In a war against Gov. Ron DeSantis, Disney fought fire with fire.
Disney hired Holtzman Vogel, a powerhouse law firm that performed millions of dollars of work for the DeSantis administration, to help Disney outmaneuver the state. Holtzman Vogel did not want anyone to know it was helping Disney for fear of DeSantis’ retribution, one Disney lawyer said under oath.
That’s just one revelation in court depositions recently obtained by Florida Politics.
Revealing their side of story for the first time, Disney executives felt their future theme park expansions were in jeopardy at the height of the company’s battle with DeSantis and the Florida GOP.
The depositions come from a civil lawsuit related to the Disney-DeSantis conflict and offer new insight on the infamous feud.
The court records reveal that Disney’s top leaders voluntarily slowed down expanding the Magic Kingdom because they were hesitant about working with a DeSantis-controlled board.
One DeSantis appointee wanted to destroy Disney World’s government and cut off its debt financing, which left a Disney road construction project in limbo for years, a former official said.
The depositions from Disney World Chief Counsel John McGowan, Disney Master Planning executive Todd Rimmer, and former Reedy Creek District Administrator John Classe offer a wealth of new information about how the episode unfolded. Below are four key revelations from the 700 pages of court documents.
Disney feared losing control of the park’s expansion
The DeSantis-Disney fight started when the entertainment giant spoke out against Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” law, which critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
The state’s revenge was swift. Fueled by national political ambitions, DeSantis put The Mouse in his crosshairs and made Disney a regular target at news conferences. The Legislature passed a law seizing control of Disney World’s governing board in 2023.
Ever since a 1967 deal with the state, Disney World had been run by a special governing structure known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District. With 400 employees, Reedy Creek handled Disney World’s infrastructure, roads and emergency services, just as a county government would.
The kingdom was huge. Reedy Creek Improvement District covered Walt Disney World Resort, a massive land portfolio approximately the size of San Francisco that was home to four theme parks, two water parks and hotels.
Suddenly, DeSantis had the power to appoint his own allies to the governing board, wresting the power away from Disney.
In the depositions, Disney executives said almost nothing about DeSantis personally, or about defending First Amendment rights or the LGBTQ+ community, explained Disney scholar Richard Foglesong after he read the depositions at Florida Politics’ request.
“What was really more important to the company was the right to control their future development, considering that two-thirds of the property by the Disney company here in Orlando is still undeveloped,” said Foglesong, author of “Married to the Mouse.”
The company was planning the biggest expansion in the Magic Kingdom’s history, which was under threat, in Disney’s eyes, due to the DeSantis fight.
“Everybody understood that we were on the cusp of Reedy Creek being overtaken by a board that we assumed, turns out correctly, was going to be a hostile board,” said John McGowan, Chief Counsel of the Walt Disney World Resort’s legal department, in his February 2024 deposition.
“Everybody understood that it was in the best interest of Disney, Reedy Creek, the legacy of Reedy Creek, everything that Reedy Creek has accomplished as a special district promoting tourism in the district, that it would be in the best interest to protect the ability for tourism to continue to be expanded in the way it’s always intended to be expanded.”
Disney brought in a surprise player to help craft the deal
McGowan admitted he was the one who came up with the idea on how to fight back against the state’s takeover of Reedy Creek.
Disney’s plan forming in Fall 2022 was to get the outgoing Reedy Creek board to approve an agreement to give Disney development rights to expand Walt Disney World in the future. The deal needed to be approved quickly, before DeSantis gained control and appointed new board members.
Reedy Creek’s attorney, Ed Milgrim, was on board with McGowan’s strategy.
“What do you recall Mr. Milgrim saying to you?” asked lawyer Nicole Moss, representing the state-controlled Disney governing board, during McGowan’s deposition.
“That he agreed that that was the right thing to do,” McGowan testified.
The agreement was written within a week or two in January 2023.
“There was no deadline by which these had to be finalized and recorded, is that right?” Moss asked.
“There absolutely was a deadline,” McGowan testified.
“And what deadline was there?” Moss asked.
“The appointment of the new board,” McGowan answered.
“Well, you said there was a deadline,” Moss pushed back. “What obligation was there for you to do it by that date?”
“The obligation to protect Disney and Reedy Creek from a hostile board,” McGowan said.
Even though it was his idea and he helped write it, McGowan’s name was removed from the top of the development agreement. McGowan knew the optics looked bad if his political enemies discovered that Disney was orchestrating the development deal.
“My recollection is that putting my name on the document would … raise the (attention) of the next board and that they would use it as a false narrative that it was something shoved down the district’s throat,” McGowan testified.
Another group also wanted to be kept anonymous regarding their work on the development agreement: Holtzman Vogel, the prominent law firm with deep ties to Republicans.
“So Disney retained Holtzman Vogel?” Moss asked McGowan.
“Yes,” McGowan testified, “to provide legal advice on the developer’s agreement.”
“Legal advice to Disney or to Reedy Creek, or both?” Moss followed up.
“Disney,” McGowan testified.
The depositions released to Florida Politics were written transcripts. But at this point in the conversation, the transcript noted that McGowan covered his hands with his face when the subject of Holtzman Vogel was brought up. A lawyer asked McGowan to put his hands down. The deposition continued.
“You go on to say, ‘The Vogel legal team don’t want to put their name on it, unfortunately, because they are a Tallahassee firm and they do work for the Governor,’” Moss said to McGowan. “You put in parens ‘unfortunately.’ What did you mean by that?”
“They were terribly afraid that if the Governor learned that they were helping Disney, the Governor would retaliate them and take the work away from them,” McGowan testified.
Holtzman Vogel has received more than $16 million for doing legal work with the state since 2021, according to state records. Some of that legal work was for redistricting and helping Florida defend controversial election laws.
But Holtzman Vogel has also worked with Disney before. One of its lawyers, David Childs, was a registered lobbyist with Walt Disney Parks and Resorts for several years up until Oct. 31, 2025, state records show.
The lawyer representing Reedy Creek carried personal ambitions. Milgrim, who had a history of performing legal services for Disney, wanted to be named a Disney preferred provider.
Milgrim emailed McGowan to put in a “good word with” Walt Disney Co. General Counsel Horacio Gutierrez, according to the depositions.
However, it appeared to be a moot point. McGowan noted that Disney never set up the preferential provider program for legal services.
Milgrim and Holtzman Vogel both declined to comment for this story.
DeSantis’ attorney might have been tipped off in advance
McGowan disputed that Disney took complete control in drafting the development agreement.
“Disney and Reedy Creek both had input,” he insisted.
Still, it was clear Disney was in charge.
Milgrim emailed McGowan about how to write an agenda item for Reedy Creek’s board.
“Do you know why Mr. Milgrim was seeking your advice as to how to present an agenda item to the board?” Moss asked.
“You would have to ask him,” McGowan said.
McGowan wrote the talking points for Reedy Creek District Administrator John Classe to give to his board.
How much did McGowan think the Reedy Creek board of supervisors should know about the agreements they were about to vote on?
“We think less is more in this case,” McGowan wrote.
The board didn’t appear to ask any questions either.
McGowan elaborated on why he didn’t want Disney World’s governing board to know the full picture.
“It’s a complicated transaction,” McGowan testified in his deposition. “It would really muck up the discussion to have that kind of detail at this point in the board meeting. That was my take on it.”
Todd Rimmer, a Master Planner Executive with Disney Imagineering, explained why these fast-moving development agreements were so important to The Mouse.
“I understood that it would be beneficial to provide certainty to the company,” Rimmer said during his own deposition. “The uncertainty of what a new board might choose to do with land development regulations and the comprehensive plan gave the company uncertainty in whether they could proceed with development in a timely fashion, and so a development agreement would lock in those development options.”
Under the proposal, Disney could sell land for fair market value to its governing board in order to build the public infrastructure needed for Disney’s expansion. That way, it avoided the governing board later seizing Disney’s land by eminent domain, Rimmer said, noting that it had never happened to Disney before.
The restrictive covenants also gave Disney control over what Reedy Creek buildings looked like.
Disney got what it wanted.
The outgoing Reedy Creek board voted in favor of the development agreement and restrictive covenants.
It was like adding more wood to the burning Disney-DeSantis fire.
After the DeSantis-appointed board took over Reedy Creek, the new members were furious when they discovered what the old board had done.
Martin Garcia, the new board’s Chair, looked for someone to blame. Garcia called Classe, who had been running daily operations at Reedy Creek for seven years.
“First of all, he said that I should have told him about them when we first met. And then he also implied that I should have stopped those agreements before they were processed because of the changes of the board,” Classe said during his deposition.
The DeSantis-appointed board began publicly attacking Disney.
“The bottom line is that Disney engaged in a caper worthy of Scrooge McDuck to try to evade Florida law,” the new board’s lawyer, Fred Thompson said in April 2023.
DeSantis slammed Disney for what he called arrogance as he signed legislation voiding Disney’s agreements in May 2023.
But it turns out that Disney’s development agreement may not have been a secret.
DeSantis’ administration appeared to know in advance that the development agreement was coming, according to McGowan’s testimony.
McGowan revealed that Ray Treadwell, the Chief Deputy General Counsel in DeSantis’ Office, was aware of what Disney was doing all along.
“I don’t think Ray Treadwell had any input in any of this,” McGowan testified. “It’s my understanding he was aware of the existence of these documents before they were approved by the board.”
McGowan did not know if anyone from Disney shared an actual copy of the development agreement or restrictive covenants to the Governor’s Office. But McGowan said DeSantis’ Chief Deputy General Counsel had been given a heads up based on what Disney lobbyist Adam Babington told McGowan.
“Am I correct that your entire basis for believing that Mr. Treadwell was aware of the development agreement and restrictive covenants before they were approved by the board is information that you received from Mr. Babington?” Moss asked.
“To the best of my recollection, yes,” McGowan said.
DeSantis and Treadwell did not respond to a request of comment for this story.
Disney’s new deals with the departing Reedy Creek board had led to an all-out war between Disney and its own government in Summer 2023. Both sides sued each other in Orange County Circuit Court as public tensions ran high. Garcia even refused to let Reedy Creek’s public record administrator access his documents, according to the court depositions.
The lawsuits set the stage for McGowan, Rimmer and Classe to testify under oath. It took more than a year for Disney World’s government to produce the depositions after a public record request.
Soon, Classe was out of his job.
In the ongoing months, the DeSantis-controlled board demoted Classe to be a special adviser to his replacement. Classe was iced out of senior-level meetings. One day, he was told he was no longer needed, so he packed up his belongings and was escorted out of the building. He received $60,000 from his employment separation agreement, though he was three months away from turning 62, so he missed getting health benefits.
Disney was forced to slow down Magic Kingdom expansion
Before the Legislature and DeSantis took action, Disney and Reedy Creek had once intermingled to the point where it was hard to know where one began and the other ended.
McGowan moonlit as Reedy Creek’s legal counsel for years before Milgrim was hired in 2019 as Reedy Creek’s lawyer.
That meant for years, a Disney attorney was negotiating for both sides of the table when The Mouse and Reedy Creek signed licensing agreements, made deals with power companies, or discussed what government services Reedy Creek provided for Disney.
When Florida Republicans punished Disney by taking over the governing district and DeSantis named new board members in February 2023, that stripped all control away from Disney. Reedy Creek was renamed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (CFTOD).
Now, in McGowan’s eyes, the DeSantis appointees on Disney World’s governing board were “hostile.”
Amid the uncertainty of how Disney and the new board would work together over land development regulation, Disney decided to slow down the Magic Kingdom expansion that had not been publicly announced yet, said Rimmer, the Master Planning Executive.
Disney stopped filing permits, as the company was unsure if the new DeSantis-appointed board would approve the wetland mitigation credits Disney needed to move forward with construction.
“The use of the wetland credits creates the developable land on which the development will sit. We’re turning wetlands into uplands to put theme park on it. So if we can’t get that approved, then we can’t go forward,” Rimmer testified. “When we’re looking at billions of dollars of investment, we want to be certain that we can proceed.”
Rimmer did not indicate how much time Disney lost by delaying the Magic Kingdom expansion, and Disney declined to elaborate for this story.
But Rimmer said Walt Disney World Resort President Jeff Vahle and other top leaders had a “general agreement that we needed to be cautious in moving forward with development plans.”
It was a choice Disney made on its own, without any pressure from the new DeSantis-controlled board and the new district administrator in charge, Rimmer acknowledged during lawyer questioning.
When Rimmer was deposed under oath in February 2024, Disney had not yet publicly announced it was building a Villains Land and other new rides at the Magic Kingdom. Disney revealed the expansion several months later, in August 2024.
Disney dealt with other headaches too.
Two solar developers reported they were unable to get financing to build their solar farms, McGowan testified.
“No lenders wanted to be involved with CFTOD while CFTOD had a dispute with Disney,” McGowan said.
Another project was also in limbo: a road construction project known as World Drive Phase III.
To fight traffic congestion and to improve safety, Disney World’s government planned to finish expanding the two-lane road on the western side of the Magic Kingdom into four lanes. The road goes around Disney golf courses, the Shades of Green Resort, and the iconic Polynesian and Grand Floridian resorts.
Reedy Creek’s construction budget skyrocketed by $75 million, meaning the price tag reached $175 million under the old board, according to the depositions.
Before the state takeover, Reedy Creek had been in the process of getting bonds issued to finish World Drive Phase III, Classe said.
But the new DeSantis-appointed board members were against taking out more municipal bonds, cutting off the funding mechanism that Disney World’s government relied on for years to pay for major infrastructure projects, according to claims made in the depositions.
“The board has made clear that it will not complete World Drive Phase III that was under construction prior to CFTOD being taken over. And they’ve made it clear that at least what they’ve said so far, they will not issue any bonds that would be necessary to complete construction of World Drive Phase III,” McGowan testified in 2024.
“The project has come to a halt. … If it had not ceased, World Drive Phase III would likely be completed by now.”
DeSantis appointee Brian Aungst Jr. believed he had been put on Disney World’s governing board to destroy it, Classe said.
“He felt it was the new board’s responsibility to eliminate the district,” Classe testified.
“Eliminate the district in its entirety?” Disney lawyer Daniel Petrocelli asked Classe.
“Yes,” Classe replied.
“Do you know why Mr. Aungst wanted to eliminate the district?” Petrocelli asked.
“If I recall correctly, I think he felt that was their mandate,” Classe testified.
“From whom?” the lawyer asked.
“I don’t know,” Classe testified.
“From the Governor?” the lawyer questioned.
“I don’t know,” Classe said.
Two years later, it appears the road project is still not completed.
Today the normally picturesque scene outside the Magic Kingdom area resorts is interrupted by the reality of messy construction work from the World Drive Phase III project.
On a recent mid-April morning, while golfers played nearby, a cement mixer poured and construction vehicles rumbled by a big mound of dirt near the Grand Floridian Resort’s Wedding Pavilion.
CFTOD did not respond to multiple questions or interview requests for this story. Aungst, a lawyer and the son of a former Clearwater Mayor, declined to comment.
Epilogue: The two sides make peace
In the wake of the Disney-DeSantis fight, many of the characters involved have moved on. Classe found a new job. Milgrim resigned as Reedy Creek’s lawyer and has a law office in Orlando. DeSantis appointed Treadwell to be a Judge on the 1st District Court of Appeal.
Today, all the DeSantis appointees, including Aungst, have been replaced with new DeSantis picks on Disney World’s governing board.
“These matters are in the past, and our development plans are moving full speed ahead with the support of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District,” Disney said in a statement for this story. “We have more projects underway at Walt Disney World than at any other point in our history, creating jobs and positive economic impact for Floridians.”
Disney World fans eagerly await Villains Land.
Term-limited DeSantis is finishing his final year of office. His press conferences no longer invoke Disney with a fury like they once did.
The Disney-DeSantis fight will long be remembered in Florida history books and will partially define DeSantis’ legacy, said University of Central Florida associate political professor Aubrey Jewett.
“It was just really attention-grabbing. Disney is one of the most well-known corporations in the world. And DeSantis was going after them,” said Jewett, who was interviewed by hundreds of outlets from The New York Times to Belgium radio at the height of the feud.
The war between Disney and DeSantis has quieted down, with the two sides in a truce.
The Magic Kingdom retains its crown for the most popular theme park in the world.
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Editor’s note: This story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, which provides grants and other support to independent journalists and news organizations.
Read Florida Politics’ previous reporting on the depositions: “Scoop: In 2024, Disney considered building hotels inside the Magic Kingdom, records show.”
Read the full depositions: John McGowan, Todd Rimmer, John Classe Part 1 and Part 2.
The post The untold story of Ron DeSantis vs. Disney appeared first on Florida Politics – Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government..