250px Mickey's magic wand beside Spaceship Earth. This photo, taken during the Christmas season, shows a Christmas tree located at the entrance to the World Showcase.Epcot is a theme park dedicated to international culture and technological innovation. Located at Walt Disney World in Florida, it opened on October 1, 1982.
1 History
1.1 The planned community
The name Epcot is derived from the acronym EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow), a utopian city of the future planned by Walt Disney. (He sometimes used the word 'City' instead of 'Community' when expanding the acronym.) In Walt Disney's words: "EPCOT ... will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise."
Walt Disney's original vision of EPCOT was for a model community, home to twenty thousand residents, which would be a testbed for city planning and organization. The community was to have been built in the shape of a circle, with businesses and commercial areas at its center, community buildings and schools and recreational complexes around it, and residential neighborhoods along the perimeter. Transportation would have been provided by monorails and People Movers (like the one in the Magic Kingdom's Tomorrowland). Automobile traffic would be kept underground, leaving pedestrians safe above-ground. A giant dome was to have covered the community, so as to regulate its climate (this idea was later seen in the 1998 movie The Truman Show). Walt Disney said, "It will be a planned, controlled community, a showcase for American industry and research, schools, cultural and educational opportunities. In EPCOT there will be no slum areas because we won't let them develop. There will be no landowners and therefore no voting control. People will rent houses instead of buying them, and at modest rentals. There will be no retirees; everyone must be employed."
This vision was not realized. Walt Disney wasn't able to obtain funding and permission to start work on his Florida property until he agreed to build the Magic Kingdom first, and he passed away before its opening day. The Walt Disney CompanyAlternate meanings: Disney (disambiguation The Walt Disney Company (also known as Disney Enterprises, Inc. or simply Disney was founded in 1923 by Walt Disney and is one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world. It is the number tw later decided that it didn't want to be in the business of running a town. (The model community of Celebration, FloridaCelebration, Florida is a census-designated place and an unincorporated master-planned community near Walt Disney World which was developed by The Walt Disney Company. Celebration is located in Osceola County, Florida. History Celebration was founded in 1 has been mentioned as a realization of Disney's original vision, but Celebration is based on concepts of new urbanism which is radically different from Disney's modernist and futurist visions.) However, the idea of EPCOT was instrumental in prompting the state of Florida to create the Reedy Creek Improvement DistrictCreation of the District On March 11 1966, several landowners, all fully-owned subsidiaries of the Walt Disney Company, petitioned the Circuit Court of the Ninth Judicial Circuit, which served Orange County, Florida, for the creation of the Reedy Creek Dr and the Cities of Lake Buena VistaLake Buena Vista is a city located in Orange County, Florida. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 16. History Chapter 67-1965 of the Laws of Florida, incorporating the City of Reedy Creek was signed into law by Governor Claude R. and Reedy Creek (soon renamed Lake Buena Vista), a legislative mechanism which allows the Walt Disney Company to exercise governmental powers over Walt Disney World. Control over the RCID is vested in the landowners of the district, and the promise of an actual city in the district would have meant that the powers of the RCID would have been distributed among the landowners in EPCOT. Because the idea of EPCOT was never implemented, the Disney Corporation remained almost the sole landowner in the district allowing it to maintain control of the RCID and the cities of Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista. That the RCID is now primarily intended as an instrument of the Disney Corporation was illustrated when the RCID redrew its boundaries to exclude Celebration, Florida which would have diluted Disney's control over the RCID.
