that part of Walt Disney's vision involved people living in EPCOT. As the project developed, some of the planners did not see the appeal of customers paying money to come to a place to watch where other people lived. It seems like the whole plan did a 180 degree change from what Walt invisioned.
The thing was, Walt's EPCOT was not a theme park. It was a community. It had a hotel, where visitors could pay to stay and shops where people would spend money. It would showcase the latest in home-living technologies that would be developed and built by the high-tech companies in the adjacent industrial park - whose employees would live at EPCOT. A World Bazaar was one of the shopping areas - this was expanded on as the nucleus of a new theme park.
I remember when I first learned it. One summer I was up VERY late watching the old Vault Disney back when the Disney Channel was good. The showed the old World of Disney with Walt and he showed the model for what Epcot would be like. It was so neat. I miss the old Disney Channel now.
{Sigh} Yes, many of us do!
Walt orriginally wanted to build his EPCOT first, but was not able to convince the bean counters. So, in order to generate the cash flow to back the project, Roy convinced Walt to build the Magic Kingdom. Unfortunately, Walt died before it ever opened. When the plans for EPCOT finally started moving forward, two seperate park models were actually pushed together to create what opened as the E.P.C.O.T. park.
The original name, EPCOT, was an acronym and should not contain periods. The theme park was named EPCOT Center to differentiate it from the original EPCOT plans. Acronyms can't be trademarked, so it was changed to the made up word Epcot. As I write, I try to keep seperate Walt's original plan (EPCOT) from the theme park (Epcot) by using those name variations.
It's my own belief that "Celebration" is the response to a "living EPCOT". It may be documented as fact or I may just be reaching here... but it makes sense.
We have never been to Celebration.
This is a big leap to make, as they are so extremely different. Celebration is a planned comunity, similar to many in Florida and around the nation, that was developed by Imagineers. It is not the cutting edge high tech marvel that EPCOT envisioned, but a quaint town with beautiful houses on tree lined streets. The original EPCOT did call for a residential section, but that is the only similarity.
Yup, they did want to build Walt's EPCOT (Experimental Prototype City Of Tomorrow), but then the realism set in that you can't have people living in a theme park, or something to that extent. When you really stop and think about it, there was no way it could have worked. Oh well, Walt was still a genius, he created what everyone calls theme parks
It could have worked - not as a theme park but as an actual city! Would people come visit a city? Do people go to New York? Las Vegas? Miami? Sure! But not to see stage shows, gamble, or go to the beach, but to see a showplace of new technology years before it is available to the average homeowner. If it existed today, as it was envisioned, it would probably be carbon neutral, getting power from it's own onsite nuclear power plant, with residents commuting by non-polluting people movers. Every home would be bluetoothed where groceries are automatically delivered as needed by self monitoring refrigerators and pantries.Children would be taught by the best instructors in the world via distance learning, taking virtual field trips from the South Pole to the Space Station. This is where those new ideas would be tested in a real world laboratory. It could have worked, but it would have taxed the Disney company to the brink and then some. Without Walt to drive it, the company could not do it. But the concept was sound.
