Did You Know? EPCOT

The Florida Project: An Orange Grove in Anaheim

Disney World’s roots can be traced back to before DISNEYLAND even opened back in 1955. When Walt Disney first began planning out DISNEYLAND, he found few people who believed in the project. Even his brother Roy doubted its feasibility and only signed onto the project to gain the trademark rights to the Walt Disney name. This meant that Walt couldn’t buy as much land as he wanted. When DISNEYLAND was under construction, Walt would often take his wealthy Hollywood friends out to the site to see what he was building and to try to convince them to buy up the surrounding land. He found no takers, even after he promised that once DISNEYLAND became profitable, he’d buy the land off of them. As DISNEYLAND’s opening day grew near, it was obvious that the surrounding area would not be controlled by Walt Disney Productions.

In a last ditch effort to create an attractive tourism area around the park, Walt Disney appealed to the city of Anaheim to create a special zone around the park which would control the look and feel of what he thought was sure to be a bustling tourist district. The city, however, seemed  to approve any structure that didn’t immediately collapse, much to the chagrin of Walt Disney. This situation was made worse by the fact that most of the earliest business owners who decided to take the risk and open up near DISNEYLAND were smaller operators who couldn’t afford large parcels of land. Anaheim was willing to divide up parcels in any required size, which made for a mishmash of oddly sized properties that would prove to be difficult to sell or buy in the distant future.

By the time that DISNEYLAND was a huge success, the area around it was a tacky mess, and Walt Disney was powerless to clean it up or improve it. While the city of Anaheim has sometimes blamed the problems in its resort area on DISNEYLAND’s explosive success having caught it off guard and unprepared, it actually had every opportunity to prevent them from occurring had it listened to Mr. Disney to begin with. 

While Walt Disney received huge pressure to expand his theme park empire to other cities, he completely resisted it- at first. One look at the real world just outside the gates of his Magic Kingdom made him consider the possibilities of a second attraction- though he was not interested in just building a theme park or a vacation resort. He wanted to build an actual city of his own.

The Florida Project: Before the Beginning

When Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom park opened on October 1, 1971, it was billed as Walt Disney’s final dream come true; a dream that became reality due to the determination of a devoted brother who believed in his brother’s dreams and always helped bring them to life. It was an inspiring story, trumpeted by Disney public relations around the world, repeated as fact over fifty years and accepted as the truth by the millions of guests who pour into the company’s massive vacation complex each year. The truth, however, is a bit more complex.

Walt Disney World, as we know it, reflects very little of Walt Disney’s actual plans for the 14,000 acres of Florida swampland that he purchased in the mid 1960’s. While Walt Disney did have plans for a place called EPCOT, it wasn’t a theme park and the “Magic Kingdom” was originally supposed to be an exact clone of DISNEYLAND, but with “more water”. 

In fact, a more accurate name for the Orlando complex might have been “Roy Disney World”. To mark the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World, we’ll tell the story behind the “Vacation Kingdom”- how it came to be, what it would have looked like if Walt Disney hadn’t passed away and how it morphed into what it is today. Join us every Friday as we tell the story of the “Florida Project”.

Walt Disney World Origins: PART SIX

In the latter part of 1966, Walt Disney seemed to be in a rush to those who knew him; almost as though he thought he was running out of time. Walt seemed to lose his temper whenever anyone asked him about working on “Disneyland East”, insisting that they concentrate on EPCOT. Walt must have realized that if EPCOT didn’t have its groundbreaking before “Disneyland East”, Roy Disney most likely would have cut back funding for EPCOT. Unfortunately, the world would lose Walt Disney (and EPCOT) on December 15, 1966.

While the company mourned the loss of its creative leader, Roy Disney immediately canceled all plans for EPCOT and re-directed the Florida team to work on the theme park for what he was now ironically calling Walt Disney World. Why was the name ironic? Because the project more closely resembled the vision Roy Disney had for the property- a revenue generating theme park surrounded by hotels- a vacation kingdom rather than a utopian city that happened to have a theme park near it. EPCOT as Walt had imagined it would never get built.

For decades, the model of what Walt Disney originally wanted EPCOT to look like was prominently displayed along the Peoplemover track in the Florida Magic Kingdom Park. Most of the time the ride narration referred to it as “Progress City” or “Walt Disney’s City of the Future.” Walt Disney’s company didn’t want its guests to realize that the EPCOT theme park down the road was originally supposed to be much different. The ride narration was eventually changed to acknowledge that the model is actually the EPCOT of Walt’s dreams.

In the end, Walt Disney World ended up becoming Roy Disney World. Roy conservatively built less than half of the originally planned hotels, which ended up making Orlando “Anaheim, Part Two”. The same sort of eyesore leeches that Walt Disney wanted to avoid ended up getting built, though they were across town instead of across the street. The resort would eventually begin a huge hotel building project, adding thousands of rooms, but by then the cheesy properties had already taken hold. While it would be hard to guess what Walt might have thought about the vacation kingdom that bears his name (he was always changing his mind and might have eventually decided to drop EPCOT himself) we can definitely say that it doesn’t resemble his original vision and ended up just pushing the blight he hated in Anaheim further away.

Walt Disney World Origins: PART FIVE

Despite his brother’s disapproval, Walt Disney pushed forward with his plans for EPCOT. The state of Florida eagerly approved the establishment of a privately owned municipality that would own and operate EPCOT, Disneyland East and the Disney owned hotels. Despite not fully understanding what Walt Disney was planning to build, the state of Florida, the city of Orlando and the world looked forward to whatever would get built in the swamplands outside of Orlando.

Roy Disney loved the idea of Disneyland East because he finally saw how profitable a theme park could be. While Walt Disney wasn’t completely motivated by profits, it always irked him that the majority of the revenue generated by DISNEYLAND went to outside entities. Whenever he wanted to fund expansion projects at his Magic Kingdom he’d often run into cash flow problems. While he was concentrating his resources and time on EPCOT, he had plans for multiple hotels and motels that would be Disney-owned. Walt Disney hoped that by building more lodging than needed, tawdry motels wouldn’t spring up in Orlando.

Walt Disney went on television to layout his plans for a real city- EPCOT. He put his team to work only on EPCOT; whenever anyone wanted to work on the theme park, he’d steer them back to his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. “We’ve already designed the perfect place,” he’d say, “We’ll just build that again and have more water.” Unfortunately for Walt- but fortunately for his brother- nobody outside of Walt Disney and his imagineers fully understood what EPCOT really was.

Walt Disney World Origins: PART THREE

Millions of people from around the world flocked to see the amazing, magical kingdom built by Walt Disney in Anaheim, making it an instant success. These same people clamored for their own magic kingdom. Walt Disney received daily offers from cities around the world begging him to build another DISNEYLAND in their hometowns. Walt turned these offers down; after all, he hated repeating himself. He had built the most amazing entertainment complex in the world; why would he want to waste his time building a copy of the Happiest Place on earth? 

But as perfect as DISNEYLAND was inside its gates, outside, the City of Anaheim was anything but. The city hadn’t followed Mr. Disney’s advice and basically approved any construction project that was structurally sound with no regard for whether it was compatible with a vacation resort area or visually attractive.

Houses were built mere yards from the Magic Kingdom, bringing complaining residents who were shocked that traffic and noise would emanate from a theme park that had already been there when they moved in. In just ten years, Anaheim had mismanaged its planning process and turned the area around DISNEYLAND into what Walt Disney called a ‘third rate Las Vegas’. Anaheim’s planning debacle coupled with urban decay in cities around the world led Mr. Disney to begin thinking about the future of cities and how they could be designed to be resistant to blight, self sufficient and more ecologically friendly. He soon set his sights on building a new project- the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow- EPCOT.

Walt Disney World Origins: PART TWO

Walt Disney eventually accepted the fact that none of his Hollywood friends really believed in his project. Bob Hope would famously joke about how he missed out by not investing in the area around DISNEYLAND. While it is easy to judge his famous friends, it isn’t hard to see why they- and the Major Hotel chains- weren’t willing to invest in Anaheim. At the time, Anaheim was just a sleepy farm town that people passed through to get to other, more interesting places. Most tourists visiting Southern California stayed in hotels clustered around downtown, Hollywood or the beaches. Sure, DISNEYLAND would eventually change this, but hardly anyone outside of Mr. Disney was certain of the park’s success. If DISNEYLAND shut down, it would also take down any hotels that sprang up around it.

Walt Disney and Anaheim’s last hope for an orderly world outside of the Magic Kingdom laid in the hands of Anaheim’s city government. They would be responsible for ensuring that real world Anaheim was as beautiful and high quality as the world inside DISNEYLAND. Sadly, they would fail miserably. Incompatible housing was zoned mere blocks away from DISNEYLAND. It seemed like as long as the proposed structure didn’t fall down, it was approved. Plus, since most of the entrepreneurs who swooped in to build around the park were relatively cash poor, they often carved out oddly shaped parcels of land that were only suitable to host whatever was being built on them and not much else. Anaheim had majorly dropped the ball and it was this “third rate Las Vegas” environment that encouraged Mr. Disney to look east- to EPCOT.

Disney Deep Dive: Walt Disney World, Part 5

Sadly, Walt Disney would only visit Walt Disney World’s actual site once before passing away in 1966. His original plans for EPCOT would be scrapped, never to see the light of day. In actuality, the only part of the project that was kept was the location of the Magic Kingdom theme park- at the back of the project site.

Scrapping Walt Disney’s original plans changed the project from a utopia into a “Vacation Kingdom” which didn’t solve any of the problems that Walt Disney saw in Anaheim; it just pushed them further away. Orlando proved to be no better than Anaheim at zoning and in many respects was much worse. Roy Disney’s conservative approach in building hotels opened the door for the leeches to spring up around Walt Disney World just like they had at DISNEYLAND. 

The only thing that Roy Disney chose to “supersize” was the Magic Kingdom’s castle. Walt Disney favored a smaller castle because he felt that only tyrants built large castles to intimidate their subjects. Roy wanted to show the world that his company had grown exponentially since 1955 and could afford to build a larger castle. 

In 1971, the Magic Kingdom park opened to less than expected crowds. Walt Disney’s imagineers, who had hated Roy Disney’s changes, believed the Resort was cursed by Walt Disney. The site as built would have been unrecognizable to Walt. Several months went by with few paying customers actually showing up. For a time, Roy Disney thought he had sunk the company. Lucky for him the crowds did show up- eventually.

Disney Deep Dive: Walt Disney World, Part 4

As Walt Disney began the planning process for what had started to be referred to as “Disney World”, he and Roy were heading for another huge conflict. While Roy wanted to concentrate on the planning and construction of “Disneyland East”, Walt Disney was concentrating on EPCOT. Roy still hoped to convince his brother that EPCOT would bankrupt the company and should be scaled back if not completely canceled. Walt, on the other hand, ordered his Imagineers to work on EPCOT and saw the theme park as something that could come later. He had instructed his staff to just copy DISNEYLAND but include “more water.”

When Mr. Disney announced his new project on television, his audience was confused. What was this EPCOT? Was it another theme park like DISNEYLAND? This confusion would work to the company’s advantage nearly twenty years later. But in 1965 it was just confusing. Walt Disney figured he would have plenty of time to explain it all in the years leading up to EPCOT’s eventual unveiling. His guests would see that EPCOT was no theme park; it was going to be a prototype city whose concepts could be taken home and used to enhance cities around the world.

Before that could happen, however, the unthinkable happened. Walt Disney would pass away on December 15, 1966. His brother would “honor” his memory by throwing out all of his plans for EPCOT and building a “Vacation Kingdom” in Florida. Roy claimed that the resort would be called “Walt Disney World” to forever honor the man who made it all possible. If the company had wanted to be more honest about whose vision was reflected in the sprawling resort the place should have been called “Roy Disney World”.

Disney Deep Dive: Walt Disney World Origins Part 3

When Walt Disney first approached his brother about building another DISNEYLAND, Roy Disney was instantly receptive. He had previously fought against the original DISNEYLAND and was the first person to admit he had been wrong about the project’s profitability. DISNEYLAND had been an excellent investment and had given the company a stable source of income that it had never been able to achieve by just producing motion pictures.

Roy’s approval was short lived when Walt told him that what they were calling “Disneyland East” was just a way to get visitors down to Florida. The biggest project (and thus the biggest expense) would be EPCOT, a real city where real people would live. Roy hated the idea and began trying to talk his brother out of it. The company still owned about fifty acres north of the DISNEYLAND Hotel; couldn’t Walt and his imagineers come up with something to build there? Roy even arranged for Walt to meet with MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman, who warned Walt Disney about the problems he was dealing with as a result of Universal City being its own governmental entity. Roy even began buying up surrounding property in Anaheim to see if that might encourage his brother to shelve his plans for EPCOT. 

Roy eventually relented and plans for “Disneyland East”, complete with the real city of EPCOT were announced to the world. Roy encouraged the imagineers to focus on “Disneyland East” first, though his brother was uninterested in the park. He already had a perfect design in Anaheim; Walt was concentrating his efforts on EPCOT. Roy hoped to change his brother’s mind about EPCOT’s feasibility eventually, but for now it was full speed ahead.

Disney Deep Dive: Walt Disney World

After DISNEYLAND became a phenomenon, the world came to Anaheim to see Walt Disney’s amazing Magic Kingdom. From the looks of the surrounding area, they might have thought they’d made a wrong turn. Despite Walt Disney’s requests, the City Of Anaheim didn’t seem to care about how the area around DISNEYLAND looked like. Tawdry motels and tourist trap businesses sprung up across the street from the The Magic Kingdom. Incompatible housing was built behind the DISNEYLAND Hotel. Despite all of this, the park’s visitors clamored for their own DISNEYLAND back home. Initially, Walt Disney declined to build another DISNEYLAND-Style theme park. As the years went on he began to change his mind due to his dissatisfaction with the City of Anaheim’s loose zoning laws.

It wasn’t Walt Disney’s desire to build a bigger theme park or resort that made him change his mind about building another DISNEYLAND; he wanted to build a model city that could inspire city planners to do a better job of zoning and building out their cities. It wasn’t just Anaheim that had dropped the ball with zoning; the problems that Walt Disney saw just outside the Magic Kingdom’s gates were seemingly endemic around the world. His Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow (EPCOT) would be a real city where real people lived, NOT a theme park. Mr. Disney realized that it would be a tough sell to attract guests to see a real city, so he had to include something that they would want to see- another DISNEYLAND.

So Walt began looking for a location that was far enough from DISNEYLAND that it wouldn’t leech off business from the original park and would allow for year round operations. He settled on the state of Florida.

Disney Deep Dive: Walt Disney World

While Walt Disney World in Florida often gets much of the attention these days when The Walt Disney Company talks about its theme parks and resorts, when it comes to books and documentaries most of the attention is focused on DISNEYLAND. While DISNEYLAND’s milestone anniversaries are always marked with a flood of new books, collectibles and deluxe box sets, Walt Disney World’s milestones are often overlooked. Even this site has been guilty of focusing on Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Anaheim to the exclusion of Disney World in Florida.

So what would explain this disconnect? It is undoubtedly due to the fact that DISNEYLAND Park was Walt’s pride and joy, the only park that he completely designed from start to finish. Its rich history and development make it a fascinating subject to study. It only exists because of the will of Walt Disney. Walt Disney World, on the other hand, was more of an afterthought in the mind of Walt Disney. It is a theme park whose only reason for existence is that Walt Disney needed something to attract people to visit his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, a project that was never actually built as designed by its founder.

While DISNEYLAND can trace its history back to Walt Disney’s own childhood, Walt Disney World’s history can be traced back to the development of DISNEYLAND. Walt Disney raised every last penny he could and planned to spend it all on his Magic Kingdom. After determining the ideal location, Walt Disney bought up as much land as he could- about 260 acres in Anaheim, California. When he realized that he didn’t have enough money to build the DISNEYLAND Hotel, he began lobbying his wealthy Hollywood friends. Even if they wouldn’t invest in his park, he suggested that they purchase some of the adjoining land, which they could sell back to him in the future at a tidy profit once DISNEYLAND took off. None of them took him up on the offer.

When Walt Disney realized that he wasn’t going to have much, if any, control over the area surrounding DISNEYLAND, he implored the city of Anaheim to enact stricter building codes and zoning around the park so that desirable, compatible development would spring up around the park. Anaheim would sadly take none of his recommendations; in fact, it appeared that they would approve practically any building as long as it didn’t fall down. While DISNEYLAND was perfectly planned and designed to be a reassuring oasis from the real world, the area around the park became a tacky mess filled with incompatible zoning, gaudy neon signs and ugly utility poles. Mr. Disney looked on helplessly as his guests had to pass a tacky mess to get to his park.

It was this mess, along with the civil unrest of the 1960’s, that made Walt Disney think about how these problems could be solved. He had long resisted the endless appeals to build another DISNEYLAND, but as he thought about how to solve the environmental and civic challenges faced by cities at the time, he hit upon an idea that he thought could serve as a model to the world on how to create better cities. He just needed something that could attract people to see his ideas- possibly another DISNEYLAND.

Disney Deep Dive: The Florida Studio Park, Part 5

Disney-MGM Studios opened up on May 1, 1989. The half day park would achieve what no American Disney park since DISNEYLAND had done; it was a rip, roaring success from day one. Guests flooded the park on opening day, forcing it to close its gates. Disney was forced to rush expansion of the park to give guests more things to do. Star Tours, which had already opened in DISNEYLAND and was slated to open in Florida’s Magic Kingdom amusement park, was hurriedly moved to Disney-MGM Studios instead.

The park began to run into growing pains caused by the rush to get it open. It quickly became a hodgepodge of random streets and attractions that were poorly laid out because of the lack of planning. Another issue, however, would resolve that problem. Filming in Orlando was unappealing for talent and other than Disney Channel shows like The New Mickey Mouse Club, the company couldn’t get many productions to move to the humid Florida swamp. This freed up the soundstages for conversion to attraction buildings.

The runaway success of the park led the company to build other “half-day” parks that proved to be less successful. Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Walt Disney Studios Paris and Disney California Adventure were built as “half-day” parks and all originally had problems attracting guests. 

Disney-MGM Studios would eventually be renamed Disney’s Hollywood Studios and begin re-inventing itself to fix some of its problems. The park will become the east coast home of Star Wars Land later this year, its thirtieth anniversary.

Disney Deep Dive: The Florida Studio Park, Part 4

When Universal Pictures announced that it would build a new theme park in Orlando, it finally became clear to The Walt Disney Company that it hadn’t really “fixed” the problems it had in Anaheim; it just pushed them further away. And, more importantly, Universal was planning to leech off Disney World the way it had leeched off DISNEYLAND since the 1960’s. The company decided it would have to do something quickly. Thus it would build a studio park of its own and try to open it before Universal Studios Orlando.

There were two issues that the company faced that could delay the opening of this new theme park. The first issue was more of an opinion that the company’s leadership held; that it did not have enough of a live action film catalog to draw from for a theme park. This issue was solved by licensing MGM’s name and film catalog to beef up the possible franchises it could draw from. At no time did MGM actually hold any ownership stake in the park; in fact, Disney’s deal with MGM was heavily weighted in favor of Disney, something that angered MGM owner Kirk Kirkorian. Seeing as how Mr. Kirkorian sold anything not nailed down once he took control of MGM, he shouldn’t have been surprised when his staff did the same.

The other issue that the company had was finding a location to build on. While the company owns thousands of acres in Orlando, much of it stands on unstable swamp land. It can take months of surveying and testing to find stable land suitable for construction. Since the company wanted to get this project built quickly, they didn’t want to wait for the land surveying process to identify a new parcel of land. An oddly shaped piece of land located behind EPCOT Center was chosen, as it had already been cleared for construction, though it was originally intended to host new hotels, not a theme park. Surrounded by major roads, this would limit the size of the actual theme park in ways that would become apparent later.

Disney would announce the construction of this theme park that would also be a working studio, set to be completed in 1989. Universal was incensed. Disney’s Special private government plus its decision to locate on pre-surveyed land meant that it would open its park most likely months before Universal Studios Orlando would open, even though Universal had been much further along in its building process. Disney’s half day, half hearted effort would open a full year before Universal Studios Orlando, but would it be successful?

Disney Deep Dive: The Florida Studio Park, Part 3

After EPCOT Center opened in 1982, Walt Disney Productions went into a tailspin. After Disney CEO Card Walker opened the park, he passed the keys to the kingdom (and all of its problems) to Ron Miller, who was Walt Disney’s son-in-Law. Ron began trying to re-invent the company and get it out of the hole that EPCOT Center had dug for it. He wouldn’t get the chance; he was replaced in 1984.

The company’s new leadership originally wanted to sell off the theme parks and license the characters and trademarks to the new owners. Elder executives convinced them that other than the EPCOT Center debacle, the theme parks were what kept the company afloat inbetween film releases. More money would be needed to fix the EPCOT Center debacle, but for the most part the theme parks were keeping the company solvent. New Disney CEO Michael Eisner quickly saw a new issue in Orlando; the company had singlehandedly built the tourism industry in Central Florida yet it had the same issues there as in Anaheim. Most of the dollars it brought to the swamplands of Florida were going into other people’s pockets. Eisner sought to expand the company’s holdings to increase the resort’s profitability.

Universal Studios Hollywood predated DISNEYLAND by decades. The studio offered tourists access to the grounds in the 1920’s, though the dawn of the sound era required soundproof stages and relative quiet on the set. When DISNEYLAND opened in 1955, however, Universal saw an opportunity to get in on the action and take advantage of the tourism brought in by DISNEYLAND. Thus the studio became another leech attached to the tourism industry that had been invigorated by DISNEYLAND. In the mid-1980’s, Universal decided to do it all again- in Orlando. This time, Disney would seek to use its larger resources to blunt the attack from Universal by announcing its very own studio theme park.

Disney Deep Dive: The Florida Studio Park

Before Walt Disney opened DISNEYLAND in 1955, few tourists ever ventured to Anaheim, California. Southern California as a whole, however, was already a major tourist destination. In the beginning, this was undoubtedly a blessing, since Mr. Disney wasn’t necessarily asking his guests to visit an area that they would have never visited on their own. Tourists had already flocked to Southern California’s beaches and Hollywood studios for decades. DISNEYLAND was just another stop. 

DISNEYLAND would soon supplant all other tourist sites in Southern California, becoming the first stop for most visitors. Others took notice and a new tourism ecosystem sprang up to entice DISNEYLAND guests to spend their time and money elsewhere after they had experienced the Magic Kingdom. This began to grate on Mr. Disney. What if he had more control over the surrounding area? What if more of the tourism revenue he was generating stayed at DISNEYLAND? He was uninterested in making money for money’s sake; he wanted to make more money so that he could build ever bigger attractions. These outside enterprises were siphoning funds away that could have been used to expand DISNEYLAND.

So while Mr. Disney’s decision to build what he was calling “Disneyland East” in Florida was mainly made so that he could build his futuristic city, he also wanted to establish more Disney owned businesses that could generate more profits he could use for expansion. After he passed away, his brother Roy canceled plans for the futuristic city of EPCOT and scaled back plans for multiple hotels and amusement enterprises.

Roy Disney based his decision to scale back on hotels and attractions on the fact that Orlando Florida was not a tourism hotspot prior to Disney World. It was where people stopped to fill up on the way to other more interesting places. Unlike Anaheim, which was already surrounded by attractions and beaches, Disney would be asking its east coast guests to trust that it would show them a good time because there was little else around to entertain them. After a lackluster start, Florida’s Magic Kingdom found its footing, but Roy’s conservative, cut down master plan still resulted in the sort of leech development that happened in Anaheim, except the vast acreage owned by Disney in Florida pushed it further away.

It would take over ten years for the resort to build another theme park. The massive project would forever shape the future of Disney in Florida as well as the theme park that would come after it.