Anaheim Officials Plan Walt Disney World Visit

A delegation of Anaheim city administrators is expected to travel to Orlando, Fla., within two weeks for talks with Walt Disney Co. executives to determine how the Central Florida city has absorbed extensive business expansion in the area now dominated by the entertainment company.

City Manager James Ruth said Monday that the meetings, which are also expected to involve government officials from Orlando and Orange County, Fla., will be key in preparing city administrators for upcoming negotiating sessions with Disney as the company prepares to unveil its plans for a new $1-billion second attraction in Anaheim.

Ruth said the Anaheim group will probably be headed by Deputy City Manager Tom Wood and include Ron Rothschild, the city’s administrative services manager, and Tom Winfield, an Orange County land-use attorney whom the city selected to head future negotiations with Disney.

“We feel it’s beneficial for us to go in firsthand and look at their entire operation,” Ruth said of the trip to Walt Disney World. “We figure two or three days there to look at the economic demands and infrastructure needs that we would be responsible for here would give us better insight going into our negotiations with Disney.

“Disney’s operation there is dramatically different than what we have here.”

Ruth said that Disney’s Florida development is larger than the Anaheim theme park but that the city could learn from Orlando’s experiences in developing a transportation system to servean expanded recreation area and in gauging the development’s financial impact on the city.

The city manager said plans for the trip could be presented to the City Council for consideration as early as tonight. If approved, he said, the city would pick upall travel-related costs. Estimates of trip expenses were not available.

The city of Long Beach, which is vying with Anaheim to win Disney’s second Southern California attraction, sent a delegation of its own last January to view the Disney operation in Florida. Six officials made the city-funded trip, reportedly at a cost of under $10,000.

In Long Beach, Disney has proposed a 400-acre waterfront resort called Port Disney that includes five new hotels, a nautical theme park and other attractions.