Progress City, U.S.A.

In early 1982, Walt Disney Productions was working full bore on the construction of EPCOT Center. Behind schedule and over budget, construction crews toiled around the clock to try and have the park ready for the October 1st opening date. In the meantime, Disney management scrambled to prepare both cast members and the public for what would be a very different type of theme park.

EPCOT Center under construction in early 1982. Click to enlarge.

When Walt Disney announced his plans for EPCOT in 1966, he described a vision for a city of the future to be built in Florida. The EPCOT Center that Walt Disney Productions began to promote in 1978 looked nothing like these original plans, scrapping the idea of a working city and replacing it with plans for a permanent World’s Fair. Many people at the time were confused by the shift; what happened to those fantastic futuristic vistas that Walt had promised us? And what will this new theme park actually be?

In May of 1982, Eyes & Ears, Walt Disney World’s internal Cast Member publication, attempted to answer those questions by reprinting a number of questions and answers drawn from a series of EPCOT Center Updates that had been held that March. Disney’s President of Outdoor Recreation, Dick Nunis, hosted the updates and gave the responses printed below. There’s a lot of interesting material here; not only Nunis’s transparent attempts to spin away the fact that EPCOT Center bears no resemblance to Walt’s EPCOT city, but also several mentions of impending projects at Walt Disney World that were never built.

Dick Nunis sez “HOWAREYA?”

A Milestone In Dreaming And Doing

Q: Dick, there’s been a lot of discussion over a very important question: Have we deviated from Walt’s original concept of Epcot Center? How do you feel about this?

A: I can’t honestly say what we’d be doing now if Walt were here, but I don’t think we’ve deviated from his original concept. The thing that has haunted us for many years is the rendering done back in 1966. Walt believed very strongly that to sell a concept, a picture says a thousand words. So he had someone come up with this idea with a tower and the domed city, and what Walt was trying to do was sell a concept. He didn’t want to come to Florida and burden the local taxpayers with everything he knew he had to do. He wanted to show how, though the free enterprise system, a corporation could take virgin land and develop it without government subsidy.

The first thing we started out with was what we knew how to do … the Magic Kingdom, which is the Disneyland people know.

But what he really wanted to do was develop an area where all types of corporations, governments, and academia could come together to really try and solve some of the problems that exist in the world today. We started with the recreation area, and then began the community, which is Walt Disney World Village, and now we’re building the center … Epcot Center, and we’re going to connect it all with the monorail system.

I don’t think Walt ever intended to have a permanent resident population. I think he wanted to have a large tourist population and an area where people from all walks of life could come and learn.

I can remember when we got the final big parcel of our land which included Bay Lake. It was in the summer of 1966, and Walt called me up to his apartment in Disneyland, and he was really happy. He said, “Just think Dick, we own 43 square miles. That’s like getting on top of the Matterhorn and looking 7 miles one way and 11 miles the other. We’re going to be able to have our own Disneyland, our own Knott’s Berry Farm, our own Marineland and a couple of cities to boot.”

Well Walt, we’re almost there.

Q: What kind of attendance do we anticipate at Epcot Center?

A: When we open Epcot Center, we’ll release a combined attendance figure for both Epcot Center and the Magic Kingdom … a Walt Disney World attendance. Current attendance runs about 13 to 14 million people. We project 20 million people to visit Walt Disney World, per year. I think that’s conservative … I’ll tell you why. Right now we only penetrate 25 percent of Florida visitors. That leaves a lot of room for growth. We know for a fact that people are going down I-4 and passing by because they think we run a carousel.

I figure that Epcot Center will take on the magnitude of a World’s Fair because of the size … people are going to come to Epcot Center and they’re going to talk to other guests who have been in the Magic Kingdom, and I believe they are going to convince the others to visit the Magic Kingdom also.

We also believe that the European market will be very big for us. Last year 23 million foreign tourists visited the United States, and we only penetrated four percent of that. We believe that gives us great growth potential.

We’d also like to extend our guests’ length of stay from an admissions point of view. We won’t offer a one-day admission ticket that will be good for both the Magic Kingdom and Epcot Center. The reason for that? First of all, we’d be selling something that people couldn’t get their value out of and secondly, we’re trying to extend their length of stay. We’re going to market a three-day ticket that will be a very, very good value.

Q: What hours will Epcot Center operate?

A: Well, they’re subject to change, but these are what we have planned: during the slow season, Future World will open at 9 a.m. and World Showcase at 2 p.m., and both will close at 10 p.m. During the peak seasons, Future World will open, depending on demand, at 8 or 9 a.m. and World Showcase at 11 a.m. Both will close at midnight. We’re not going to change the operating hours for the Magic Kingdom.

Q: How will we staff Epcot Center?

A: We outlined the staffing procedure in the EYES & EARS several months ago. We’re going to need a staff of 3,000 people for Opening Day and that will break down to roughly 300 salaried and the balance in hourly classifications. There is one exception to our transfer-from-within policy … World Showcase. We’re trying to give the people a feeling that they’re actually in the country, so we want to theme the pavilions with the people from the different countries. That’s where the World Showcase Fellowship program comes in. Basically, this enables us to bring university students from other countries for one year to represent their country in World Showcase and to go to school together. It’s going to be a fantastic thing. We might just wind up with the greatest United Nations that’s ever been created.

Wouldn’t it be nice someday if a major power called another to say, “Hey! What’s going on?” because they knew each other way back when they worked at World Showcase at Walt Disney World.

We’ve committed ourselves to 100 of these students, and we’re going to look internally for these ethnic groups as well. If we cant’ find them internally, we’ll reach outside because we truly want to have Germans in the German pavilion and Italians in the Italian pavilion. We think that’s an extremely important part of the overall show.

Q: Will we ever expand Epcot Center?

A: Very definitely. Epcot Center will never be complete. We want to go ahead with the Seas pavilion and we feel there is a need for a Life and Health pavilion. Beyond that, there should be a Space pavilion, but we’ve put that on hold for now because the space industry is changing so rapidly.

In World Showcase we have nine countries to begin with: Canada, Great Britain, France, Japan, the United States, China, Italy, Mexico, and Germany, and there are eight other spaces available. We think they will fill up rather rapidly. We’ve signed a contract with Spain, and we’re negotiating with Israel. We’ll have an African pavilion. We’ll probably have a Scandinavian pavilion someday and we’ve also been talking with Venezuela. Now you see why I think those eight sites will fill up very rapidly.

We also have a blue-sky dream. On both sides of the American Adventure there is enough room to make a cut through and create another lagoon on the south side of the World Showcase where there are about five good building sites. The concept involved building a hotel in Australia for instance. If you’re staying in the hotel then you’re in World Showcase already, if you’re a day guest, you could take a cruise down to Australia or to the South Seas or other parts of the world. I think it’s a good concept and would be another way to generate more hotel space.

Q: Let’s talk about our plans outside Epcot Center. Do we have any plans of expanding the Magic Kingdom?

A: Very definitely, the Magic Kingdom will continue to grow. It’s designed to expand to the north in Fantasyland, and I’d like to bring the Matterhorn to the Magic Kingdom. It’d be the tallest Mountain in Florida. Our concept would be to put the Matterhorn over the train, creating a blizzard scene with real snow. Can you imagine people in July and August riding the train to get cool?

Q: What about the Tokyo Disneyland project?

A: Tokyo Disneyland, quite honestly, will be a fantastic success. Just imagine a local audience of 35 million within a 15-mile radius. Right now, we’re providing as much creative help to support them and get it open next March.

Q: Do we plan to expand our hotels?

A: Estimates say that this area is between 15,000 and 19,000 hotel rooms short. We’re worried about it. Right now we plan to expand the Polynesian Village, Golf Resort, and the Walt Disney World Village resort area.

We also have in design three hotels. The Mediterranean will be located between TTC and the Contemporary. The Cypress Point Lodge will be west of River Country and be themed as a western hotel. It’ll include log cabins along Bay Lake.

The third one, the Grand Floridian, we’ll build on the old Asian site on Seven Seas Lagoon. It will be a replica of the great Florida hotels of the early 1900’s. Our creative people came up with an absolutely beautiful design.

In addition, we have some dreams for the Walt Disney World Village. From the Empress Lilly, we’re going into a New Orleans street, and you’ll walk right into a beautiful New Orleans hotel.

Those are the kinds of things we can continue to do in the future here at Walt Disney World … I think the sky is the limit.

Let me finish by saying that the great strength of our company is our name. It’s internationally known, and the reason it has maintained a reputation is because of the job that all of you people do. The greatest asset Walt Disney World has is its people, and right now, I’d like to thank you. We’ve been going through some very difficult times, and thanks to all of your efforts, I think we’ve done an outstanding job.

Yes; the reason I have so much confidence in our company is because of all of you. We’re going to be doing a lot of things beyond Epcot Center … we’re going to create dreams that we might not have thought of yet. And the reason is because of you.

I want you to know that wherever you are, whatever you’re doing you are important and I appreciate what you’ve done in the past. I appreciate what you’re doing now, and I appreciate the job you are going to do in the future.

Being a history-oriented Disney obsessive means that occasionally, from time to time, you find yourself immersed in activities both arcane and inexplicable to the general population. Sometimes you have to invent names for these pastimes; for this post I’m voting for “berm analysis.”

When Walt Disney Productions announced in 1978 that it would proceed with the design and construction of EPCOT Center, one of the pavilions planned for the park’s 1982 debut was known as Life & Health. While this attraction would not appear until 1989 under the name Wonders of Life, a pavilion centered around the theme of human health was central to EPCOT Center’s design from its inception.

A model from the late 1970s of the Life & Health pavilion. Click to enlarge.

While a full retelling of this pavilion’s origins will have to wait for a future post, there is a historical oddity that I’d like to throw out to the open internet in the hope that someone out there might be able to shed a little light on this mystery.

I was recently discussing the Life & Health pavilion with Disney historian extraordinaire Martin Smith, when I mentioned that during EPCOT Center’s first year there had been a sign between The Land and the future site of The Living Seas trumpeting the soon-to-arrive Life & Health pavilion. Martin thought that I must be wrong, as the only pavilion ever planned for that plot that he was aware of was the second iteration of Journeys in Space. This opinion was echoed by Mike Lee, webmaster of the spectacular Widen Your World, who also remembered the Health pavilion as always being planned for the Wonders of Life spot. As I trust Mike and Martin’s research far more than I trust my childhood memories, I surveyed the members of my family who had been on those early trips to see if they recalled the sign. Strangely enough, the only person who clearly recalled seeing it also remembered without prompting that it had been between Land and Seas.

Further contributing to the confusion were a couple of pictures which were the only documentation I’ve been able to find over the years of the signs in situ:

Future site of The Living Seas. Click to enlarge.

Future site of Life & Health. Click to enlarge.

Wider angle of the Life & Health site. Click to enlarge.

As you see, the berm behind the two signs looks very similar. As Foxx from Passport to Dreams pointed out, the round planter on the edge of the picture resembles those in Future World West as opposed to the angular planters in Future World East (now that’s good fandom!). I also speculate that, if the Life & Health sign were in the position currently occupied by Wonders of Life, the construction of Horizons would be clearly visible in the background. Perhaps more definitive is this photo that Martin sent along, which comes from the book Walt Disney World: The First Decade:

EPCOT Center, circa 1982. Click to enlarge.

You can clearly make out the berm in front of the land intended for The Living Seas which matches the landscaping behind both signs. The walkway past the site is close enough to the berm that these pictures would be possible, and it might be my imagination but I think I can make out the circular planter seen in the picture. In Future World East, where Wonders of Life would eventually be located, the Horizons construction wall dominates the angular terrain and there’s no sign of a berm or significant landscaping.

So, mystery solved? Not really, but it does indicate that my youthful memory isn’t as bad as I suspected. What we need to know now is whether this sign was really in Future World West, and whether the Imagineers ever intended for the pavilion to actually be located on that site.

After that we’ll move on to the mystery of how I have a girlfriend, and people who talk to me in real life when they know I spend my free time doing berm analysis.

Yes, what about that, Mr. Eisner?

With all the fooferall surrounding recent rumors of a fifth gate (or 4th and a half gate) in Florida, I’ve been reminded of an odd period in Disney history when, from 2000 until 2002, Disney operated a website called thirdthemepark.com. Occasionally when I make joking reference to the site as a generic verbal stand-in for any gross instance of managerial hubris, I find that Disney fans don’t remember or were not aware that this page once existed.

Click to enlarge

Thirdthemepark.com is a fairly interesting piece of Disney theme park lore, especially for those interested in the NeverWorld of lost park concepts. While the site itself is long gone (its URL is currently owned by an individual in Colorado), one can still view elements of it courtesy of the Internet Archive. So lets travel back, forty thousand years (or, say, seventeen), and take a look at this mysterious website and the process leading up to its creation.

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The tiki gods have been debating lately whether to pass along the latest rumors from Jim Hill regarding the possibility that Imagineering was dusting off the long-dormant plans for EPCOT’s Russia pavilion. Initially, the royal we decided to let these rumors pass for now, until such time as other sources became available. Then yesterday, Screamscape posted a rebuttal of Hill’s piece containing a tidbit that grabbed my attention enough that I thought it worthy to comment.

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“Every day, a diverse and unlikely society, made up of every culture and race on earth, is working together to build a great nation. We have a single vision - a new order based on the promise of democracy.

Our resources for building this nation are a rich mixture of land, family and beliefs - which we apply with our own fiety brand of spirit, humor and innovation.

As the nation has grown and changed, we are constantly reminded of how impossibly far we’ve come - and how far we still have to go.

DISNEY’S AMERICA celebrates these qualities which have always been the source of our strength and the beacon of
hope to people everywhere.”

- Disney Promotional Material, 1994

As we in the States gather around the table today to gorge ourselves on unreasonable amounts of lethargy-inducing slather, I thought it would be good to take a moment and reflect on what we have to be thankful for. Then I ran out of those, and started thinking about things I’m not thankful for. Namely, the year 1994 and Michael Eisner’s complete creative and personal meltdown that began the disastrous eleven-year stretch that wrapped up his career at the Disney company. If not for the year 1994 and a number of factors both controllable and not, I would be able to spend my turkey day a few hours away in rural Virginia enjoying Disney’s tribute to American history, Disney’s America.

Just over fourteen years ago, on November 11th, 1993, Michael Eisner and other Disney officals gathered in Haymarket, Virginia to announce the Disney’s America project. The announcement was rushed, as Disney had been forced by press leaks to move the press conference up and thus try and get ahead of the story. Secrecy had allowed Disney to either purchase or option 3,000 acres of property in the area, but made them unable to quickly respond to area critics who were both well-connected and very well funded. Nearly a year later, in September of 1994, Disney would announce that they were no longer seeking to build the park in Prince William County. While the story of Eisner’s ‘year of hell’ and the political and business machinations that helped torpedo the park are significant, what’s really important here is the park we missed out on. So let’s take a look at the process that brought us the park, and specifically what we’re missing on this Turkey Day.

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