Is there a joke on "Jaws" that I missed or am I misunderstanding your post?
Aside from the occasional ad lib from a boat driver, when the ride first opened there were a pair of mouse ears very prominently placed in the wreckage of a boat that has already fallen victim to the shark. I haven't been on the attraction in a while, so I don't know if they are still there. Others have reported Universal characters making comments about guests' Disney t-shirts.
At the same time, there have been many comments about Disney cast members making identical comments to guests in Universal t-shirts at WDW. And there have even been posting at this site about Disney concierge cast members "not knowing" the driving between Disney and Universal and/or refusing to give transportation options.
The Portofino had world class dining options, beautiful pools, and a nice staff working at the resort.
What’s really a good inside joke is that the Portofino is the exact same hotel that was announced as part of the “Disney Decade” in the early 1990’s. It was to have been called the ‘Disney’s Mediterranean Resort’ on the Seven Seas Lagoon just north of the Ticket and Transportation Center. It would have been the exact same “coastal village” design with rooms encircling a bay. The site was long planned for a hotel – in fact the original Phase One plan for Walt Disney World had placed the Venetian Resort on the exact same spot.
I’m sure that everyone knows the original hotels in the Magic Kingdom area were designed to reflect an aspect of the Magic Kingdom and to serve as a background for a land where they could be seen. Thematically, the Venetian/Mediterranean would have represented the turn-of-the-century “Old Country” origin of the residents of Main Street.
But, the Venetian was killed off by the Arab Oil Embargo of the 1970’s that also dashed a lot of WDW’s Phase One; the Mediterranean fell victim to Michael Eisner’s ego (along with most of the Disney Decade). The Grand Floridian Beach (were you can’t swim ‘cause Disney’s too cheap to clean the water) Resort never attracted the free-spending “right type of people” crowd that Eisner wanted (think Paris Hilton’s parents)…and so he canned any plans for upscale resorts and focused instead on the motels. So Disney fired everyone working on the project - and they and all the Imagineers being fired at the same time, promptly marched right over to Universal Studios. They found a happy home there, so much so that it said more years of "Disney experience" went into Islands of Adventure than Disney's Animal Kingdom.
But like a lot of things at Disney, good ideas are hidden away like monks used to hide books in the Dark Ages. Disney’s Mediterranean was finally built as Tokyo DisneySea’s premier resort – the Mira Costa. Google for pictures of
that place and see all the wonder that could have been at WDW.