(CBS) ORLANDO, Fl. Walt Disney Company is banning smoking at all of its 22 Orlando hotels and time-share resorts.
The ban is effective June 1. It permits smoking at designated outdoor areas.
The theme park's spokesman Jacob DiPietre said the company is simply responding to demand from their guests. He says the transition to become smoke-free will allow Disney to better accommodate the increasing number of guests requesting nonsmoking hotel rooms.
He says the ban follows a 2000 measure that restricted smoking throughout Disney's theme and water parks, limiting smoking to designated areas.
Guests caught smoking after the ban could face cleaning surcharges up to $500.
If Disney does not have the demand for smoking rooms, then the theme park should reduce the number of smoking rooms available -- not ban smoking rooms altogether, said Gary Nolan, U.S. regional director of The Smoker's Club, a smoker's rights group.
"Disney is going to send money elsewhere," Nolan said.
Abraham Pizam, dean of the Rosen College of Hospitality at the University of Central Florida sees Disney's smoking ban as a positive move.
The odor from smoke lingers long after the smoker has checked out of the room -- even permeating to nonsmoking rooms, Pizam said.
"Nonsmokers are really belligerent," Pizam said. "They want a smoke-free environment and they don't want to be affected by second hand smoke."
Some hotels located on Disney property are not owned by the theme park and will still offer smoking rooms after Disney's ban takes effect next month.
The 17-floor Royal Plaza hotel, for example, offers its 4th floor to smokers.
Florida leads the nation in water reuse by reclaiming some 240 billion gallons annually, but it is not nearly enough, Sole said.
Floridians use about 2.4 trillion gallons of water a year. The state projects that by 2025, the population will have increased 34 percent from about 18 million to more than 24 million people, pushing annual demand for water to nearly 3.3 trillion gallons.
More than half of the state's expected population boom is projected in a three-county area that includes Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach, where water use is already about 1.5 trillion gallons a year.
"We just passed a crossroads. The chief water sources are basically gone," said John Mulliken, director of water supply for the South Florida Water Management District. "We really are at a critical moment in Florida history."
In addition to recycling and conservation, technology holds promise.
There are more than 1,000 desalination plants in the U.S., many in the Sunbelt, where baby boomers are retiring at a dizzying rate.
The Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant is producing about 25 million gallons a day of fresh drinking water, about 10 percent of that area's demand. The $158 million facility is North America's largest plant of its kind. Miami-Dade County is working with the city of Hialeah to build a reverse osmosis plant to remove salt from water in deep brackish wells. Smaller such plants are in operation across the state.
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Disney and It's A Laugh Productions announced that they are going to start shooting "Hannah Montana: The Movie" in late January 2007. The feature length film will be released in theatres worldwide, instead of being released as a Disney movie. Although the writers strike is going on right now, Bob Iger, Disney's Chief Executive, says that the effects of the strike won't be felt in the film business until 2009. This, of course, means that everything is on schedule for the upcoming films "High School Musical 3", "Cheetah Girls 3: Indian Adventure", "Dadnapped" and the afore mentioned Hannah Montana movie. On a side note, there are still accepting photos and resumes at the casting office for the Hannah Montana film. For more information on casting, see below.
