Imagineering Utopia

"Michael Eisner is not Sir Thomas More any more than [architect] Robert Stern, with his Mickey Mouse ties, is Frank Lloyd Wright," reporters Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins write.

Henry Holt and Company

But their new book, Celebration, U.S.A.: Living in Disney's Brave New World (Henry Holt and Company, $25, 342 pages), demonstrates that although Disney's planned city in central Florida is hardly the unblemished utopia of More's fabled eponymous city of perfection, it certainly makes for a worthy variation on the theme.

Frantz and Collins landed on some prime real estate for investigative reporting with their book that offers a look from the inside. Opting to become part of the story by moving to the development and immersing themselves in the experiment for more than a year, the husband-wife team provide a backstage pass to this wonderful — and at times, not so wonderful — socially engineered world of Disney.

If the brand-name recognition initially lures readers to the book, what eventually takes over and captures the audience's interest is the colorful cast of characters who make up the newfound community. There's the school principal who left a comfortable job and a long, successful career to risk the innovative open education that Celebration touted as one of its cornerstones. There's the company-line-talking town manager who conducted routine porch checks to ensure houses met a rigid aesthetic code. There's the Southern belle who moved out of Orlando's high society to rough it in the tiny new community. And that's just to name a few.

The narrative follows no consistent chronology, making each chapter a good, independent story. But reading the book cover-to-cover can be fairly redundant. For instance, the real diehard Disney fans, whose expectations were sky-high, became the most disappointed residents in the town, the authors tell us over and over again.

The episodic nature of the book also leaves the reader begging for more. For example, what ever happened to the family who risked it all and moved to the community, only to suffer a near-fatal crash on the drive from Michigan?

Overall, however, the many subplots do find some closure and contribute to the ongoing saga of a community's evolution.

Extremely well researched, Celebration, U.S.A. provides an in-depth look at the architecture that, designed by some of the country's finest, gives a visceral structure to the town. In digging into the town's nitty-gritty, Frantz and Collins dish the dirt on everything from Disney's early land purchases and its relationship to the local Florida government to its strong-armed gestures to maintain control of the city. The writers prove adept at unearthing the necessary back story to keep the main plot vibrant.

While More's Utopia (1516) may have depicted an imaginary island community living in perfect social and political harmony, Celebration, U.S.A. is a true story — a close study of a very real place made up of real people who have their shares of ups and downs (innovative schooling along with troubled education), wins and losses (new homes designed by the best architects accompanied by inflated prices and shoddy construction) and advantages and disadvantages (order, yet loss of freedoms).

Frantz and Collins didn't find utopia, but they didn't find a dystopia either. And while Disney may try to keep up its role of Big Brother, Celebration, the authors indicate, will live and thrive only if its residents can truly call it and make it home.

The only question that remains — will there be a sequel?

Erica D. Rowell is a news editor for Fox News Online.