Disney: 25,000 unionized hourly workers will get raises this week

From Sentinel Staff Writers Jason Garcia and Sara K. Clarke

Despite the still-struggling economy, about 25,000 unionized hourly workers at Walt Disney World are getting raises this week.

The raises, which will range from 4 percent to 5 percent for most workers, are part of a three-year contract that the resort and Service Trades Council Union negotiated in April 2007. Another 4,000 tipped employees will get raises at the end of the year.

The trade council — an umbrella group representing half a dozen smaller unions whose members include costumed characters, hotel maids, stagehands, monorail drivers and many more — estimates that the raises will add between $15 million and $20 million dollars of purchasing power to the local economy.

That contract expires a year from now.

Look for a new round of negotiations between Central Florida’s largest employer and the trade council to begin early next year.

Contractual hitches?
Amid the rumors swirling around a possible Blackstone Group purchase of Busch Entertainment Corp. have been questions about whether the firm’s deal with NBC Universal (its Universal Orlando co-owner) precludes it from buying another theme park in Florida.

It looks like the coast is clear for Blackstone, for the most part.

The firm’s deal with NBC Universal does include language preventing it from engaging in a “similar theme park” within Florida, or anywhere else in the world, without first getting NBC Universal’s consent. (Likewise, NBC Universal would have to get Blackstone’s permission to buy or develop a “similar theme park” in Florida, though it’s free to do so elsewhere.)

The catch is the definition of “similar theme park.” The deal describes it as any park larger than 50 acres where the “primary thematic content” is based upon one or more of four “key elements”: themes or characters based on movies or TV shows, cartoon characters, comic strip or comic book characters; and themes or characters based upon children’s literature that have been so widely developed they are significantly linked to movies or TV.

SeaWorld and Busch Gardens both use some properties that involve those “key elements.” SeaWorld, for instance, transforms its Wild Arctic simulator into The Polar Express every winter, and Busch Gardens is building a children’s area with a Sesame Street theme. But those are hardly “primary thematic content.”

One Busch park that might pose a problem: Sesame Place in Pennsylvania, where the primary theme is clearly based on the TV show.

Summit of scary
For the second year in a row, Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights has won a pair of industry awards.

The popular fright fest at Universal Studios Florida was chosen “Best Halloween Event” by Amusement Today, a trade magazine, based on a fan vote that Universal said it won by an even greater margin this year.

Horror Nights was also chosen the top “Theme Park Halloween Haunted Event” by hauntworld.com, a Halloween-attraction and haunted-house directory.

‘Day of Firsts’ theme
Last week’s opening of Hilton Worldwide’s Waldorf Astoria Orlando in Bonnet Creek, the first hotel to share the name Waldorf Astoria with the original in New York, also honored the “first ladies of Orlando”: Rita Bornstein, first female president of Rollins College; Linda Chapin, first mayor of Orange County; Val Demings, first female police chief of Orlando; Deborah German, first dean of UCF’s College of Medicine; Paula Hawkins, first female U.S. senator from Florida; Glenda Hood, first female mayor of Orlando; Toni Jennings, first female lieutenant governor and first female state Senate president; Ann McGee, first female president of Seminole Community College; and Joan Ruffier, first female chair of the State University System Board of Regents and first female president of the University of Florida Foundation.

Jason Garcia can be reached at 407-420-5414. Sara K. Clarke can be reached at 407-420-5664.