Walt Disney's Orignal Plan for Epcot

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At the old Disney Hyperion Studio, the screening room where animators would show animated scenes to Walt for his approval was small, with no ventilation or AC. Not only was it hot, but the animators were nervously awaiting Walt's reaction to their work. Thus, the room became known as the Sweatbox. Even after the Studio moved to Burbank and elegant screening rooms were offered to the staff, the moniker remained.

Now SGT has a sweatbox of our own. This is the place to find and post all entertaining topics such as video links, jokes, games, and the like. A general rule of thumb is that if the thread is meant to be informative (interesting news stories for example), or a topic for discussion (like setting up a park meet) then it should go in the Break Room, but if the intent is to entertain the masses then it's home is The Sweatbox. I'm sure there will be grey areas at times, so if you have doubt as to where a new thread should go, just use your best judgement and the SGT Staff will be glad to move it later if you guessed wrong.
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DonutGoddess
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Walt Disney's Orignal Plan for Epcot

Post by DonutGoddess » Sun Oct 14, 2012 10:32 am



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Goofyernmost
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Re: Walt Disney's Orignal Plan for Epcot

Post by Goofyernmost » Sun Oct 14, 2012 2:15 pm

Sure was a big plan wasn't it? How many of you think it would have worked if Walt had lived to make it happen? Do you see many flaws in the plan?


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Re: Walt Disney's Orignal Plan for Epcot

Post by SG I Yam » Sun Oct 14, 2012 7:18 pm

Goofyernmost wrote:Sure was a big plan wasn't it? How many of you think it would have worked if Walt had lived to make it happen? Do you see many flaws in the plan?
Yeah, there was a few flaws.

One, I think was the cost of the city. It would have been much more than sponsors would have been willing to contribute. It's one thing to contribute to a pavilion. It's another to commit to a city.

Transportation options of people movers and monorails looked great, but a general labor problem would have crippled the city without a secondary transportation system.

We have an underbelly to the city of Chicago on the near north, which may have been the impetus to Walt's plan of having all the automotive/truck transportation under the city. (Lower Wacker is part of this, made famous in movies such as the Blues Brothers...) But in reality, it got filthy from the exhaust fumes and became a place of crime and homelessness and garbage and rats. It took the city years to clean it up. Exhaust in the 60's was pretty bad. A huge ventilation system would have had to have been used to exhaust the fumes. We won't mention the potential problems of fires or other hazmat spills.

Epcot (the theme park) is right where the city was supposed to be. It turns out the land there sucks. That big place between future world and world showcase? It's empty there because beneath it is a huge sinkhole. They sunk two 120 foot pilings there for the monorail supports, and they both disappeared in the muck.

I have no doubt that Walt would have built it anyway, had he lived. He probably would have made it work on some level as well. But corporations and individuals like to be different, and I'm not sure they would have like the uniformness of what is ultimately a planned community.

Disney World would have looked a lot different that it does today, though.



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Re: Walt Disney's Orignal Plan for Epcot

Post by BRWombat » Mon Oct 15, 2012 3:29 pm

It would have been an interesting experiment. I think the biggest issue would be that there ultimately could not be the complete top-down control Disney would need to manage every aspect of life there. This being America, residents would have a say in the governing of the community, and they could ultimately choose to go in a different direction than Disney would like. Still, if anyone might have made it work, it would've been Walt.


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