This news article gave some background:
According to the original plans and brochures, Disney’s America would contain nine sections: a Colonial-era Presidents Square, an Indigenous village, Ellis Island, a factory town from the Industrial Revolution, a Civil War fort, a county fair, an early 19th-century port, a World War II-era battlefield and a Depression-era family farm.
On the surface, these themed areas seemed fitting. You could easily see them as exhibits at the Smithsonian. But issues emerged when people took into account that this was still a Disney theme park, with entertaining guests and making money likely taking precedence over historical accuracy and contemporary sensitivities and sensibilities.
As criticism mounted, Disney decided to shift its approach. In the summer of 1994, it renamed the project Disney’s American Celebration.
Rather than highlight periods or events in American history, the new concept would focus more on themes: Democracy, Work, Family, Generations, Streets of America and the Land.
Linda Shopes wrote an impassioned plea She asked:
Historians operating in classrooms and in nonprofit public venues have a difficult enough time challenging such views. Can we really expect a for-profit enterprise to effectively address them? Shopes continued: I wonder if the much-vaunted Disney wizardry does as much harm as good: cannot simulations lead participants to a facile, if not arrogant, view that because they’ve experienced a recreated version of an event, they know it? Do they not create a false sense of intimacy with a past that can only be known approximately, and in ways deeply limited by the knower’s point of reference?
Shenandoah Studios is filming a documentary called “Almost Magic” that recounts events surrounding the park project, “Disney’s America.” It explores the conflict over breaking ground for the project in 1994. I’m interested in watching it!
Having spent 12 years in northern Virginia now, I am glad we don’t have a Disney themepark in our backyard. I prefer experiencing history at a battlefield without being entertained at the same time.