Point taken, my concern would be such heavy-handed covenants that you basically don't even own your home.
I'd expect that. Some HOAs are like that.
From my understanding, Celebration is like that. I'd basically just think of this as "franchised Celebrations." If you want to know what kinds of rules you'll live under, look at Celebration in FL. You'll either like them or you won't. That's probably what you can expect at these new locations.
Good idea or bad? I could see this going either way. With how Disney nostalgia is, I could see A LOT of people wanting to live in a dream like "Disney Community". Heck, even if it was just upscale and they knew it was built by Disney that would be enough - even if there weren't hidden Mickey's everywhere. With that "LOT of people" comes a high cost. You're competing with everyone else who has strong nostalgia for Disney and want to live in a Disney community. That'll up the price. That'll definitely help Disney, the company.
I think it really hinges around: Is Disney a construction company or, can it be a construction company for developing neighborhoods. They can charge a high price and cut a good number of corners and get away with it because:'
- They'd just blame the underlying construction company (probably contracted out)
- Nostalgia seems to smooth everything over (also: TAKE MY MONEY!)
Still... People don't want to pay a high price and have things constantly break.
My hope: Disney does a quality management job with this and creates a premium product (homes, neighborhoods, shopping) which people will pay a premium for and be proud to be a part of (over and above the nostalgia bit - like, "Yeah, Disney built it but it's all top notch. I paid a premium but I couldn't be happier with my purchase!"
Based on current management and just "how things go": Disney "manages it" which means a huge number of managers to pay which means they cut costs on quality (which they're used to, if you look at reports from the parks) and people's expectations aren't met. Class action lawsuits and all that. <-really hope it isn't this one.
It's not their core industry and really doesn't fit under any of the umbrellas. It'd be like Lockheed getting into the ice cream game. What do they know about ice cream? It'd take them a ton of $$$ to figure it out and decades of commitment to make it work (plus they'd have all the competition from those who've figured it out). I think Disney faces the same uphill battle. You have tons of local development companies that know how to do this for their market and know what their market is looking for and have decades of experience both in their market and buying homes. These folks know what they can/can't get away with in their markets and do so accordingly (I'm not saying it's right - I'm saying they already have the knowledge that Disney doesn't).
Disney, on the other hand, will need to have a management team, which none of these local, slimmer operations have, and that team will need to be paid (huge bonuses for cutting costs!) and the multiple layers above them will need to be paid. That's a lot of cost without even putting a shovel in the ground, yet. Add to that the cost of: lack of knowledge. It will cost them a great deal to learn how to do this and I'd doubt that they'd ever be able to do it at the same cost as the local level guys.
Back when Disney was daring and more of a technology company I could see them doing this. They wouldn't look at it as, "We'll build Celebrations EVERYWHERE!" but, instead, look at it as, "How do we mass-build a ton of quality homes as cheaply as possible??" and they'd look into pre-manufactured homes (not mobile homes), or 3D printing of homes, or things along those lines to:
1) do it better and cheaper
2) to possibly prove a technology
I don't think that's where this Disney is headed, however.
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