Main Street Balloons (Explored!) on Flickr.

hey, this is my picture! From a long time ago though..

thedisneyparks:

Pictured above is the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or as it’s more commonly known: EPCOT. This architectural model of Walt Disney’s original concept of EPCOT can only be viewed in the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover in the Magic Kingdom.

Walt Disney’s original plan for the huge expanse of Florida property that he purchased was to make EPCOT city the focal point of the area. The Magic Kingdom was not planned to be constructed until the Board of Directors pressured Walt to create a Disneyland-style park after he had proposed EPCOT city. Therefore, Walt had the Magic Kingdom built at the northernmost area of the property so people would have to travel through EPCOT city (what he considered the real attraction) before they got to the theme park. Everyone who lived in the city would work at Disney World, either in EPCOT city, or the Magic Kingdom. No one would own their own land, and all the property would be overseen by Walt himself. This allowed him to constantly update the technology in the properties to make sure everyone was advancing together, however, this took away any municipal voting rights from the citizens of the city. Furthermore, there would be no retirees, as everyone would be required to have a job in order to uphold “the living blueprint of the future” that was EPCOT city. 

EPCOT also did have a park attached to its idea from conception. However, instead of being a “theme” park, it was to be an “industrial” park, with many American corporations joining together to inspire each other to create new technology that advanced the American lifestyle. Walt’s goal was to have many people from all around the world fly into the EPCOT Industrial Park and see all the technology that Americans were creating and go home to their native country inspired and ready to advance their own communities.

Walt died in 1966, two years after EPCOT’s inception. His brother, Roy Disney, stepped out of retirement to take charge of EPCOT’s future, however, the Board of Directors simply felt that building the city when its biggest advocate had passed would be too difficult. In 1971, the Magic Kingdom opened its gates for the first time and it seemed that EPCOT had been put on the back burner. In the late 1970’s the idea was revisited, but the Board still thought the idea was too shaky as they felt no one would opt to live under a constant microscope. As a compromise, EPCOT Center, the theme park we know today, opened in 1982.

In 1996, EPCOT Center became known simply as Epcot, a theme park devoted to the nations of the world and the technology of tomorrow. But who knows? Perhaps one day Walt Disney’s dream of the Community of Tomorrow will come true.

epicmouse:

The Themed Entertainment Association(TEA) has released the park attendance numbers for 2010. Disney still leads in millions of visitors, however the only Disney parks that had an increase in attendance year over year was Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Disneyland and the Tokyo Disneyland parks. The…