When Mickey Comes Marching Home

By Hugh Sidey/Washington

The hills and fields around Manassas, Virginia, have felt the boot of foreign forces before. But the latest intruder, the Walt Disney Co., may leave a mark more lasting than any Yankee heel: a $650 million American-history-and- entertainment park, called Disney's America, situated on 3,000 acres in the history-rich country 35 miles west of Washington.

Despite a formidable array of opponents, the project moved ahead last Saturday when the expiring session of the Virginia general assembly approved a $163 million package of incentives for roads, highway signs, worker training and tourism promotion designed to entice embattled Disney to stay in the Old Dominion. Final victory for the innovative park project is sensed, but not yet in Disney's grasp. There are many memories of how one invader or another snatched defeat from the jaws of victory back when Robert E. Lee strode this countryside.

The battle started last November in Richmond with Virginia's new Republican Governor, George Allen Jr., allying himself with "the mouse," a sobriquet used by the locals and even Disney itself to describe the dozens of lawyers and lobbyists who descended on the state capitol. The mouse was managed by Mark Pacala, a negotiator who threatened to walk out of Virginia if Disney did not get what it demanded. Many legislators, while incensed, were still scared of losing such a potential cash cow. After months of wrangling, Virginia will give Disney the support structure it wants but will force the company to guarantee some of the debt servicing on the state-issued bonds if the park does not produce the tax bonanza Disney has projected.

At stake is a business that Disney says will create 19,000 jobs, generate $1.5 billion in state and county taxes over 30 years and create a billion- dollar building boom. Critics doubt all those figures. But Prince William County and the nearby town of Haymarket (pop. 483), while redolent with history, have been suffering from downturns in defense jobs and real estate prices.

Disney's America would also bring a daily horde of 30,000 visitors in 25,000 vehicles, swarming far beyond the Disney enclave to "destroy our battlefield," in the words of Annie Snyder, 72, feisty guardian of the meaning and mood of the national park established along the old Bull Run.

Exact plans for Disney's America are in a state of evolution. At first they included a water adventure with Lewis and Clark through pristine America, a factory town with a high-speed ride around a vat of molten steel, a county fair with a 60-ft.-high Ferris wheel, a Civil War fort and simulated skirmishes, old trains, a working farm and a Victory field where kids could parachute from a plane and operate tanks. These concepts are being reworked, but Disney is secretive on just how.

Many beyond the Disney inner circle harbor doubts about the idea of an honest history park. Can slavery, Civil War slaughter and the doleful fate of American Indians be blended with the traditional marvels of Disney entertainment that will also include Mickey, Minnie and the gang? "Serious fun," Disney chairman Michael Eisner calls it, and his experts rightly point to such a blend in Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida. "This is not to be a Pollyanna view of America," insists Robert Weis, a principal Disney imagineer. "But we want people to leave the park feeling good about their country."

The hurried journey to break ground in 1995 and open Disney's America in 1998 will be rough every inch of the way. Opposition comes from history buffs, environmentalists, old meddlers like Ralph Nader and a lot of residents who moved to the area to get away from things like the mouse. Not the least of these is the Piedmont Environmental Council, with various Mellons and DuPonts and Jackie Onassis on the membership rolls. It has ponied up $400,000, with a goal of $1 million, for what board chairman Charles Whitehouse calls "the fight of our lives."

Disney has deep pockets too. The mouse costs an estimated $50,000 a day, employing such notables as Jody Powell, former press secretary to Jimmy Carter and now a top public relations operative. Ironically, Powell was one of the leaders in a 1988 campaign that stopped millionaire developer Til Hazel from dropping a shopping mall right onto the second Manassas battlefield. Powell claims that nine of his ancestors fought for the Confederacy, and mall construction would have put pizza parlors on the crucial Stuart's Hill. "He must have needed the money," complains Snyder, one of Powell's erstwhile comrades who marched with him then but sees him as a turncoat now.

"They were going to bulldoze Confederate bones for that mall," protests Powell today. "Disney's America is four miles from the battlefield. People out there are fooling themselves if they think development is not coming along that Highway 66 corridor. This is about as good as you can get." That may be true, but it is hardly a solace for those whose imaginations still hear the crash of muskets and see General Thomas Jonathan Jackson standing like a stone wall.

With reporting by Kristen Lippert-Martin/Washington