Mouse Extra

Well, it didn’t take long for the back peddling to begin on the rumor Disney is buying land in Branson, Missouri.  Today the News-Leader, the same paper who started all of this over the past weekend, is now reporting the rumor to be a bunch of hooey.

After rumors flew last week that Disney was planning to build a $1.1 billion theme park in the area, Presiding Commissioner Jerry Carter got the word Monday that, as he put it, it’s “shenanigans.”

“I just talked to the vice president of public affairs for Disney, and she said there’s nothing to it,” Carter said.

But don’t just take Disney’s word for it.  Apparently the representative we talked about yesterday gave a telephone number that is always busy and an email address that is never answered.  The whole ruckus started because investigating reporters traced ownership of the company claiming to be building a theme park to addresses within the Walt Disney Company.  But the addresses also went to other places…

Also, the business address listed on the registration form is 1826 S. Glenstone Ave., Springfield, Suite 353. That address is the site of a UPS store with a mailbox numbered 353.

And lending an odd touch, the name of one of the company’s owners is registered as Robert Brown. While it may be a common name, it also is the name of the deceased first husband of Walt Disney’s daughter, Sharon Disney. That Robert Brown died in 1967.

As we said yesterday, this rumor sounded too obvious.  No one in the Disney Company would risk having to pay inflated land prices by being this careless.  It sounds more like a goofy prank or an attempt to inflate land prices under false pretenses gone wrong. 

One thing we can always be sure of is that a rumor like this will pop up every year or so.  Usually it starts on the internet and involves an area of Texas, but Branson has been an old favorite of the Disney rumor mill as well.  Being that it appeared in a newspaper, and not an online chat room, gave this a bit more legitimacy, at least on the surface.  But suspicion surrounded this from the very beginning.