The rides you have been waiting for almost did not happen. Newly obtained court depositions from the Disney-DeSantis legal battle reveal that Disney World’s top leadership voluntarily paused the biggest expansion in Magic Kingdom’s history because they were not confident a DeSantis-controlled board would approve the permits needed to move forward.
What the Depositions Say
Florida Politics obtained roughly 700 pages of sworn testimony from Disney World Chief Counsel John McGowan, Master Planning Executive Todd Rimmer, and former Reedy Creek Administrator John Classe. The depositions come from a civil lawsuit tied to the state’s 2023 takeover of Reedy Creek Improvement District, the special governing body that had run Walt Disney World’s infrastructure since 1967.
Rimmer testified that Disney stopped filing permits for the Magic Kingdom expansion after DeSantis-appointed board members took control of Reedy Creek. To build on undeveloped land at the resort, Disney needed wetland mitigation credits approved by the district. Without confidence that a hostile board would sign off, leadership was not willing to move forward on a project worth billions of dollars.
“When we’re looking at billions of dollars of investment, we want to be certain that we can proceed,” Rimmer said in his February 2024 deposition.
Resort President Jeff Vahle and other senior leaders reached a collective decision to slow down. Rimmer confirmed Disney made that call on its own, without direct pressure from the new board. The company was simply not willing to gamble the expansion on an uncertain outcome.
Villains Land had not yet been publicly announced when Rimmer testified in early 2024. Disney revealed the full expansion that August.
That Road Construction Has a Real Backstory
If you have been to the Magic Kingdom area in the past couple of years, you have seen the mess. The stretch of World Drive near the Grand Floridian and Polynesian resorts has been torn up for what feels like forever. The World Drive Phase III project was supposed to widen that two-lane road into four lanes to ease traffic and improve safety around the resort’s most iconic hotels.
The depositions explain why it stalled. Before the state takeover, Reedy Creek had been moving toward issuing municipal bonds to fund the project’s completion. The construction budget had already climbed to $175 million. When the DeSantis-appointed board took over, the new members refused to issue any bonds, cutting off the only realistic funding path the project had.
McGowan testified in 2024 that the project had come to a complete stop and would likely already be finished if the dispute had not intervened. Construction activity is still visible on World Drive as of April 2026.
One DeSantis appointee, Brian Aungst Jr., reportedly believed the board’s mandate was to eliminate the district entirely, according to Classe’s testimony. Whether that came directly from DeSantis is not established in the depositions.
The Fan Angle Nobody Covered
The Disney-DeSantis story got enormous national coverage, but almost all of it focused on the politics. The depositions tell a different story, one that is directly about the park you visit.
Richard Foglesong, author of “Married to the Mouse” and a Disney scholar who reviewed the depositions for Florida Politics, put it plainly. What mattered most to the company was control over future development, given that roughly two-thirds of Disney’s Florida property remains undeveloped.
That is the frame every Disney fan should apply to this story. The fight was never just about ideology. It was about whether the most ambitious expansion in Magic Kingdom’s history would ever get built at all.
Disney says the conflict is behind them. All original DeSantis appointees have been replaced. The company told Florida Politics that development plans are moving forward with full support from the district.
That tracks. Villains Land is coming. The permits are moving. The expansion is real.
But for a stretch of time, the thing guests were most excited about was sitting on pause while executives waited to see if their own government would let them build it. The depositions put that on the record for the first time.
For the latest on the Magic Kingdom expansion and everything happening at Walt Disney World, stay with Fantasy Land News. Read more in our Walt Disney World coverage. This Information came from FloridaPolitics.com.
Disney Paused the Magic Kingdom Expansion Because of the DeSantis Fight, Court Records Show
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