I think what I miss the most from the old Epcot was the optimism for the future. My first time at Epcot was in 1988, and I thought it was amazing. My parents thought it was quite boring themselves, but they knew I liked it so they would bring me back every year. Like some other posters, I'm someone who loves learning and Epcot fitted the bill perfectly.
As to whether Walt would of liked what Epcot turned into, it's impossible to accurately say. Walt was banking on an awful lot in order to make Progress City a success; he wanted to constantly swap new experimental technology in and out of all the homes with no say so from the people living there, not to mention the people living in Progress City wouldn't of been allowed the right to vote on *anything* - Walt (and by extension, the Disney company) would of been the sole arbiters of everything turning Mickey quite literally into 1984's "Big Brother". Would you really want to live like that, have your life constantly monitored by Disney and then every month have people come into your home saying, "Yeah, we're taking away your refrigerator and replacing it with this new one that we want to test and see if it works or not." And let's not forget there was also supposed to be a 1,000 acre industrial park where all the large corporations of the world were supposed to come together and work on new ideas and share them among one another. An altruistic idea to be sure, but do you really see companies developing new technologies and just giving them away to other rival companies? It would be like if Ford developed a new engine that is twice as efficient and then taking it to Toyota and saying, "Here, we made this for our cars - you can have it too." That's really why after Walt died Epcot and Progress City died - if anyone were able to actually try and bring together all those ideas and make them work through sheer force-of-will it would of been "Uncle Walt." Not to mention that much of what Walt wanted to plan and do was lost when he died - the story goes that on his deathbed in the hospital he was using the ceiling tiles to plan out Progress City. And when Card Walker finally got the ball rolling with Epcot in the mid 70's, not only was Disney management afraid to spend billions of dollars on a project that could easily flop (for reasons I mentioned above), but the Imagineers who were working on the project just flat out didn't know how to make it all work. So they made Epcot into something they did know how to make work - a theme park. I suppose if you put a gun to my head and asked if Walt would of liked Epcot Center I would have to guess no. Everything I've ever read said Walt was genuinely concerned with what was going on in cities like overcrowding, pollution, etc, and he really wanted to try and make something that could be used as a model for benefiting the world. At the very least, he had definitely moved beyond just making entertainment and theme parks. The best quote I remember is what Walt told his secretary when he realized he probably was not going to live to see Epcot made and was worried it wouldn't be built if he died, "Fancy being remembered around the world for the invention of a mouse!"
