Magnetic Train Plan Puts Disney on Troublesome Track in Florida

Faster than a speeding bullet train, “maglev” technology is threatening to change the competitive landscape in tourist-rich central Florida.

And Orlando-area businesses as big as MCA’s planned Universal Studios tour are getting worried about it.

Maglev, which stands for “magnetic levitation,” refers to wheel-less trains that float on a cushion of electrostatic energy at speeds of more than 300 m.p.h., roughly twice the speed of Japan’s bullet trains.

Maglev Transit, a Japanese-German consortium, last month presented Florida officials with a plan to spend as much as $650 million on a privately financed commercial line near Orlando. If approved, the train would be scheduled for operation as early as 1994, possibly making it the world’s first commercial maglev line.

(A much longer Las Vegas-to-Southern California maglev route is being studied, but won’t be in operation before 1998, according to the California-Nevada Super Speed Ground Transportation Commission. A government-supported test line in Emsland, West Germany, has operated for nearly a decade.)

The problem: Maglev Transit wants to whoosh visitors from the Orlando International Airport to Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center in a seven-minute, non-stop thrill ride for under $12--a stunning show of technological force that could help sell trains around the world.

To Universal, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich’s Sea World and a host of smaller water parks, hotels and related tourist businesses, however, maglev is beginning to look like a giant funnel, designed to suck a huge portion of the area’s 11 million tourists a year directly into Disney World, which might not let them out until their last dollar is spent.

“This is really just another E-ticket ride for Disney,” one Universal executive complained in a telephone interview last week.

The executive declined to be identified and said he didn’t want to turn the train into a public issue between MCA and Disney, which have been feuding over Universal’s claims that Disney based much of its recently opened Florida studio attraction on plans originally drafted by MCA for its own $550-million-plus studio tour. Disney has denied the claims.

Still, the two entertainment giants are beginning to treat maglev as a potential source of new conflict.

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During a visit with Florida Gov. Bob Martinez late last month, MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman and President Sidney Sheinberg, according to several individuals familiar with the talks, argued that any mass transit plan approved by the state should provide easy access to both Universal and Orlando’s International Drive tourist strip, which are between Disney and the airport.

One plan, which Maglev Transit has agreed to study, calls for a spur station that might allow runs from the airport to International Drive. According to several MCA executives, their company would further like to see Disney provide easements for a future line that could run out of Epcot toward Universal and assurances that companies other than Disney could participate in marketing the bullet train, to assure that it wouldn’t be turned into just another Disney ride.

Walt Disney World spokesman Charles Ridgeway scoffs at the notion, advanced by many local businessmen, that the every maglev run should include a stop at International Drive. “Obviously, it makes no sense to operate a train at 350 miles an hour and have it make a stop every four miles.”

Further, Ridgeway called it “much too early” to consider marketing or easements--although Florida legislation to clear the way for the bullet train explicitly requires Disney to provide some form of public access at Epcot if it does become a maglev terminal.

The spokesman added that Disney has no investment in Maglev Transit, which is largely funded by Japanese banks and trading companies, and finds the project appealing less for its ability to move tourists than its near-perfect match with Epcot’s “community of tomorrow” theme. “It would make a great attraction to bring people into the area in general,” he said.

In the Orlando area, however, maglev is already churning up a major political storm over the use of state permits and public facilities at the airport for a project that seems heavily tilted toward Disney’s interest.

Some local officials “are pretty unhappy with the whole thing,” said Vera Carter, a member of the Board of Commissioners in Orange County, where Orlando is located. “There are a lot of people who feel we’ve done enough for Disney.”

Unlike other businesses in Orlando, Disney is exempt from paying road impact fees, which has become a sore point among officials, who say that Disney’s growth is expanding the need for local services. The road fee exemption stems from acts passed by the Florida Legislature in 1967 out of deference to the late Walt Disney and his plan to create an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow--hence Epcot--on the land.

An earlier plan to build a so-called People Mover in Orlando died in 1986 after Disney declined to support it. “Disney would never give us permission for a station on Disney property and that, in essence, killed it,” said Lou Treadway, a former county commissioner who oversaw transportation issues.

The Florida High Speed Rail Commission is supposed to render an opinion on the Maglev Transit proposal by June 30. The opinion will be submitted to administrative hearings, then passed on to the governor for final approval as early as February, 1990. A separate panel of airport commissioners is considering whether to grant access to the airport, which handles about 16 million arrivals annually.

About half of the airport visitors are tourists, most of whom find Disney World the area’s primary drawing card.

But the average tourist stay is eight days, and the typical visitor spends four of those days at attractions outside Disney World, according to Orange County Commissioner Hal Marston. “I don’t support (the Maglev Transit plan), because I don’t see that it really serves this community,” Marston added.

Dick Batchelor, a lobbyist hired to represent businesses opposed to the current Maglev Transit proposal, maintained that a Disney representative had already turned thumbs down on easements for new rail lines to Epcot. “Disney is not willing to give up any land. They are not willing to provide any easements. That’s the message we’ve gotten from their lobbyist,” Batchelor said.

Batchelor said he believed that the rail commission was inclined to approve the Maglev Transit plan but might be persuaded to change the plan as a result of public hearings. Four days of hearings will be held later this month. Privately, some businessmen speculate that Gov. Martinez will back the rail line because it doesn’t use public funds and could help reduce future traffic congestion.

An aide to the governor acknowledged heavy interest in the issue but said most lobbying activity was focused on the gubernatorially appointed rail commission. At least one opposition group has threatened to file suit in an attempt to block the plan, if necessary.

Maglev Transit president Sam Tabuchi blames “Disney-bashing,” not unknown in Orlando, for much of the opposition. “We are being victimized for talking to Disney, because Disney became (the) bad boy in the community,” said Tabuchi.