ANYTHING & EVERYTHING 1.0: discussing a rather predictably (yet still regrettably) unsuccessful theme park project

Just to discuss a little something different this time from my usual material, I'd like to bring you back to Disney, specifically, one of that company's more visible failures, instead of successes, in its history, and that would be its "America" theme park plan from the early 1990s, which, had it opened, would have been located near Washington, D.C., in northern Virginia, but, as you'll find out later, it was specifically where the company had planned that park to be in northern VA that would eventually "doom" the thing...

Ironically, despite the opposition from residents, the project had "official" support from both (D) and (R) gubernatorial administrations alike within the state government, which was purportedly both inspired by various existing "colonial" locations in VA, and also alleged to have taken from just about every other theme park in the state of VA, which had (apparently) just lost out on the opportunity to host the world's first Legoland theme park, which, as we all know by now, ended up going to San Diego (where Disney had a few, more minor, botched plans that I'll touch on later), and would have been placed in the Haymarket/Manassas area of the state, right near the site of a pair of Civil War battles, hence Disney's whole idea there - to build a "Civil War experience", of sorts, instead of building a few different "parks within a park", as Anaheim and Orlando have always been!

The other parks in the state might have objected, but Disney's project there might have, ironically, brought more people to some of them, instead of seeing them stay in D.C. proper, near all the memorials and monuments and whatnot; some historians also objected, saying that the various battlefields nearby would become overly "commercialized", and still others objected to the mere notion of places where "blood, sweat, and tears" had been shed over a century earlier being made "fun" in any way, shape, or form, yet the company touted some "quality of life" improvements in attempt to turn some of the opposition into support... Once some politicians joined the historians, however, in opposing the project, that was just about it for Disney's "capital-area" theme park, as the company decided to instead close down a few of its older/more outdated parts of its Orlando property, along with (attempting to) build near both of its other existing theme park here, including attempts to build a "west coast EPCOT", naturally called "WestCOT", in Anaheim, along with a "port" theme park in Long Beach, CA, between Anaheim and San Diego (speaking of which, how 'bout those Chargers, playing in a soccer stadium until 2020?)!

I'll share a few current (back then) Washington Post editorials, a pair both against and for the complex, in just a moment, but, if you ask me, the monuments in D.C. proper seem a bit too "static" to keep visiting them regularly, although I would've changed that thought process entirely had the project mentioned here not been controversial the whole way through its "life", and opening the place in the face of all the opposition from various types of groups nationally, even in spite of Disney claiming it would've been more of a "day trip" than any of its other parks, since, surely, they could've invested the millions it surely would've taken to adapt that to its D.C./northern VA surroundings, like climate control architecture/technology, and perhaps a few different characters from the ones we've all come to know and love out west and down in FL!