October 1st marks the 30th birthday of one of Disney's most beautiful creations, Epcot Center. In 2011 the Orlando based park was the third most attended theme park in North America and the sixth most popular globally. Walt originally envisaged the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (Epcot) as being a real, working, Utopian city of the future. That grand plan was never realised, but what we did get was a truly original theme park. Following on from the Magic Kingdom, this was perhaps the last of Disney's Florida parks to be built on a no expense spared basis.
As you can see from the 1982 map, the park was split into two areas - Future World and World Showcase, the park attempted to focus on science with world cultures. I first visited the park in 1990 and the Future World area was already looking dated. Over the years Disney have refreshed various parts of the park sometimes succesfully; Nemo & friends, sometimes less so - the millenium wand (below).
Visiting the park last year, I was struck by just how beautiful it is. The World Showcase in particular seems to have matured beautifully over the past three decades. It also seems to be better maintained than the other Walt Disney World parks. Its not perfect though. It would be nice if they created a more welcoming entrance plaza like the one at Tokyo DisneySea, and the World Showcase needs some new countries (Brazil, Australia, etc). Adding the Ratatouille ride that is currently being built in Disney's Paris resort, to the French area could work. I'd love to see Journey to the Center of the Earth imported from Tokyo, probably the best ride that Disney have ever created and could be a Harry Potter style game changer for the park.
All that being said said, it remains a great place to visit, eat, relax and learn. So Happy Birthday Epcot!
Here follows some photos from my visit in 2011, some construction photos and some original concept art.
posters and concept art
construction photos
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