Happy Birthday, Epcot!
“Everyone in the world will come to these gates. Why? Because they want to look at the world of the future. They want to see how to make better human beings. That’s what the whole thing is about. The cynics are already here and they’re terrifying one another. What Disney is doing is showing the world that there are alternative ways to do things that can make us all happy. If we can borrow some of the concepts of Disneyland and Disney World and Epcot, then indeed the world can be a better place.”
—Author Ray Bradbury talking about Epcot Center in the September 1982 issue of OMNI magazine
This week we celebrate the 25th birthday of Epcot and while the final version wasn’t quite the dream that Walt had first imagined, it was still a unique and risky undertaking.
At a press conference at the Cherry Plaza Hotel (which no longer exists) in Orlando, Florida, on Nov. 15,1965, Walt revealed his initial plans for Epcot to the world. He was frustratingly vague about the specifics but his enthusiasm for the project was contagious. For a long while, the project had simply been known in the Disney Company to a selected few as “Project X.”
In fact, I’ve seen material the Disney Company sent to possible corporate sponsors where the project was just known as “COT,” the Community of Tomorrow. Always the savvy salesman, Walt evolved it into EPCOT, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.
It still makes me smile that when Epcot opened, the Imagineers made a cake that was a scale model of Epcot Center and dubbed it “EPCake: the Experimental Prototype Cake of Tomorrow.”
Walt’s original drawing for the Epcot property included an airport, a tourist trailer park, convention facilities, and a swamp ride. The Main Gate entrance (the only entrance) would be off of Highway 192 (Bronson Highway) and that is still where the Disney Company Main Gate offices are today even though they house Entertainment leadership and Merchandise leadership.
Walt’s plans quickly expanded from that first rough sketch. To convince the Florida legislature and prominent business leaders about the viability of his concept and why they should want to make it happen, Walt made a short film.
Walt made the famous 25 minute “Epcot film ” in late October 1966 in a studio designed to look like the Florida Conference room at WED Enterprises Glendale headquarters. The script was written by Imagineer Marty Sklar.
Today, it is disturbing to hear the outtakes with Walt coughing pretty violently and pleading to Marty in a hoarse voice, “Don’t you have enough that you can stitch something together?” Little did anyone realize how ill Walt was and that this would be his last filmed appearance. In less than two months, he would be dead.
Feb. 2, 1967 was when Walt’s “Epcot film” was first seen by anyone outside of Walt Disney Productions. It premiered at the Park East Theater in Winter Park, Fla., where a plaque is in place today to commemorate the historic event.
A massive model of Walt’s vision of EPCOT was built as a finale for Disneyland’s Carousel of Progress in 1967. It was 115-feet wide and 60-feet deep, with 2,500 moving vehicles, 20,000 trees, and 4,500 structures. Walt insisted the interior of the buildings be finished, furnished and lit. A small part of that model still exists today on the Walt Disney World’s Tomorrowland Transit Authority.
On May 15, 1974, Card Walker, then president and chief operating officer of the Disney Company, announced to a meeting of the American Marketing Association that Walt Disney Productions would be building Epcot and that the company was not seeking “the commitment of individuals and families to permanent residence” but rather “long-term commitments from industry and nations.”
The groundbreaking for Epcot took place Oct. 1, 1979. The Epcot Preview Center was in the post-show area of “The Walt Disney Story” on Main Street at the Magic Kingdom. It featured concept artwork, elaborate models and a short film. Guests could also take a ride on the monorail to view the construction in progress at a platform close to where Spaceship Earth was being built.
For me, when I think of Epcot, I immediately think of the 180-foot tall, 16-million pound Alucobond-covered globe known as Spaceship Earth.
In truth, it is actually two spheres with a one inch space between the Alucobond panels that allows them to expand and contract in the Florida heat and humidity and permits the rain to flow through into two gutter systems located at the geodesic sphere’s equator and near the bottom.
Both gutters were sloped to drain water through the support legs and into the canals surrounding Epcot. From there, the water flows through a retention pond where oils and pollutants are removed before sending the water to World Showcase Lagoon.
Pretty amazing? It is just one of many amazing facts about this huge structure based on the work and philosophy of Richard Buckminster Fuller. Yet the interior offered even more amazement.
A show based on thousands of years of communication-related events was to be the core for Spaceship Earth so the Imagineers consulted with author Ray Bradbury, who developed a preliminary storyline.
His concept was taken to Dr. Fred Williams, dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at USC, and, with his assistance, a timeline of significant events in the history of communications was developed.
Once finished, the timeline was studied for the changes in man’s lifestyles that paralleled communication’s progress, and from that, the Imagineering team developed the 17 scenes in Spaceship Earth.
Experts from many fields were consulted to make each scene as authentic as possible from reconstructing ancient languages to playing authentic reproductions of musical instruments. Historical specialists who were consulted included Carey Bliss, Howard M. Brown, Leonard DeGrassi, Genette Foster, John Hoffman, Robert Jansan, Charles Xrahmalkov, Mary Robertson, and Gilbert Wyland.
“Ray Bradbury did some very brilliant writing for a very broad concept which became the underpinning for everything we had done in Spaceship Earth,” Imagineer Marty Sklar said.
According to Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald, in a conversation with several of us a few years ago, Bradbury’s original script, narrated by actor Vic Perrin, was too “poetic.”
“People couldn’t process the poetic narration and still process the movement and what they were seeing,” Fitzgerald said. “I rewrote it for Walter Cronkite, who recorded the new narration in the Magic Kingdom with a cold, at a fifth grade level so that it was low enough that kids understood, but not offensive or boring for parents.”
Perrin’s narration was in the attraction from 1982-1986. Cronkite’s narration (that many people mistakenly believe was the original narration) was showcased from 1986-1994, after which Jeremy Irons took over as narrator.
Bradbury first defended Walt Disney in 1958 when Julian Halevy wrote an unflattering piece about Disneyland titled “Disneyland and Las Vegas” for The Nation magazine June 1958. Bradbury immediately sent in an outraged letter to the editor in which he defended Disneyland as “an experience of true delight and wonder.” Bradbury first met Walt in the early 1960s.
“I was walking down a street in Beverly Hills and a man passed by with so many gifts he couldn’t seem to hold them all. And then I saw it was Walt Disney!” Bradbury remembered.
Bradbury introduced himself and asked Walt if they might have lunch together sometime. Walt turned the offer into an invitation and set up a lunch for the following week.
“I got there at noon and Walt’s secretary warned me that I better be out by 1 p.m. because he had a lot of work to do. Walt gave me a tour of the lot and showed me some hippos they had been building as well as the work they were completing on the audio-animatronics figure of Abraham Lincoln. When we got back around 3 p.m. his secretary just glared at me, and I told her it was Walt’s fault,” Bradbury said with a laugh.
Bradbury described his relationship with Walt as a “quiet friendship” characterized by a mutual respect for each other’s work.
During the next few years, Bradbury consulted with Walt, sharing numerous ideas and suggestions. In appreciation, Walt asked him what he could do to repay for the author.
“Open up your vaults!” Bradbury replied and to his amazement, Walt did exactly that and let Ray select 20 items.
“I still cherish those items in my house and I remember that as a great day in my life,” said Bradbury in 1983.
Bradbury and Walt had informal talks about Disney’s involvement in the 1964 New York World’s Fair as well as plans for Epcot. When Bradbury was contacted to work on Spaceship Earth, he said, “I wanted to put in some of the ideas Walt and I talked about many years ago.”
Bradbury later defended Disneyland more poetically in an essay for Holiday magazine (October 1965) titled “The Machine-Tooled Happyland” indicating that by instilling human qualities in machines promised to enhance human life greatly in terms of education, service, and imaginative possibilities.
Speaking of instilling human qualities in machines, I had always heard that some of the audio-animatronics figures in Spaceship Earth were actually faces recycled from other attraction including the Magic Kingdom’s Hall of Presidents and Epcot’s American Adventure.
Just recently I found a listing of those audio-animatronics that did double duty and here it is:
The Shaman (Chief Joseph from AA), Egyptian Priest (President William Howard Taft), Phoenician Sea Captain (Store Owner from AA), Centurion (President Zachary Taylor), Roman Senator (President Teddy Roosevelt), Turk (front/right John Tyler), Sitting Scholar (President Franklin Pierce), Writing Monk (President John Adams), Printer Pulling Tray (President Andrew Jackson), Gutenberg (President James Buchanan), Printer Pressing (Andrew Carnegie), Mandolin Player (President Dwight D. Eisenhower), Steam Press Operator (Matthew Brady from AA), Reporter/Telegraph (Store Owner from AA) and Sound Engineer (Mathew Brady from AA).
Pat Scanlon, director of research when Epcot opened, said that Epcot was to depict the future as “achievable and do-able. People are scared enough of the future with everything that’s happening. We don’t want to put them into a future with people in aluminum jump suits. This is the near-term future, the day after tomorrow.”
Imagineer John Hench told reporters that people would come to Epcot because people are interested in survival and Epcot would give them clues about how mankind can survive.
For some, it is amazing that Epcot did survive. It was designed to be complimentary, not competitive with the Magic Kingdom. That is why until Michael Eisner came aboard there was an edict that no classic Disney characters would appear in the park, only characters created for Epcot. It was the first Disney theme park to sell alcohol openly to its guests. It was the first Disney theme park to have two full entrances at either end of the park. It was a theme park designed to be educational as well as entertaining and to appeal primarily to adults.
In the beginning, people (including some cast members) made fun of the name itself, but this month, the Spaceship Earth globe looks just like it did 25 years ago. The park has survived the future it predicted and it will be interesting to see how Disney re-invents Epcot in the next five years.
