How do you think Disneyland would look if Walt had lived 5 more years?

[Disstevefan1]

How do you think Disneyland would look if Walt had lived 5-10 more years?

I don’t think much would happen between 1968 and 1971 because of Walt Disney World.

I think we would have still gotten The Haunted Mansion as a ride regardless because the imagineers would have have convinced Walt about the capacity issues.

Space Mountain may have been built sooner and would be more stylized I think.

There would be no Country Bear Jamboree at the park because the Mineral King project would go through.

I think Walt would have seen a New Fantasyland in his lifetime because he had always wanted to improve on the medieval theme.

We may have even seen a Hall of Presidents at the park as well because it’s something that Walt wanted earlier on.

How do you think the park would be different?

If I read my Walt Disney History correctly, Walt was totally focused on HIS EPCOT to the point he was laying out His Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow in his mind, staring at the ceiling in his deathbed.

 

[el_super]

Florida isn’t exactly a place known for its disdain of home owners associations. They already exercise immense control and places like Seaside, Celebration and The Villages are popular places. The control of the interior, such as appliances, is already common in apartment complexes.

Actually, it was specifically the failures of Celebration that led me to think that EPCOT wouldn't have worked long term either.

While it's easy to draw the comparison to an HOA, EPCOT could have potentially been far worse: Reedy Creek and Bay Lake are controlled by a cadre of Resident Employees are they not? So the question would be, to what degree would potential EPCOT residents have been willing to give up personal freedoms and voting privileges to live there? Far beyond what just an HOA would manage, would they been allowed to elect a school board? A city council? A mayor? Would they be able to override Walt if they so desired? Would Walt have had sole authority to make deals to relocate corporations to EPCOT or would the citizens have some say in which companies would be invited/allowed into the town?

I think there are a lot of questions about Walt's EPCOT best left unanswered.

 

[smooch]

I think there are a lot of questions about Walt's EPCOT best left unanswered.

Yeah I have a feeling some people would be disappointed / downright upset at how little control Walt would've given citizens of EPCOT of their own lives. It sounds like a cool concept at first but becomes pretty authoritarian pretty quickly when you ask the sort of questions you did in your post.

 

[Disstevefan1]

To answer the OPs questions it’s irrelevant as to if EPCOT would have worked or not, all I am saying to answer the OP’s question, Walt was focused on his Florida project when he died so I think his focus would have remained there for those 5 years and Disneyland would not have looked much different.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Actually, it was specifically the failures of Celebration that led me to think that EPCOT wouldn't have worked long term either.

While it's easy to draw the comparison to an HOA, EPCOT could have potentially been far worse: Reedy Creek and Bay Lake are controlled by a cadre of Resident Employees are they not? So the question would be, to what degree would potential EPCOT residents have been willing to give up personal freedoms and voting privileges to live there? Far beyond what just an HOA would manage, would they been allowed to elect a school board? A city council? A mayor? Would they be able to override Walt if they so desired? Would Walt have had sole authority to make deals to relocate corporations to EPCOT or would the citizens have some say in which companies would be invited/allowed into the town?

I think there are a lot of questions about Walt's EPCOT best left unanswered.

What failures of Celebration? People still live there and they‘re not holdouts living amongst blight and abandoned properties. The Walt Disney Company still owns The Celebration Company which continues to expand the development, although now it is done more through third parties. Island Village will add more than 1,000 new homes and an elementary school. Is it because Disney got out of the homeowner’s association early? That was always going to happen. Is it because Disney sold the Town Center properties? That, and getting out of the homeowner‘s association, occurred at a time when Disney was divesting a lot of property in Florida including some sizable chunks of Walt Disney World. Does that mean Walt Disney World is a failure? Like most New Urbanist developments, Celebration has failed to be a true live-work community but EPCOT accounted for that by being larger, having greater urban density at its core, being transit oriented and requiring residents to work at Disney World.

You seem to be under the pervasive, but incorrect, assumption that the Reedy Creek Improvement District has far greater power and autonomy than it actually possesses. The District‘s power is almost entirely focused on water management, land management and utilities. The District though is still bound by county (except those it is granted) and state laws and regulations. We know of new projects because they get submitted to the South Florida Water Management District for approval. The EPCOT Building Code cannot be less restrictive than the Florida Building Code. Reedy Creek Emergency Services enforces the Florida Fire Prevention Code. Disney pays county property taxes, and collects local and state sales and hotel taxes.

The District does not have the power to operate its own schools, so the residents of EPCOT would be voting residents of Orange County Public Schools. Disney themselves could have operated schools but they would have been private schools just like any other; local residents don’t have any say in how a Catholic diocese runs its schools. I can’t speak to the situation in the late 1960s, but for several decades now Florida counties have required major land developers to provide public schools in some manner. The Celebration School wasn’t just a crazy Eisner idea, it was a requirement for developing Celebration and is the property of the School District of Osceola County. Celebration High School and the previously mentioned new elementary school are also part of these requirements. So if residents didn’t want to use the private Disney school and didn’t want to deal with bussing to nearby Orange County schools, they could have pushed for the county and or school district to use their own power of eminent domain to build one within Disney World or even EPCOT proper.

While the Reedy Creek Improvement District is incorporated in the cities of Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, they don’t do much and the District still has power to act within a municipality. Even then, many major developments like Celebration or The Villages or Columbia, MD are unincorporated communities. They don’t have a city council or a mayor.

If you live in an apartment building that also has commercial space you generally have no say in the leases of that space. The reason residents of a city can typically stop a company from moving to a city is because there is usually a deal with the local government itself be it to buy land at reduced prices, tax breaks, subsidies, or whatever. The residents of a city couldn’t really stop a company from buying an office building and moving into it. So of course Disney would control the invited companies because they would be the landlord and the private entity providing any incentives. The big loss of control would have been over zoning, which can get heated, but again, there are plenty of large scale developments where development is effectively controlled by the developer.

A lot of the “questions“ about EPCOT arent actually something has not or is not being done right now somewhere. The Villages about an hour north of Walt Disney World is a pretty big example of a place with a lot of developer control that people have flocked to and continues to grow.

 

[Sailor310]

Disney themselves could have operated schools

It brings up pictures of kids learning to draw Mickey Mouse, talk like Donald Duck, memorize facts about Walt...

 

[NeedMoreMickey]

I think if Walt would have lived another 5 years he would have worked mostly on EPCOT and in Florid. I wouldn’t be surprised if an amusement park wasn’t part of the plan because it was a money maker to finance EPCOT. I wonder how much of MK was designed by Walt. I feel like a few things were designed with the thought that Disneyland was nice but let’s do it better in Florida. Wasn’t Walt involved with designing the tunnels under Main Street? And I loved my trip to Disneyland but the castle in Florida blows the California castle away.

 

[lazyboy97o]

I think if Walt would have lived another 5 years he would have worked mostly on EPCOT and in Florid. I wouldn’t be surprised if an amusement park wasn’t part of the plan because it was a money maker to finance EPCOT. I wonder how much of MK was designed by Walt. I feel like a few things were designed with the thought that Disneyland was nice but let’s do it better in Florida. Wasn’t Walt involved with designing the tunnels under Main Street? And I loved my trip to Disneyland but the castle in Florida blows the California castle away.

Design of the Magic Kingdom did not start until after Walt’s passing (which is why the claim that Cinderella Castle was to have an apartment for Walt is not true). While alive he had mentioned the amusement park being something different but that design would mostly be left up the WED. The Disney World master plan seen in “The EPCOT Film” just uses Disneyland as a placeholder for the park.

The utilidor concept does come from Walt (actually Victor Gruen) as EPCOT was also supposed to have a utility level beneath the city center. There are smaller, proto-utilidors at Disneyland in New Orleans Square and Tomorrowland.

Versions of what became The Hall of Presidents, then known as One Nation Under God, were developed during Walt’s lifetime. The Country Bear Jamboree started development shortly before his death, intended for the Mineral King ski resort, as well as early concepts for the Space Port roller coaster that became Space Mountain.

 

[Californian Elitist]

I think if Walt would have lived another 5 years he would have worked mostly on EPCOT and in Florid. I wouldn’t be surprised if an amusement park wasn’t part of the plan because it was a money maker to finance EPCOT. I wonder how much of MK was designed by Walt. I feel like a few things were designed with the thought that Disneyland was nice but let’s do it better in Florida. Wasn’t Walt involved with designing the tunnels under Main Street? And I loved my trip to Disneyland but the castle in Florida blows the California castle away.

Walt Disney initially had no intentions on building a second Disneyland-style theme park in Florida. He also passed away before designing for MK began.

MK was built mostly to fund EPCOT, not because Walt Disney genuinely wanted another Disneyland in Florida.