It's a pretty dim view of Florida politicians to think that they would have granted such powers had mention of EPCOT never been made, but to be honest, they don't seem all that bright these days either.
But the broader point is: we will never really know. Disney pitched the whole affair, creating the two municipalities and the district, on the premise that it was absolutely necessary to build EPCOT. They kept advertising EPCOT and talking it up in the press and privately among the lawmakers in the run up to get their charter passed. There is not a shred of evidence anywhere that they passed Disney's legislation, satisfied in knowing EPCOT wouldn't be built, and yet that bit of misinformation persists.
It's not a dim view at all if you choose to view this through the lens of the period in which all of this happened rather than from today.
Tourism was already our major business. Our state officials were well aware of Disney as an animation company and movie company and the company that owned Disneyland and who had a weekly show promoting
that park on ABC across the nation.
What Disney was
not was an urban planing company.
Disney was offering to turn central Florida, known mostly for cow pastures, costly-to-develop swamp land, and orange groves into a major tourism hub and Disney was willing to foot 100% of the bill to put the infrastructure in to get it all started.
There was the potential for free national weekly coverage of that wonderful theme park smack dab in the middle of Florida just like Anaheim was getting.
Even Universal
jokingly acknowledged the state of this area pre-Disney in the Minion's movie.
The EPCOT thing was a wild dream - too wild of a dream as it turned out.
Walt had a saying "
You can't top pigs with pigs" but he agreed to do that very thing in order to secure the control he was after over the land in Florida for his project. The MK was his concession to the state at the time. He had no plans for the sprawling WDW resort we have today with another three under-built theme parks, 13+ resorts, and timeshares out the wazoo.
All he'd ever built at that point was the Disneyland park and the guts for some World's Fair pavilions. His company hadn't even built the Disneyland Hotel.
I'm sure state officals were happy to get whatever they could with EPCOT
(which probably would have been a disaster that bankrupted the company and definitely would not have lasted this long, even if it had been successful for 10-20 years) but MK was always the prize - the sure bet, the thing that was going to spur growth in Orlando and create a tourism bridge from east to west Florida; relatively close to port Canaveral which had promise as a cruse launch but which was still mostly dominated by commercial vessels and not too far from Tampa Bay which already was established as a tourist area - that's what made this whole project appealing to the state.
Tourism was concentrated to the coasts which was heavily subject to seasonal swings in business and where land was expesnive and scarce. This was a deal to bring some of that into the center where space was plentiful, land was cheap, and that theme park would be able to continue to draw people outside of beach weather seasons.
To suggest
EPCOT was the carrot would be silly.
Walt was who wanted EPCOT. Our state officials weren't that naive, even if he kind of was.
Would the RCID charter have been so robust without consideration to EPCOT?
Probably not but not because Disney somehow hoodwinked Florida - in fact, the Disney Co. ended up going in a direction that in all honesty, state officials would have been even
more thrilled with from the start.
Walt wanted total control for EPCOT and the state wanted Disneyland East. The state was fine giving total control so Walt could have his project in exchange for their Disneyland. I'm pretty sure they would have had no problem granting it without EPCOT if Disney had wanted it just to build their theme park out there in the sticks but I don't think the Disney Co. would have, at the time, felt the need for such broad control if they weren't trying to figure out how to maintain development control of a city with residents that they effectively owned.
We all know Walt never got his EPCOT but the state got far more than we ever expected from the WDW resort and basically everything tourism related that you see in central Florida today bloomed from that initial deal with Disney - for better or worse.
Heck, Orlando International Airport started as the McCoy Air Force Base. It was in joint military/civilian use with the Air Force largely subsidizing its operation up until 1975. Disney is the reason it became a major international civilian facility.
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