Epcot celebrates 30 Years – Walt’s Words

Epcot opened 30 years ago as the second park at Walt Disney World. To celebrate this impressive anniversary we’ll take a tour of Future World and look at how the different Lands have changed over the last 30 years. If you want to learn more about this innovative park read The Imagineering Field Guide to Epcot (affiliate link). World Showcase is also part of Epcot. For a fun tour of that area check out my World Showcase Wonders series. Today we’ll look at Walt Disney’s own vision for Epcot.

Walt Disney was not alive to see the completion of Epcot, but it was his brainchild. In honor of Epcot’s 30th anniversary I would like to share Walt’s vision with you. When he was dreaming up Epcot he thought of it as a test city where people lived, worked, and visited, and new ideas could be tried out on this closed system. That idea never emerged, but the need to push the envelope is alive and well. Epcot has changed a lot in 30 years, but I like to think that the core ideas that Walt Disney desired have remained. Happiness squared.

Goofy Quote: I found this quote in the Quotable Walt Disney, a truly inspirational book.

“But the most exciting and by far the most important part of our Florida project…in fact, the heart of everything we’ll be doing in Disney World…will be our Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow! We call it EPCOT.

…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