Me, ninety minutes ago: "okay, another RUclipsr-basically-reads-the-Wikipedia-article video for background noise." I was so wrong. Original interviews, a site visit, and a well-structured narrative made this an incredible treat from a channel with shockingly few subscribers. Thanks for making this and good luck with your future success.
Fr I have lived in celebration my whole life and the only times I've seen people talking about celebration its critical calling us a cult 😅 THIS video is amazing I went to the k8 fron the years of 2010 to 2019 I always heard that the school was a k 12 and ran differently it was awesome to actually hear from people that were there
Fascinating documentary. My family have lived here since late1996 when we did participate in the original lottery. Our two boys attended Celebration school with great success. In spite of Disney denials, during the early months we were the early family that constantly met "paid" dog walkers in the downtown parks. So clean our excited dog Casey loved to walk and baptize hundreds of trees long before any other dogs. Both our sons graduated with full scholarships and went on for great professional careers. Today's Celebration is similar to what was hoped but now has become so large and spread out you'd never recognize what was dreamt for in the early days. There is NO affordable housing and virtually no shopping within walking distance. To be honest it is now a town dominated by wealthy seniors. Quite a few second homes owned by the elite from many larger American towns. Easily half the town now owned by foreign investors. In our case 3 of our neighbors have never stayed in their vacation homes more then a few weeks a year. Walk around Celebration at night and much of the year it is more like a ghost town. Crime exists but you'll seldom hear or see anything about it. In the end, it is a great town .Much like Walt wanted it is a veneer of the original plans and will probably stay that way forever.
my family might want to move to florida we want to move somewhere cheap that isnt too hot but not cold either we live in montana and if i move anywhere it has to be near disneyworld no exceptions
Thank you for the great documentary -- Just recently in April 2023, bought and moved into a home here in Celebration (Artisan Park Village) -- and absolutely love it! Great people from all over the world, wise-with-age and youthful, many with families, gorgeous amenities, pools, community centers, great shopping, grocery, restaurants, parks, sports fields and walking/biking trails that you can get lost in consisting of ~ 20 miles in/around the town....and many other fantastic happenings all the time -- don't miss the monthly magazine delivered to your door! The holidays here are amazing with beautiful decorations and lights everywhere --- especially love Halloween - the treats are plentiful and OMG Christmas -- it snows on Market Street every night! So many residents go FULL-ON Christmas spirit and it's THE best! I can't imagine living anywhere else..and just a 10-minute drive to the Disney parks. Thank you, Love Celebration 2024!
I have absolutely no recollection of this place at all, but I was born here. It was always so strange to put “Celebration” as my birth place, but I haven’t known anything about it as my family moved away from Florida shortly after I was born. Thanks for the video and thanks YT gods for the rec! ♥️
it’s a damned shame that this idea didn’t take off in the states. suburb culture has isolated people there. remote work and the pandemic made it worse, now many people spend all day on their private territory and only occasionally venture out into the public. a lack of exposure to other people’s lives makes the idea of “other people” feel like an abstract concept, because there is no physical proof of it in front of you. like the trend of calling other people “npcs”, some people nowadays can’t imagine that others have inner worlds. maybe that’s why so many people act rude in public now. we’re too isolated from one another. everyone in the grocery store is a stranger that we’ll never see again, so why care? each person is no different than an npc. communities like celebration are needed for humans to thrive, not just survive.
After moving to the UK, I completely agree with you. I feel way more connected and happy in my neighborhood now that I walk and cycle everywhere. I love that there are always tons of kids and older people out & about and it's easier to socialise and meet people. Cars suck the life and soul out of people and communities.
I can't imagine the hours of research you have dedicated to this project. It is the most comprehensive, truthful look into Celebration I have seen. Congratulations and thank you.
My grandparents have lived across the street from Celebration for over 30 years. Sadly, they both passed but we were able to buy that house as our first home and I love the history the town. It has definitely changed but its awesome seeing things still there from time to time that Walt inspired. Disney is 100% Kissimmee's economy. Reading the comments reminded me of the 4th of July firework celebration they would have by the lake. Would go every year when I was younger. Great video!
This video is fantastic!! I figured you were a well known creator with a very established channel. Damn was I surprised to see that you’re just starting out! You deserve so much, and I am happy to be one of your first few subscribers :)
@@watchtylerfilms It is so well put together, and the details that were supplied show that you did your homework. I can remember when Celebration started, Thanks for all the back stories and for making it so interesting that I watched the whole thing.
I live in Celebration and love living here. Just the other day on a Celebration Facebook group a Celebration neighbor posted that they had a flat tire and were too old to change it and needed help. Neighbors sprang into action and in a couple of minutes there were several people ready and willing to come help. This is a beautiful town but the hearts of the residents are even more beautiful despite what anyone might say. This town is a treasure. I love Celebration. ❣️
Pretty sure my neighbors help each other all the time, and we don’t need to live in shoddy several million dollar homes shoehorned next to a corporate money pit.
This is the best researched and presented about Celebration I've ever seen. EPCOT and Celebration have always fascinated me because while the original plans grandiose and even kind of bizarre, I think Disney (the man) was way ahead of his time in recognizing that the postwar "build baby build" philosophy toward zoning and community planning would have disastrous consequences for the sense of community in American towns. We still haven't really reckoned with that problem today-- but Disney wanted to try, half a century ago, and he had the resources to set some powerful precedents-- he just didn't have the time. I have to wonder whether the world would be any different if that man had been granted five more years of life. Celebration was a failure that I don't think necessarily deserved to fail. Cotino and Asteria deserve to fail, and I pray they do.
I grew up in central florida for a time from like 97-02. Celebration is a part of my family’s history too. Going there during Christmas they’d make fake snow out of foam and put on winter wonderland displays. When my dad was ending this life my friends and I parked up there to do teenage/early 20s things and forget the world in a place that seemed just as magical but way less expensive than Disney. Really interesting to watch this video and understand the full story. I honestly thought it was still “Disney’s celebration” haven’t been since 2017 though and back then I had way too much to deal with to have actual thoughts. Miss you daddy, forever grateful for the memories we made in Florida.
Thank you for sharing. ❤ My dad also created magical memories w me in Disney. He is gone now too. I'm glad we got to experience this time w our dad's. We were blessed.
I just moved to Celebration less than 2 months ago and I hope I never have to leave! It’s very uplifting to live in such a vibrant and beautiful community. Thank you for such an informative video!
So cool that you got interviews from the people involved! I’m sure they were so excited to talk about this again, crazy that it is not more well known that they were so innovative!
This video is incredibly well done. I don't really know what drew me to this video in this first place, but once I started I couldn't stop. Amazing work, one of the best youtube docs I've seen
Tyler, I’m only on the 4th chapter but must stop to give you kudos!! Unbelievable work here. This feels like award-winning research and documentary narrative - I hope somehow you get that due! I am a Floridian, 90s Disney girl who remembers all this WELL. We were all so excited about Celebration. I especially loved the Disney Institute. I took MANY classes there and was always blown away by all they offered to us “regular” people who just wanted to have fun and learn something new - and under some of the best professionals around! Amazing. There was a lot of cool, groundbreaking stuff Disney was trying out during this time and I really respect that.
Great video! We've lived in Celebration since June 19th, 1996 and what you have reported is pretty accurate. We're still here and both of our kids went to the K-8 and then the HS. We still love the town.
This was incredibly in-depth and I'm glad I clicked on this out of almost nowhere. Much more personal and investigative than I was expecting. Just great work. My family moved to FL around the time that the town was founded but we settled in the next county. I grew up with the rumors of Celebration. Our favorites: Residents weren't allowed to order pizza delivery from anywhere except Domino's because of the Parks' brand deals. If there were shades or curtains in the front-facing windows, residents weren't ever allowed to close them to lend to the transparency of the community and encourage that trusting old-time feel. Tourists would just walk up into peoples' yards, sometimes even barge into their homes, exclaiming about how life-like everything was and couldn't be told off when they did. And that kids who went to Celebration schools had their pick of Disney jobs after graduation. Didn't know what was or wasn't true about those, of course, and didn't really care. It just seemed like such a bonkers place. In high school, you'd run across students from Celebration at parties or as parts of friend groups and they were just odd. Odd in a different way from the home-schooled kids, but still definitively strange. I will admit that I didn't think there were many great qualities to Disney the man (I am not a fan of the franchise, business, parks, etc.) but perhaps I didn't know about him like I thought I did. His understanding that a shift to a vehicle-centric society had been detrimental was spot-on. Celebration, however, and other FL communities that look somewhat like it (Lake Nona) definitely do not manage to reverse the trend, however. FL is just such a spread-out place and now the "15-min cities are meant to imprison us!" conspiracy theory is catching fire, unfortunately. Anyway, congrats on this. It was some damn hard work and feels like honest investigative journalism.
It's interesting to see elements of how ahead of its time it was. Like the school segment really stood out, our elementary schools here in town are largely groups around tables now instead of individual desks, and incredibly successful. And I had the same reaction, oh wow this is so different than what I had, but I gave it a chance and my kids have done so well by it.
This is easily one of the best and well researched video essays I've ever seen on RUclips. Phoenominal work creating this, dude, and I hope this video gets more recognition!!
I'd clicked on this video in my RUclips recommendations on a whim, and I've never been more happy to have taken a chance on a video. What a wonderfully well researched piece. The interviews with residents and teachers add so so much. I found myself so invested I kept putting down my switch to listen open-mouthed. A town with the politics of a small town, the corporate overreach of Disney and the entire world wanting to peep in sounds like a nightmare. But people find a life there and find the best parts of it still. Loved to spend an two hours of my life on this video and I'll be back to rewatch it again soon.
Thought I’d check this out for a few minutes and ended up watching the entire thing straight through. Very professionally done - your year of hard work easily shows. Thank you.
I enjoyed watching this. I watched the whole documentary! I lived in Orlando and Kissimmee throughout my teenage years. My family knew that I would visit Celebration frequently. The restaurants, the culture, and the attractions all fascinated me, and it made my family feel very at home. I always wondered what it would be like to live in Celebration, go to Celebration School, and be one of the neighbors in the community. Even today, I find myself intrigued by that thought and always hope to one day be able to own a home there. This made it even more intriguing. However, I’m not too sure if this is something I can commit to now. It has a lot more growth, but I do admire how the townspeople helped build it and continue to make it even more beautiful.
Great job on this! I have dreamed of reopening the theater here someday as an entertainment flex space and arcade. The last person who tried this couldn't work out the right deal with Lexin, but I'm hoping I can
Would be great to have that theater space open up again. Would be very interested to hear your efforts in redeveloping or vitalizing it. It has been needed for years.
I rarely comment on RUclips videos, but I have to commend you on this documentary. I expected it to be around 10 or 15 minutes long, so I was surprised to see it was nearly 2 hours. I watched the entire video and was very impressed by the thorough research, interviews, and editing. The documentary was engaging and well-structured. Well done!
I’m really glad that the Celebration school tried something different for the students. Education is not a one size fits all system, and some students do need more focused learning than others. It’s being done now in many ways with many districts, so I think Celebration was ahead of its time! If the community would’ve rallied behind the school’s different curriculum for a couple of years I think it would’ve done very well.
A first class quality piece of work : extremely well researched, thoroughly and fairly presented. I’m a local and learned loads of new things. Thank you.
I was 14 when my family was one of those families that won the lottery and moved into the apartment above at the time was the Village Mercantile, directly across from the Bakery. My father worked for Honeywell construction who was in detail installing on phase 1. I have home video because my father was at the time a Vlogger in his day and have hours on hours of footage if interested to do an interview for more content you can contact me. Great video, but there’s more, especially from the school perspective and Apples influence in the technology advancement for our different education styles we were being taught! I knew Mrs. Flanagan she was my teacher in the portables before the school opened, I’m in that picture of the group that was taken in the Teachers Academy at that time! WOW! 😅 I also dated her daughter Hillary, she was a sweetheart!
Honestly, as a Celebration resident it’s a pretty nice and awesome town, it’s always expanding and it’s always renovating into something new and cool. I do wish it was in the hands of Disney still, but with the stature of the town today, it’s a pretty nice town still and I think it is getting somewhat better.
This was incredibly created! Fantastic investigation, wonderful interviews, perfect narration, and beautifully edited. Well done! Can’t wait to see what else you create 🎉
This is an awesome documentary! I'm a huge Disney fan and somehow had never heard of this town? My husband laughed and told how common knowledge it was? Lol! Oh course he worked for the Disney Store back in the early 90's.
I have been binge watching any sort of theme park adjacent deep dive videos recently, and this was perfectly up my alley as i have visited celebration many times. my family would go to orlando yearly to visit with a family doing the disney marathon, and we would get food at restaurants right around the corner from the old theater. i remember walking around it vividly from our car to the restaurant and liking the way it looked
Great documentary! 👍 My husband and I lived in Celebration for 6 years. For 5 of the years we rented a garage apartment (which was beautiful) Then the owners decided to sell their house, so we rented a condominium for our final year living there. The town center always had plenty of people walking around (mainly tourists) but even though the town’s motto was: ‘The front porch community’ I never saw anyone sitting on their porches, or even outside (other than walking their dogs) The only thing that I liked about Celebration was living so close to Disney World.
I love seeing a beautifully made documentary with a nuanced point of view! You happened to be the first person/video to tell me about Celebration and its history, and I'm glad you were. I loved being able to hear about the opinions of the people on the inside, especially from people who were trying to and wanted to make it work, like the teachers and residents. This was an interesting and fascinating watch, thank you so much!
The most sureal thing i took away from this is that the school i went to as a kid, Walt Disney Magnet School, had some elements similar to celebration, especially in the whole "open classroms" and technology aspect
what a great video! celebration is unique and honestly a bit strange since there really isn’t another town built in the same way, but i never thought about the real community and school system of the town before. loved the interview with the teachers! thank you for this! i went to subscribe and can’t believe you have under 500 subs! i’ll be patiently waiting for whatever your next project may be and i can’t see wait to see your channel grow because i know it will with the level of care you put into this one! ❤
Wow. What a great and informative documentary of Celebration. I was just a little kid when I lived there for 6 years in the late 90s to early 2000s. I don’t live there anymore and I truly miss it. There are so many things I didn’t know about the history of celebration and even the current celebration. To be honest with you, watching this video in its entirety brought back so many memories for me. It really made me tear up and also filled with joy at the same time. You just got yourself a new subscriber!! Thank you. Please do more of these long documentaries! I would love to see what you do in the future! 😊
I live o my a few minutes from Celebration and love to visit whenever I can. It’s a pretty town with great trails connection. I would live there if it weren’t so expensive. Though, just outside the town in the surrounding Osceola County and SR192 area is one of the most uncomfortable places to witness. My wife worked in the schools here and there were so many children who lived in the run down hotels illegally.
WHOAH!!! I've heard & known about Cotino for a while a now & felt like whenever I heard/read about it, I had a feeling like it reminded me of Celebration. But I had no idea it was a Disney project!!! Rancho Mirage is like a 15, 20 minute drive frome my current home!!! This is blowing my mind right now...!!!!
I never lived in celebration but I have heard about it, this is probably the most detailed and well rounded documentary about this subject! The only other videos that I recall that talk about this subject was those "Celebration is a cult" type videos and one from a true crime channel, but I've never knew it had a school system! I'm not sure why but when you began talking about that section my eyes lit up lol Their concept did seem unorthodox to many but I liked the whole "community learning" aspect of it all. Especially how I was a student who had trouble learning in public school, math especially, and always felt like I was...punished?? or made to feel like I was the "dumb/low achieving" student when most of the time, I just needed the concept to be explained to me in a different way and given more time to fully process it. It's a shame that when restructuring the celebration school system they couldn't work out a compromise to not only please the parents who wanted a traditional school system but keep some aspects of their original vision. Idk, I don't know much about schools and the educational system but I just liked that "community learning" concept.
I sit here shocked watching this. Somehow seeing my town in a RUclips video makes me not be able to conceive how I lived here from 9 to 17. Especially because we couldn’t afford it the entire time.
I loved there in 2002 and I loved the animitronic animals but I'd also get the so where the roof? As in the downtown area was under a dome and was temperature controlled. I lived in the apartments off mainstreet and when I first moved it was very eerie even for a castmember. It was very very Truman show. After a month I loved it. I kinda miss it too be honest. Celebration was not their last foray into a development. People forget about the golden oak community. It's not a full town but it was made that way so the residents there never got voting power. Between that, celebration, and the college program housing they have learned a lot in the development of a town.
Amazing video! I spent a lot of time in Florida growing up and was a teenager when Celebration was being built. It sparked my fascination with New Urbanism that continues to this day.
Amazing video! Huge fan of Disney history and oddities. My family stayed in celebration at a hotel last year and piqued my interest about Celebration. Thanks for the video as it answered all my questions.
After watching this in-depth documentary, it seems to me that Celebration was a Community more Experimental & Prototypical than even Walt's version of EPCOT. However, like all experiments, was prone to missteps, but also learning experiences. Hopefully, these lessons learned will be implemented & improved upon in - not just other future Disney communities, but also - in the original Celebration as well. Perhaps these lessoms can & might be one day implemented in EPCOT, one that more closely resembles Walt's vision for a TRUE community of Tommorow, w/People Movers & Monorails to take you from one Storyliving community to the other.
I attended Celebration School from 1999 = 2002, and I missed the chaos of the first two years. I know the school sent a disclaimer with your transcripts explaining that they did things differently, and that many of my classmates didn’t get into their first choice universities.
a lot of the hotels that closed along 192 outside of the town are now being re purposed as rental apartments. My ex wife and I looked at buying a house in Celebration back in 98 when we were at Disney on our Honeymoon but when we found out we couldn't rent it out as we are Canadian residents we opted not to make the purchase. I do wish someone would re open the movie theatre though.
Tyler, you totally are the next Kevin Perjurer from the DefunctLand RUclips channel. Great start to your channel!! I'm liking Forward to seeing where you go and how you grow
dude this videos getting pushed to shittttt, i’ve watched it twice already and its been recommended 3 times since then. i can’t blame youtube. you’ve done a great job. excited to see what you do next 🔥
Such quality work! Deserves much praise. I LOVED the Opening Credits/Info with the blue grid and the line looping around the neighborhood. I'm not even a Disney Superfan and I watched the entire Doc. Great work and so well done!
Love the video! It is so well researched! One thing I would suggest is choose less repetitive music next time please 🙏 or at least play it for less time in the video
Love this type of content! You did amazing with this video. Especially the audio. I’m kinda Disney obsessed so I’ll be back multiple times to watch this video in segments 😂. Also subbed.
A lot of towns and neighborhoods have remained the same but the sense of community in those places haven't. The major change wasn't in infrastructure, it was in people.
this was such a fantastic, well put together video. i am so so impressed with your video creation skills and i am proud to say this is a documentary i will recommend to everyone i know :)
The first episode in my new series, “Kings of the Magic Kingdom”, is live now! Watch here: ruclips.net/video/XMfeizDqKQE/видео.html
The RUclips recommendation gods have blessed me with this video. Come on over, Defunctland subscribers!
Thanks for watching!
Came here to say this. This just showed up in my feed, and my God am I impressed. Job well done
Kevin would be proud
Make Celebration Great Again!
@@watchtylerfilms Be cool for video on Golden Oak.
Me, ninety minutes ago: "okay, another RUclipsr-basically-reads-the-Wikipedia-article video for background noise."
I was so wrong. Original interviews, a site visit, and a well-structured narrative made this an incredible treat from a channel with shockingly few subscribers. Thanks for making this and good luck with your future success.
Fr I have lived in celebration my whole life and the only times I've seen people talking about celebration its critical calling us a cult 😅 THIS video is amazing I went to the k8 fron the years of 2010 to 2019 I always heard that the school was a k 12 and ran differently it was awesome to actually hear from people that were there
Fascinating documentary. My family have lived here since late1996 when we did participate in the original lottery. Our two boys attended Celebration school with great success. In spite of Disney denials, during the early months we were the early family that constantly met "paid" dog walkers in the downtown parks. So clean our excited dog Casey loved to walk and baptize hundreds of trees long before any other dogs. Both our sons graduated with full scholarships and went on for great professional careers. Today's Celebration is similar to what was hoped but now has become so large and spread out you'd never recognize what was dreamt for in the early days. There is NO affordable housing and virtually no shopping within walking distance. To be honest it is now a town dominated by wealthy seniors. Quite a few second homes owned by the elite from many larger American towns. Easily half the town now owned by foreign investors. In our case 3 of our neighbors have never stayed in their vacation homes more then a few weeks a year. Walk around Celebration at night and much of the year it is more like a ghost town. Crime exists but you'll seldom hear or see anything about it.
In the end, it is a great town .Much like Walt wanted it is a veneer of the original plans and will probably stay that way forever.
Thank you for watching!
New celebration point is in walking distance....
If you live near there of course 😅
Awww... someone with their head still in the sand. literally.
@@jextreme4909it’s almost like people are allowed to share differing opinions from your own, crazy.
my family might want to move to florida we want to move somewhere cheap that isnt too hot but not cold either we live in montana and if i move anywhere it has to be near disneyworld no exceptions
Thank you for the great documentary -- Just recently in April 2023, bought and moved into a home here in Celebration (Artisan Park Village) -- and absolutely love it! Great people from all over the world, wise-with-age and youthful, many with families, gorgeous amenities, pools, community centers, great shopping, grocery, restaurants, parks, sports fields and walking/biking trails that you can get lost in consisting of ~ 20 miles in/around the town....and many other fantastic happenings all the time -- don't miss the monthly magazine delivered to your door! The holidays here are amazing with beautiful decorations and lights everywhere --- especially love Halloween - the treats are plentiful and OMG Christmas -- it snows on Market Street every night! So many residents go FULL-ON Christmas spirit and it's THE best! I can't imagine living anywhere else..and just a 10-minute drive to the Disney parks. Thank you, Love Celebration 2024!
I have absolutely no recollection of this place at all, but I was born here. It was always so strange to put “Celebration” as my birth place, but I haven’t known anything about it as my family moved away from Florida shortly after I was born. Thanks for the video and thanks YT gods for the rec! ♥️
it’s a damned shame that this idea didn’t take off in the states. suburb culture has isolated people there. remote work and the pandemic made it worse, now many people spend all day on their private territory and only occasionally venture out into the public.
a lack of exposure to other people’s lives makes the idea of “other people” feel like an abstract concept, because there is no physical proof of it in front of you. like the trend of calling other people “npcs”, some people nowadays can’t imagine that others have inner worlds.
maybe that’s why so many people act rude in public now. we’re too isolated from one another. everyone in the grocery store is a stranger that we’ll never see again, so why care? each person is no different than an npc. communities like celebration are needed for humans to thrive, not just survive.
People in cities don't socialize any more than people in suburbs.
After moving to the UK, I completely agree with you. I feel way more connected and happy in my neighborhood now that I walk and cycle everywhere. I love that there are always tons of kids and older people out & about and it's easier to socialise and meet people.
Cars suck the life and soul out of people and communities.
I can't imagine the hours of research you have dedicated to this project. It is the most comprehensive, truthful look into Celebration I have seen. Congratulations and thank you.
I fully agree. I hope he sees these comments it’s truly phenomenal
This is an outstanding documentary, well done!
My grandparents have lived across the street from Celebration for over 30 years. Sadly, they both passed but we were able to buy that house as our first home and I love the history the town. It has definitely changed but its awesome seeing things still there from time to time that Walt inspired. Disney is 100% Kissimmee's economy. Reading the comments reminded me of the 4th of July firework celebration they would have by the lake. Would go every year when I was younger. Great video!
This video is fantastic!! I figured you were a well known creator with a very established channel. Damn was I surprised to see that you’re just starting out! You deserve so much, and I am happy to be one of your first few subscribers :)
Thank you so much!
Ii😊😊
@@watchtylerfilms It is so well put together, and the details that were supplied show that you did your homework. I can remember when Celebration started, Thanks for all the back stories and for making it so interesting that I watched the whole thing.
I live in Celebration and love living here. Just the other day on a Celebration Facebook group a Celebration neighbor posted that they had a flat tire and were too old to change it and needed help. Neighbors sprang into action and in a couple of minutes there were several people ready and willing to come help. This is a beautiful town but the hearts of the residents are even more beautiful despite what anyone might say. This town is a treasure. I love Celebration. ❣️
This
Nice to know some of the original idea still lives on in the people
Pretty sure my neighbors help each other all the time, and we don’t need to live in shoddy several million dollar homes shoehorned next to a corporate money pit.
@@Reubachi ...still upset you didn't win the lottery, huh? 😜
@@Reubachidamn Bro, whatchu yappin about
This is the best researched and presented about Celebration I've ever seen.
EPCOT and Celebration have always fascinated me because while the original plans grandiose and even kind of bizarre, I think Disney (the man) was way ahead of his time in recognizing that the postwar "build baby build" philosophy toward zoning and community planning would have disastrous consequences for the sense of community in American towns. We still haven't really reckoned with that problem today-- but Disney wanted to try, half a century ago, and he had the resources to set some powerful precedents-- he just didn't have the time. I have to wonder whether the world would be any different if that man had been granted five more years of life.
Celebration was a failure that I don't think necessarily deserved to fail.
Cotino and Asteria deserve to fail, and I pray they do.
I grew up in central florida for a time from like 97-02. Celebration is a part of my family’s history too. Going there during Christmas they’d make fake snow out of foam and put on winter wonderland displays. When my dad was ending this life my friends and I parked up there to do teenage/early 20s things and forget the world in a place that seemed just as magical but way less expensive than Disney. Really interesting to watch this video and understand the full story. I honestly thought it was still “Disney’s celebration” haven’t been since 2017 though and back then I had way too much to deal with to have actual thoughts. Miss you daddy, forever grateful for the memories we made in Florida.
Thank you for sharing. ❤ My dad also created magical memories w me in Disney. He is gone now too. I'm glad we got to experience this time w our dad's. We were blessed.
@@jul.escobar we truly were 🫶🏼
Your comment reminded me of all the 4th of July fireworks they would do by the lake there. Would go every year! go dad!
Walt would be horrified at how car dependent the US has become.
You are brainwashed with left wing lies
I just moved to Celebration less than 2 months ago and I hope I never have to leave! It’s very uplifting to live in such a vibrant and beautiful community. Thank you for such an informative video!
Wow! Very well done, and balanced! You provided both sides of the issues. I wish more journalists did that and kept their opinions to themselves.
So cool that you got interviews from the people involved! I’m sure they were so excited to talk about this again, crazy that it is not more well known that they were so innovative!
This video is incredibly well done. I don't really know what drew me to this video in this first place, but once I started I couldn't stop. Amazing work, one of the best youtube docs I've seen
Tyler, I’m only on the 4th chapter but must stop to give you kudos!! Unbelievable work here. This feels like award-winning research and documentary narrative - I hope somehow you get that due!
I am a Floridian, 90s Disney girl who remembers all this WELL. We were all so excited about Celebration. I especially loved the Disney Institute. I took MANY classes there and was always blown away by all they offered to us “regular” people who just wanted to have fun and learn something new - and under some of the best professionals around! Amazing.
There was a lot of cool, groundbreaking stuff Disney was trying out during this time and I really respect that.
Algorithm, recommend this channel to everyone who likes Defunctland and Sun Bright Films. This was a fantastic video.
Just curious how you know where the recommendation originated?
Great video! We've lived in Celebration since June 19th, 1996 and what you have reported is pretty accurate. We're still here and both of our kids went to the K-8 and then the HS. We still love the town.
This was incredibly in-depth and I'm glad I clicked on this out of almost nowhere. Much more personal and investigative than I was expecting. Just great work.
My family moved to FL around the time that the town was founded but we settled in the next county. I grew up with the rumors of Celebration. Our favorites: Residents weren't allowed to order pizza delivery from anywhere except Domino's because of the Parks' brand deals. If there were shades or curtains in the front-facing windows, residents weren't ever allowed to close them to lend to the transparency of the community and encourage that trusting old-time feel. Tourists would just walk up into peoples' yards, sometimes even barge into their homes, exclaiming about how life-like everything was and couldn't be told off when they did. And that kids who went to Celebration schools had their pick of Disney jobs after graduation.
Didn't know what was or wasn't true about those, of course, and didn't really care. It just seemed like such a bonkers place. In high school, you'd run across students from Celebration at parties or as parts of friend groups and they were just odd. Odd in a different way from the home-schooled kids, but still definitively strange.
I will admit that I didn't think there were many great qualities to Disney the man (I am not a fan of the franchise, business, parks, etc.) but perhaps I didn't know about him like I thought I did. His understanding that a shift to a vehicle-centric society had been detrimental was spot-on. Celebration, however, and other FL communities that look somewhat like it (Lake Nona) definitely do not manage to reverse the trend, however. FL is just such a spread-out place and now the "15-min cities are meant to imprison us!" conspiracy theory is catching fire, unfortunately.
Anyway, congrats on this. It was some damn hard work and feels like honest investigative journalism.
It's interesting to see elements of how ahead of its time it was. Like the school segment really stood out, our elementary schools here in town are largely groups around tables now instead of individual desks, and incredibly successful. And I had the same reaction, oh wow this is so different than what I had, but I gave it a chance and my kids have done so well by it.
Thanks for watching!
This is easily one of the best and well researched video essays I've ever seen on RUclips. Phoenominal work creating this, dude, and I hope this video gets more recognition!!
I'd clicked on this video in my RUclips recommendations on a whim, and I've never been more happy to have taken a chance on a video. What a wonderfully well researched piece. The interviews with residents and teachers add so so much. I found myself so invested I kept putting down my switch to listen open-mouthed. A town with the politics of a small town, the corporate overreach of Disney and the entire world wanting to peep in sounds like a nightmare. But people find a life there and find the best parts of it still.
Loved to spend an two hours of my life on this video and I'll be back to rewatch it again soon.
Thought I’d check this out for a few minutes and ended up watching the entire thing straight through. Very professionally done - your year of hard work easily shows. Thank you.
Thank you for watching!
Incredible documentary. This deserves MILLIONS of views!
A fantastic documentary! I can’t be the only one who got “Living+” vibes from that Storyliving by Disney part at the end…
I enjoyed watching this. I watched the whole documentary! I lived in Orlando and Kissimmee throughout my teenage years. My family knew that I would visit Celebration frequently. The restaurants, the culture, and the attractions all fascinated me, and it made my family feel very at home. I always wondered what it would be like to live in Celebration, go to Celebration School, and be one of the neighbors in the community. Even today, I find myself intrigued by that thought and always hope to one day be able to own a home there. This made it even more intriguing. However, I’m not too sure if this is something I can commit to now. It has a lot more growth, but I do admire how the townspeople helped build it and continue to make it even more beautiful.
Great job on this! I have dreamed of reopening the theater here someday as an entertainment flex space and arcade. The last person who tried this couldn't work out the right deal with Lexin, but I'm hoping I can
I was thinking like "The Lakehouse" in Lake Nona! works as GREAT event space and even a great wedding reception facility.
Would be great to have that theater space open up again. Would be very interested to hear your efforts in redeveloping or vitalizing it. It has been needed for years.
Wow!!! How is this not a RUclips channel with millions of views?!
I rarely comment on RUclips videos, but I have to commend you on this documentary. I expected it to be around 10 or 15 minutes long, so I was surprised to see it was nearly 2 hours. I watched the entire video and was very impressed by the thorough research, interviews, and editing. The documentary was engaging and well-structured. Well done!
I’m really glad that the Celebration school tried something different for the students. Education is not a one size fits all system, and some students do need more focused learning than others. It’s being done now in many ways with many districts, so I think Celebration was ahead of its time! If the community would’ve rallied behind the school’s different curriculum for a couple of years I think it would’ve done very well.
seriously an incredible in depth look into such an interesting project. amazing job!
A first class quality piece of work : extremely well researched, thoroughly and fairly presented. I’m a local and learned loads of new things. Thank you.
I was 14 when my family was one of those families that won the lottery and moved into the apartment above at the time was the Village Mercantile, directly across from the Bakery. My father worked for Honeywell construction who was in detail installing on phase 1. I have home video because my father was at the time a Vlogger in his day and have hours on hours of footage if interested to do an interview for more content you can contact me. Great video, but there’s more, especially from the school perspective and Apples influence in the technology advancement for our different education styles we were being taught! I knew Mrs. Flanagan she was my teacher in the portables before the school opened, I’m in that picture of the group that was taken in the Teachers Academy at that time! WOW! 😅
I also dated her daughter Hillary, she was a sweetheart!
Honestly, as a Celebration resident it’s a pretty nice and awesome town, it’s always expanding and it’s always renovating into something new and cool. I do wish it was in the hands of Disney still, but with the stature of the town today, it’s a pretty nice town still and I think it is getting somewhat better.
This was incredibly created! Fantastic investigation, wonderful interviews, perfect narration, and beautifully edited. Well done! Can’t wait to see what else you create 🎉
This is an awesome documentary! I'm a huge Disney fan and somehow had never heard of this town? My husband laughed and told how common knowledge it was? Lol! Oh course he worked for the Disney Store back in the early 90's.
I have been binge watching any sort of theme park adjacent deep dive videos recently, and this was perfectly up my alley as i have visited celebration many times. my family would go to orlando yearly to visit with a family doing the disney marathon, and we would get food at restaurants right around the corner from the old theater. i remember walking around it vividly from our car to the restaurant and liking the way it looked
Great documentary! 👍
My husband and I lived in Celebration for 6 years. For 5 of the years we rented a garage apartment (which was beautiful) Then the owners decided to sell their house, so we rented a condominium for our final year living there. The town center always had plenty of people walking around (mainly tourists) but even though the town’s motto was: ‘The front porch community’ I never saw anyone sitting on their porches, or even outside (other than walking their dogs) The only thing that I liked about Celebration was living so close to Disney World.
I love seeing a beautifully made documentary with a nuanced point of view! You happened to be the first person/video to tell me about Celebration and its history, and I'm glad you were. I loved being able to hear about the opinions of the people on the inside, especially from people who were trying to and wanted to make it work, like the teachers and residents. This was an interesting and fascinating watch, thank you so much!
The most sureal thing i took away from this is that the school i went to as a kid, Walt Disney Magnet School, had some elements similar to celebration, especially in the whole "open classroms" and technology aspect
what a great video! celebration is unique and honestly a bit strange since there really isn’t another town built in the same way, but i never thought about the real community and school system of the town before. loved the interview with the teachers! thank you for this!
i went to subscribe and can’t believe you have under 500 subs! i’ll be patiently waiting for whatever your next project may be and i can’t see wait to see your channel grow because i know it will with the level of care you put into this one! ❤
This was fantastic, thank you so much for your work and thank you RUclips for recommending this to me!
This is so well done
A very professional documentary!
Thank you for this; I just moved to north village celebration earlier this year love it here, my son starts kindergarten at the school this August
Wow. What a great and informative documentary of Celebration. I was just a little kid when I lived there for 6 years in the late 90s to early 2000s. I don’t live there anymore and I truly miss it. There are so many things I didn’t know about the history of celebration and even the current celebration. To be honest with you, watching this video in its entirety brought back so many memories for me. It really made me tear up and also filled with joy at the same time.
You just got yourself a new subscriber!! Thank you. Please do more of these long documentaries! I would love to see what you do in the future! 😊
I appreciate this video. I moved to Celebration in 2019 and been living there ever since
I live o my a few minutes from Celebration and love to visit whenever I can. It’s a pretty town with great trails connection. I would live there if it weren’t so expensive. Though, just outside the town in the surrounding Osceola County and SR192 area is one of the most uncomfortable places to witness. My wife worked in the schools here and there were so many children who lived in the run down hotels illegally.
I recommended that Defunctland cover Celebration! Glad someone did!!
WHOAH!!! I've heard & known about Cotino for a while a now & felt like whenever I heard/read about it, I had a feeling like it reminded me of Celebration. But I had no idea it was a Disney project!!!
Rancho Mirage is like a 15, 20 minute drive frome my current home!!! This is blowing my mind right now...!!!!
Amazing work! Great documentary. Thank you!
I never lived in celebration but I have heard about it, this is probably the most detailed and well rounded documentary about this subject!
The only other videos that I recall that talk about this subject was those "Celebration is a cult" type videos and one from a true crime channel, but I've never knew it had a school system! I'm not sure why but when you began talking about that section my eyes lit up lol
Their concept did seem unorthodox to many but I liked the whole "community learning" aspect of it all. Especially how I was a student who had trouble learning in public school, math especially, and always felt like I was...punished?? or made to feel like I was the "dumb/low achieving" student when most of the time, I just needed the concept to be explained to me in a different way and given more time to fully process it. It's a shame that when restructuring the celebration school system they couldn't work out a compromise to not only please the parents who wanted a traditional school system but keep some aspects of their original vision. Idk, I don't know much about schools and the educational system but I just liked that "community learning" concept.
Criminally underrated, keep it up
Loved this as wanted to know more about Celebration! Very interesting story
I sit here shocked watching this. Somehow seeing my town in a RUclips video makes me not be able to conceive how I lived here from 9 to 17. Especially because we couldn’t afford it the entire time.
I loved there in 2002 and I loved the animitronic animals but I'd also get the so where the roof? As in the downtown area was under a dome and was temperature controlled. I lived in the apartments off mainstreet and when I first moved it was very eerie even for a castmember. It was very very Truman show. After a month I loved it. I kinda miss it too be honest.
Celebration was not their last foray into a development. People forget about the golden oak community. It's not a full town but it was made that way so the residents there never got voting power. Between that, celebration, and the college program housing they have learned a lot in the development of a town.
Amazing, AMAZING work you made! I subscribed to your channel after the few minutes of this video 😊😊😊
Great work, I know you put many hours into this project and it shows.
Very nice documentary
Very detailed and thoughtful. I enjoyed the story and your analysis very much, especially taking an unbiased look and not vilifying the town.
Interesting documentary! Great job.
Amazing video! I spent a lot of time in Florida growing up and was a teenager when Celebration was being built. It sparked my fascination with New Urbanism that continues to this day.
Not sure how I ended up here, but you did an amazing job on this.
Love celebration! I had dinner there last night
The algorithm was algorithming when it put this on my feed. Sunscribed.
This is really well done!! Thank you for all your efforts.
this is so so good. impressed with how little (not any?) stock imagery you've used. brilliant doc
Well done Tyler. Great work.
Amazing video! Huge fan of Disney history and oddities. My family stayed in celebration at a hotel last year and piqued my interest about Celebration. Thanks for the video as it answered all my questions.
Commenting for the algorithm but also to document that this guy’s at 967 subs right now - this channel is going places
After watching this in-depth documentary, it seems to me that Celebration was a Community more Experimental & Prototypical than even Walt's version of EPCOT. However, like all experiments, was prone to missteps, but also learning experiences.
Hopefully, these lessons learned will be implemented & improved upon in - not just other future Disney communities, but also - in the original Celebration as well.
Perhaps these lessoms can & might be one day implemented in EPCOT, one that more closely resembles Walt's vision for a TRUE community of Tommorow, w/People Movers & Monorails to take you from one Storyliving community to the other.
I attended Celebration School from 1999 = 2002, and I missed the chaos of the first two years. I know the school sent a disclaimer with your transcripts explaining that they did things differently, and that many of my classmates didn’t get into their first choice universities.
Awesome I went between the years of 2010 to 2019
This was a fantastic documentary! Really interesting to learn the history of the town and what it's actually like.
These videos are incredibly well done!!!!
This is extremely well done and put together 👏
Fantastic video. Excited to be one of your first few hundred subscribers, cant wait for you to blow up soon!
This video is 🔥!!! How’s this dude only have 400 subs?
Glad to see this comment and know he's gotten 1k more in the last month! Hopefully that number continues to grow!
a lot of the hotels that closed along 192 outside of the town are now being re purposed as rental apartments. My ex wife and I looked at buying a house in Celebration back in 98 when we were at Disney on our Honeymoon but when we found out we couldn't rent it out as we are Canadian residents we opted not to make the purchase. I do wish someone would re open the movie theatre though.
What an amazing film. Thank you for this!
amazing video!!!! everybody knows about celebration but nobody ever talks about it and this deep dive was incredibly fascinating!!!
Tyler, you totally are the next Kevin Perjurer from the DefunctLand RUclips channel. Great start to your channel!! I'm liking Forward to seeing where you go and how you grow
Excellent video, very well researched and presented! 😊 thanks for the entertainment
Such a great video, super thorough and engaging! Hope more people see this soon!
dude this videos getting pushed to shittttt, i’ve watched it twice already and its been recommended 3 times since then.
i can’t blame youtube. you’ve done a great job. excited to see what you do next 🔥
I graduated highschool in 1998….i dont ever remember hearing about this town at all…lol…very interesting situation though…..
Fantastic documentary! I’m surprised you didn’t mention the Disney corporate offices in the town now.
Wow, what an amazing video. You really took the time and care to tell the story of this town. Thanks for a great documentary!
Such quality work! Deserves much praise. I LOVED the Opening Credits/Info with the blue grid and the line looping around the neighborhood. I'm not even a Disney Superfan and I watched the entire Doc. Great work and so well done!
I’m glad you enjoyed! Thanks!
Love the video! It is so well researched! One thing I would suggest is choose less repetitive music next time please 🙏 or at least play it for less time in the video
Love this type of content! You did amazing with this video. Especially the audio. I’m kinda Disney obsessed so I’ll be back multiple times to watch this video in segments 😂. Also subbed.
This was excellent! I have subbed and I patiently await more documentaries.
Glad I was suggested your video! New sub ❤
awesome video!!! i love orlando lore videos
I was here before this channel completely exploded 🎉🎉🎉🎉 (1.5k Subscribers)
A lot of towns and neighborhoods have remained the same but the sense of community in those places haven't. The major change wasn't in infrastructure, it was in people.
this was such a fantastic, well put together video. i am so so impressed with your video creation skills and i am proud to say this is a documentary i will recommend to everyone i know :)
Incredible documentary!!! Looking forward to your next productions!!!