Walt Disney's EPCOT - Past, Present, and Future

Update: 2020-09-24

Description

How is Disney World like in the reopening post-pandemic? Different but no less magical! How he managed to get into Epcot twice, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios.

Surviving without Meet-and-Greets! Stores & shops & restaurants still closed! Eaties Ice Cream Shop and Casey’s Corner both closed. Went through 100 Dasanis! Where to find the next Mickey bar?

10:00 - World Showcase: How are they dealing with the college program? Not fully staffed. Not a complete international experience. Pandemic and border closure influence felt.

12:50 - The Worldwide Wisdom of Walt! Updates on his next book. How he’s doing his research during the pandemic, with world travel on the backburner. Will it still happen?

Park-centric books. That’s what readers love about them. “I want to continue that tradition.” Yes, it’s about the ambience and the atmosphere. We all have our favorite ride. We all have our favorite attraction. I want to inspire people based on the story that come from those attractions.

17:00 - “If you show up, then the muse of inspiration will show up with you.” (“If you wait for inspiration or the muse to show up, then good luck, it will never happen.”)

The Book Blueprint: How did he develop the model for writing a book? Even when the material and the stories changed, he already had the blueprint.

21:00 - His interview strategy for unearthing information about the international parks. When most primary sources are in the native language. How he finds hidden gems, lesser-told stories.

23:00 - The marketplace doesn’t need another Disney business book. Or another Disney history book. I wanted to do something that was completely different. Get in touch with the way the park makes us feel when we step into it, when we experience it, when we engage with it, and most importantly, the way we feel when we leave it, and maybe the next day, that sense of, man, why can’t every day feel like a day at Disneyland.

30:40 - Not Walt's EPCOT: “I love EPCOT in its current state. It’s my second favorite Disney park outside of Disneyland. People may not even know that the entire purpose of Walt going to Florida was for EPCOT. The center of everything that we’re doing in Florida is about the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Magic Kingdom or Disneyland 2.0 was only there to appease the state legislature and generate the revenue necessary for building what was going to be the City of Tomorrow. Roy had been to Imagineering ONE time. That’s it. ONE time. And now he’s gotta run the entire company and he’s gotta get Walt Disney World built. It’s a yeoman’s project. “

35:00 - Sam Gennawey: Urban Planner and Disney Historian: If Walt had lived, he absolutely would have pulled it off. Could we do it today? I don’t know. It would take someone like an Elon Musk to do it. Walt wasn’t around to pull it off. What would it look like in the 21st century? I don’t know.

37:00 - Because if you think about Walt’s career. He starts off as an ambulance driver. Then he becomes an animator and does cartoons, but he gets bored with that, and gets into full-length feature films. Then he becomes a theme park operator. And now he wants to become an urban planner. But he wasn’t an urban planner long enough to really set the example of exactly how to do it. And so the folks who were left behind, they knew how to operate a theme park, and they knew how to keep that going, but Walt hadn’t really set an example on how to build, let alone run a city, because it hadn’t been done yet.They knew how to do the cartoons, and they knew how to make the movies, and they knew how to build another theme park, because Walt had done that. But he hadn’t done the city yet.

38:30 - The real issue where they really got stuck, was the question of governance. "You’re gonna have people live here, and Walt’s got this vision that it’s going be this way and it’s gonna be that way. What about the people living here? What kind of say do they get? Walt hadn’t really worked out those details. In our system of government, the people have a voice. The landowners have a stake. And Walt didn’t hang around long enough to get his hands dirty enough to iron out those details."

40:00 - What will it take? "He would have been the networker who would have inspired and motivated corporate America to come together and work together to be partners in seeing it to fruition. Because he sort of envisioned this being a giant corporate laboratory. Walt could have gotten General Motors to work side by side with, say Ford and Chrysler, to come and be apart of this domed city and figure out what the future was in say automobile production."

40:30 - Walt’s Gift: "Walt was very unique in his ability to reach into people’s hearts and get them to do whatever it was that Walt wanted them to do. There really wasn’t anyone else in the company — really, in the world — who had that gift and that ability."

44:00 - Walt wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable. On more than one occasion, he would look at folks and with a tear in his eye say, “I’ve wanted this my entire life, and it’s not going to happen if you don’t help me. Will you please help me.” That’s how he got the first drawing of Disneyland that Herb Ryman drew, that Walt used to go to New York to pitch it to the networks to get the television program from ABC. That’s what he used to get the Disneyland Hotel built when he was getting 800 calls a day asking about overnight accommodations. You think about successful people as being powerful people, and being folks who are alpha dogs and at the top? But at the same time, Walt had that childlike quality and he wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable and say to folks, I need your help. And this is my dream. I’ve wanted this my entire life.