his personal encounters and on several hundred hours of interviews with residents, employees, and county locals, Ross records what went right and what went wrong in this latest version of the American Dream. Diverse in background, Celebration's pioneers were united by a desire to escape the cheerless isolation of suburbia and reconnect with the neighbors. They were also dazzled by the Disney brand name and expected much more than they got. The Celebration Chronicles recounts their often unruly struggles to build a community in the face of adversity: shoddy construction, typecasting by the media, Disney's skittishness about negative publicity, and friction with the working-class county of Osceola. An acute observer in the controversial school, Ross takes us to the front lines of a superheated battle of wills between educators and townspeople.

What does Celebration reveal about the state of contemporary culture? Is this model town a cause for celebration or alarm? Can we entrust the public interest to giant beneficiaries of the marketplace like Disney? One of our shrewdest social commentators, Ross brilliantly places this planned community within the context of the New Urbanist movement to combat suburban sprawl and restore public life to the nation's increasingly privatized landscape. Powerful, wide-ranging in its analysis, The Celebration Chronicles is a provocative account of the inner life of a new American town.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In The Celebration Chronicles, Andrew Ross has written a moving and subtle account of his yearlong stay at Disney's glistening suburban development in Celebration, Florida. Readers might expect that Ross, the director of American studies at New York University and a devoted urbanite, would contribute to both the fashionable sport of Disney bashing and the tired genre of suburban reproof. But, like an anthropologist gone native, Ross immersed himself in the community, interviewing dozens of the 20,000 residents, volunteering at the local school, and finding himself pleasantly surprised when his subjects had christened him an honorary Celebrationite.

Celebration, Ross argues, is the latest in a long line of utopian communities built to realize the American dream. Many wealthy and eager romantics flocked to the town with a faith that Disney magic would fulfill their hopes for a perfect community (and increase their property values). When the majority of these people found their dreams dashed against the corporation's bottom line, however, they engaged in grass roots activism that did more to bring their community together than any of the schemes from Disney "imagineers." Moving from a cogent analysis of the town to a multifaceted consideration of the environmental implications of American liberty, The Celebration Chronicles is a masterpiece of American studies scholarship. As astute as it is readable, Ross's book shows how Celebration's high-octane pursuit of happiness resulted in a limited civic culture and contributed to an overall ecological catastrophe that continues to worsen with each new drive toward the American dream. --James Highfill

From Publishers Weekly

The object of unrelenting media scrutiny since its inception in 1996, the small, Disney-built town of Celebration, Fla., has, according to Ross, been portrayed as either a real-life embodiment of a Disney fantasy of good, clean American values or as a haven for slavish Disney devotees who fall in line like dutiful Stepford wives. Like Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, whose Celebration, U.S.A. (Forecasts, July 26) records 12 months in the life of the town, Ross lived there for a year and came away with mixed feelings. The director of the American Studies program at NYU, Ross points out that the one thing most vividly separating Celebration from other communities is the glare of the media: perennially aware that they're under scrutiny, residents are subject to "performance anxiety" and tend to be highly self-conscious about their actions and decisions. While Disney's ideas about desirable urban designAwhich include such features as Muzak continually piped into the main street from speakers hidden beneath the palm treesAdo suggest a sugar-coated utopia, most of the residents Ross encountered were seeking an alternative to the isolating design of traditional suburbia. In this respect, Ross believes, Celebration is at least "a step in the right direction." Though Frantz and Collins more vividly describe the community and its residents, Ross's writing is refreshingly unacademic as he adroitly analyzes both the various upheavals plaguing this fledgling town and the day-to-day lives of Celebrationites of all ages, providing an astute look at a notable, if in some respects surreal, experiment in community building. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (August 3, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345417518
• ISBN-13: 978-0345417510
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #457,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why this is a phenomenal book, November 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Celebration Chronicles : Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property Values in Disney's New Town (Hardcover)

This is an excellent portrayal of small town USA citizens and at the same time and earnest critique of Disney's capital appetite. Ross weaves these stories together to create a fascinating read.

Celebrationites are a unique crew hailing from all over the country for reasons as varies as hoping the monorail system at Disneyworld could use a retired doctor as the conductor to expecting the cutting edge, progressive school to improve teenage grades and angst. Ross interviews the citizenry allowing them to tell their stories to an honest interviewer and fellow townee as opposed to their usual experience of giving five minute sound bite interviews from media folk in town for the afternoon. Celebration comes across as a town with incredible civic involvement and interesting inhabitants. Most citizen issues seem common to small neighborhoods, although some do have to do with the Disney Company and their poor construction of houses.

Ross demonstrates how the Disney Co. established Celebration as an (overpriced) homestead for varied income level inhabitants and racial diversity. Unfortunately neither was accomplished and the town is largely white and upper middle class. Celebration was designed to combat the ills of the urban sprawl overtaking the central Florida region and to promote clean living, community sentiment and an alternative to the glare of franchise neon lights. Interestingly, Ross points out that at the same time the Disney Co. is daily recruiting underpaid labor from Florida's immigrant pool of Mexicans and Central Americans who are forced to squeeze into tiny apartments on the strip thus adding to the urban sprawl as well as exploited laborers.

Ross relies on concrete data and solid interview to critique Disney's plans and true motivations for building celebration - 20 years worth of permits to develop their property holdings in Central Florida and continue to fortify their kingdom.

An excellent book, I highly recommend it!

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gripping discussion of Celebration's early development, September 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Celebration Chronicles : Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property Values in Disney's New Town (Hardcover)

Andrew Ross is hardly the kind of person for whom Celebration was built. He's single, he has no children, and he's apparently an educated intellectual with an abiding love of urban life. Nonetheless, he has done a very capable, skilled job in The Celebration Chronicles. Accurate coverage of the origins and early life of Disney's town required research and synthesis of the huge number of disparate elements - for example, architecural history and Disney's plans for its corporate future - and Ross has risen to the challenge in almost every way.

He does an especially good job - not surprising, for a college professor - of describing and analyzing the parents v. school war that had such an incredible influence on the town's development. Ross covers the external and internal politics, the education theory, and the human details of the school, as well as the many other, varied factors that fed into the battle.

The book also displays the results of the author's wide-ranging, thorough research. Ross appears to have entered into every social circle that would have him and even a few that wouldn't. He attended every town meeting, even those where he was the only resident present. He visited many residents and talked with the full range of social groups. He even carefully documented every rumor that blossomed on the flourishing town grapevine - that chapter makes for humorous reading indeed. All of Ross's research means that this book provides a very clear picture of the range and diversity of the residents and their lives in Celebration.

The book does founder a bit in the places where Ross's own leanings become too clear. His opinions - which, I'm grateful to say, are generally quarrantined in their own sections and chapters - about the town's issues are just what you'd expect from a hugely liberal educator without children. In the famed school battle, for example, his sympathy and empathy is all for the teachers and the lost innovative instruction paradigm. He appears totally incapable of understanding the parents' viewpoints, so his personal opinion is unbalanced.

Overall, though, this is a well-balanced, well-written, well-researched book. Considering the depth and complexity of the topic, this is an astounding work. Absolutely worth reading and owning, even if you'd never in your life consider residing in a place like Celebration.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A definite top ten., December 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Celebration Chronicles : Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property Values in Disney's New Town (Hardcover)

This book certainly deserved its place on Amazon's top ten list of the year. I have read many stories in the press about Celebration, and hoped that someone with real feel for the residents would write an in-depth account of life inside that strange place. Ross set aside his life for a year, and dedicated himself to participating fully in all of the activities of the town. His efforts paid off, the book is a real eye opener, and will surprise anyone expecting a simple-minded diatribe about Stepford Wives in a Mickey Mouse town. The Celebration Chronicles gives us all kinds of lessons about urban planning, civil liberties, and public life in privatized suburbia. Best of all, while the book is an absorbing piece of journalism it is also a responsible ethnographic study conducted with several hundred hours of interviews with residents and Disney employees. The reader knows she is getting at deep community truths and not just superficial opinions from a few sound bites. The chapters about the school controversy are worth the price of the book along, but Ross has done a great job throughout, and produced a masterful commentary on America at the end of the century.