curmudgeon99,
Sorry, there is no option to disable the design view for MyEclispe visual JSP designer. You can open the JSP file in MyEclipse JSP editor which doesn’t have a design view. Right click on JSP file > Open with > MyEclipse JSP editor.
In order to make MyEclipse JSP editor as the default editor for jsp files, you need to go to Windows > Preferences > General > Editors > File Associations and associate the *.jsp file with the MyEclipse JSP Editor. Select *.jsp file in the file types section and select ‘MyEclipse JSP editor’ as default and click Ok. (See the attached screenshot for a visual reference)
Let us know if you see any issues.