What if Walt's EPCOT Had Failed

[spirit971]

I was having this discussion the other night with some friends. What if Walt Disney had lived long enough to build his vision of EPCOT and it failed? Corporations would have been used for sponsorship within the city. That may have worked back in the 70's but in todays market we see how hard it is to get sponsors just for the attractions in the parks let alone for a whole city. What if a corporation found that in was no longer in their best interest or bottom line to stay involved with EPCOT. Would the people living there lose there jobs? Would the people living there have to pay taxes to a local Disney government or would Disney Corp. have to pay for all improvements to the city? Would it have become a city for just the rich? Was WALTS vision of EPCOT a viable idea?
Since the people who read this forum are the most itelligent Disney people I have ever seen, I would like to post these questions to you.
Could EPCOT have ever worked?

 

[wbt06]

If you read any Walt Disney biography you can see that he loved the idea of self contained communities. he liked the idea of many people living together away from the real world where they could have fun. To tell the truth it never worked for very long. He did this with his studio in Anaheim. He made it like a collage campus and had all kinds of fun stuff in it for his workers. Well to make a long story short it failed miserably.(not the studio but the perfect world concept.) I really don't think it would have worked. because eventually the real world would find a way in and there would be crime or something worse but also because it is a lot harder to update a hole city's technology than a rides. It would have been great for a while but at some point people everywhere would have caught up with the city's technology.

 

[ChrisFL]

I've been studying Walt's original EPCOT City plan for 3+ years. While some aspects make it seem like it would be a self contained community, seeing as it was placed in the middle of the property, I think it would be more than successful. It's not as if the CM's living there would be stuck. The plan still had cars as a form of travel, but it was merely to travel in and out of the city itself.

The only true flaws that I saw in the plan were the idea that tourists would be able to get tours of the city and therefore making the CM's who lived there still "on stage" in some places, even if they weren't working.

Overall, I seriously think that so many people have forgotten about the details of the city plan and that's sad because people start to come up with these wild concepts about what Walt wanted. Im constantly hearing that he was "crazy" because the city would have "weather control" when in fact, that merely meant that the downtown section would be housed indoors, more like a large shopping mall (which wasn't too common back in the 1960's)

The ideas are completely valid, especially now since we're living in a time when many of us are practically slaves to our automobiles. The cities and towns we live in rely on 95% automobile travel to get around. There are MANY problems with that, and they're becoming more clear all the time.

I think it is quite tragic that the city plan was never built the way it was intended, I'm sure we could have learned a lot from it.

 

[Frank Stallone]

I would have felt bad for the CM's driving to work in the tunnels...since they would be drowning.

I also would have felt bad for the older people living in the community, since nobody would be allowed to retire. Everyone living in the community would be required to work. Wal-Mart greeters!

 

[ChrisFL]

I would have felt bad for the CM's driving to work in the tunnels...since they would be drowning.

I also would have felt bad for the older people living in the community, since nobody would be allowed to retire. Everyone living in the community would be required to work. Wal-Mart greeters!

Similar to MK's tunnels, Im sure they would not have tried to build underground, but up a few levels.