A months-old fake online post claiming the Walt Disney Company (WDC) will be building a theme park in the district of Toril, Davao City again went viral on social media last week.
Facebook page Davao Construction posted on April 1 a photo of famous Disney mascots, including Mickey Mouse, with the caption:
“BREAKING NEWS!
After 2 months of keeping it a secret. We can finally reveal that DISNEY will be developing an 80 hectare theme park in Toril, Davao City. After DisneyLand Japan, Hong Kong, and Shanghai their next location in Asia is Mindanao, Philippines. Have a blessed Sunday everyone.”
A search on the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts official website yielded no results on a planned expansion of the franchise in Davao City or anywhere else in the Philippines.
No legitimate news report corroborated the post’s claim. A Nov. 23 Philippine Star report quoted “Walt Disney Philippines” as saying it has “no plan yet to build a park” in the country.
Davao Construction’s fake post went viral two weeks after a Mickey Mouse mascot, sporting a barong Tagalog, went around famous tourist spots in Manila as part of WDC’s celebration of his 90th birthday.
Photo from Oh My Disney Asia Facebook page
Speculations on plans to develop a Disney theme park in country started in 2012 when former Pampanga Representative Carmelo Lazatin in an open letter appealed to WDC to consider doing so in the Clark Freeport Zone.
It resurfaced in 2016 when then President Benigno Aquino III met with WDC executives to discuss the latter’s tapping into the pool of Filipino creatives, as well as the company’s commercial partnership with big Philippine corporations.
The fake Facebook post has garnered almost 30,000 shares, and over 2,900 comments and 24,000 reactions.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
