I very much appreciated Jack's wealth of knowledge, but I was pretty lost in all the legalese. It's needs to be REALLY dumbed down for people like myself to understand.
If you have questions, I'll be happy to try to answer them. I drowned on too long and just had to assume listeners would know some of the background. But in case it helps, here goes.
There are two (possibly three) agreements at issue. One is a "restrictive covenant" which RCID and WDW agreed upon. A restrictive covenant is simply a contract, typically involving land use, where landowners agree to refrain from certain conduct. Ordinances accomplish much the same thing only ordinances are laws passed by municipalities while restrictive covenants are agreements between two or more parties. Restrictive covenants are typically imposed when property is purchased. The town of "Celebration" is good example (its
online restrictive covenants are 128 pages).
WDW transferred a decent amount of developed real property to RCID (or RCID developed property WDW transferred to it). From looking at the Orange and Osceola online tax maps, RCID owns most of the main roads, most of the power facilities (other than the solar power panels), solid waste and recycling facilities (not sure about recycling as Disney may on it) and, of course, the fire stations. What surprised me, assuming the tax maps are accurate, is that RCID owns at least one or more facility in or near each of the theme parks. There's a large facility north of the MK, two facilities in Epcot (you see two facilities (an electrical substation and chillers) from the outside part of Test Track), one or two in DHS (north of Slinky Dog) and a larger waste facility on the western part of the property in Osceola County. In AK, RCID owns the canal near Rafiki's Planet Watch. Here's the Orange County assessor's map:
https://vgispublic.ocpafl.org/webmapjs/# (click on identify and then select property to see who owns or is responsible for paying taxes on the property).
To over simplify it, the restrictive covenant had RCID agree that its property would only be used for the "public and governmental purposes that such RCID Property is or are being used as of the Effective Date." While RCID's property is small, and largely out of sight of guests, I can see Disney wanting to prevent the Governor or CFTOD from using the RCID property to build a prison, just for argument sake. The restrictive covenant includes a list of "prohibited uses" which covers any advertising or publicity about any business other than RCID. The restrictive covenant also prohibited RCID from using the "Disney" name, "Walt Disney World" or any Disney characters.
The restrictive covenant, by the way, is the one that made all the news for having the "King Charles clause."
As an aside, if Disney wanted to make life really interesting, it could. For example, while RCID owns the chillers and substation north of the MK, Disney apparently owns the parking lot and we all know how Disney likes to charge for parking. I suspect Disney's real concern are the roads. The tax maps are not detailed enough to know for sure but with RCID owning the main roads (including World Drive, East Buena Vista Drive, Epcot Resorts Blvd, Epcot Center Dr ), the land between the roads, and probably some part of the land on either side, I can see Disney wanting to prevent CFTOD from putting anything (billboards, etc) along the road.
