If you go to tomorrow land at Disney World, and ride the Jetson-like People Mover near the Carousel Of Progress, and you turn backwards in your car as it passes through a dark tunnel, you might get a fleeting glimpse of Walt Disney’s cherished secret plan for EPCOT Center, something he worked on for years with a corps of trusted and hidden The Imagineers, but was abruptly scrapped after his death from lung cancer.
No one was present at Disney’s funeral, and rumor had it within the company that he threatened to freeze his body and return to wreak vengeance on his greedy corporate successors if his dream for Epcot was abandoned. It was, and quickly, this motel in the tunnel is all that remains of it. The recorded voice says it was Disney’s model for Epcot Center, but that it not quite the truth. The name EPCOT came from Disney’s name – Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow.
Disney’s plan – told to me by some Imagineeers after his death when I was researching a story about him – was for EPCOT to be the utopian, socialist really, home for Disney World’s workers. There, as the model suggests, EPCOT would be a showcase for the community of the future. Disney workers would have free health care, education, and a choice of different kinds of residences – high-rise apartments, single family homes, small developments and pods.
EPCOT would have the world’ most up to date technology, it would be the first wired community in the world (this when the Internet was still very primitive and marginal), have the most efficient transit and waste disposal systems, some of which are incorporated in Disney World today (garbage tunnels and waste systems, recycled water and irrigation canals, the monorail).
Disney and his Imagineeers worked on EPCOT for years, but his smoking habit got the better of him and he died of lung cancer before EPCOT could be built. His successors turned it into a corporate theme park and celebration of world unity, a dream that seems naive today.
When I was in Orlando some years ago, I met with some of the original Imagineers. We arranged to meet at EPCOT, they were waiting for me on some concrete benches. They talked about EPCOT and Disney’s graet passion for the project. It was to be his crowning legacy.
They told me about the truth behind the model and I rode the train a dozen times to try and get a digital photo of the model – the cameras were very primitive in low light then. I was finally tossed off the train for hanging out of the car too far and kicked out of the park. Today, with my Canon, I could take this shot sitting still in the car. It is, for me, sacred ground, and I am sure it will be gone one of these days as soon as a Disney executive remembers what it really is.
I always think of this model when I go to EPCOT and feel some sadness that Disney never got to build it, even though it probably would not have lasted long. Even Disney could not have imagined the cost of health care. When I walk around the big lagoon with it’s food and merchandise shops, I half expect to see Disney – thawed out – to rise up out of the lagoon and wreak havoc on the people who betrayed his vision.
If you want to get a sense of the power of it, got on the People Mover and be alert when you get into the tunnel.