The Walt Disney World Plans You’ve Never Heard

By now, the lore of EPCOT has become an essential part of Disney history.

Walt Disney planned a new East Coast city, and he wanted to redefine the future of communities.

So, he created the blueprints for the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or EPCOT for short.

Only a smart part of that project was intended to be a theme park, but after Walt Disney died, Imagineers had to reboot.

Disney’s team reinvented the idea on the fly, admirably turning it into Walt Disney World, the most popular paid tourist destination in the world.

However, the theme park you know doesn’t include many of the features Walt Disney had envisioned.

Here are the Walt Disney World plans you’ve never heard about.

The Disney Trailer Park and Theme Resorts

The fascinating part of the EPCOT blueprints is how forward-thinking they are.

In 1955, the Disneyland Hotel opened near Disneyland Park.

Walt Disney couldn’t afford to build that hotel, but he sold someone else on the premise.

Walt believed that he could vertically integrate the family vacation.

If the Disney campus offered its own hotel and restaurants alongside the theme park, tourists would empty their entire wallets there.

That was a profound idea at the time and one Uncle Walt struggled to convince potential investors was possible.

Once the Disneyland Hotel booked regularly at high rack rates, its success emboldened Disney.

In planning Progress City, Uncle Walt added several spots for Disney hotels.

Only one of them exists today, although others were listed on the blueprints (but unnamed).

Some argue that at least one of them came together as planned. I’m a bit more skeptical on that point, but it doesn’t matter.

What’s important is that in 1966, Walt Disney showed the world a map for what he called the “South Seas Theme Resort.”

That’s right, my friends. Walt Disney called his shot on Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort five years before it opened!

The Cosmopolitan Hotel

The plans all called for “3 Theme Resorts” on the west side of the Disney campus as well.

Given their locations on the map, we cannot describe these as either of the other two current monorail resorts.

Could one of them be Shades of Green aka the former Disney’s Golf Resort?

The connection is that these resorts reside near the “3 Par Golf” on the map, but the location doesn’t match the description.

Still, you can see that after a decade of Disneyland Hotel, Uncle Walt was all-in on the idea of theme hotels.

EPCOT also would have featured a magnificent property called the Cosmopolitan Hotel, a high-rise building and one of the city’s centerpieces.

Oddly, the illustrations also show two different places where guests could have stayed on their own.

One was a “campers area,” while the other was a “trailer park.”

In fact, the WEDWay PeopleMover route would have connected to the trailer park and campers area.

The PeopleMover also would have transported guests to and from high-density and low-density housing.

So, Walt Disney covered all the bases. He added places for tourists who didn’t want to pay for a hotel and for all kinds of city residents.

Meanwhile, the richest tourists would live the high life at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, whose pinnacle design mirrors the Burj Khalifa.

That building didn’t open until 2009, more than 30 years after Disney Imagineers envisioned something similar.

That’s how far ahead of the curve Disney was with his urban planning!

Roller Skating and Ice Skating

Walt Disney planned his Progress City to include a slice of Americana.

After all, the EPCOT he envisioned would be a capitalist utopia wherein families worked for Disney.

During their downtime, they’d need hobbies and activities, preferably wholesome family ones.

So, the earliest drawings of EPCOT show specific areas where Uncle Walt planned to build roller-skating and ice-skating rinks.

On the original Progress City drawings, you can see these two outlets south of the area called “Theme Park” on the map.

WED Way, a proposed street, would have run past these symmetrical rinks.

Also, the monorail would have dropped guests right at the front door for both. It was part of the logistics plan Disney designed.

The monorail would have carried guests across longer distances.

Then, they would have ridden the WEDWay PeopleMover for shorter travel.

Disney wanted the residents of the city to have easy travel methods for these family activities.

In fact, the EPCOT plans called for plenty of family entertainment.

The drawings show multiple golf courses, including a Par 3.

There are also plans for tennis courts, outdoor bowling, and even a drawing of what sure looks like a football stadium.

Even in a capitalist utopia, Uncle Walt recognized that people would need hobbies and activities. 

A “Swamp Ride”

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the original EPCOT plans is how honest the naming conventions were.

Nowadays, if you show some unpleasant conditions on a map, you either ignore it or describe it in the most flattering terms possible.

In 1966, Walt Disney wasn’t messing around. He bought swampland, and he called it swampland.

On Google’s historical EPCOT site, you can study plans for an Industrial Park, an Entrance Complex, a Regional Airport, and…lots of swamps.

When you look at all these early drawings, you cannot help but realize just how much of Walt Disney World resides in former swamps.

Rather than run away from this fact, Uncle Walt planned to lean into it. Disney plotted a “swamp ride.”

About the Swamp Ride

The entrepreneur intended to monetize what should have been a business negative.

Disney would offer airboat rides within the Walt Disney World campus but outside the parks.

During these “swamp ride” adventures, guests could have studied Florida’s wildlife and natural beauty from safely inside a boat.

For a fee of $4 per guest, Disney would have allowed tourists to ride for an hour. That’s nearly $40 in 2024 dollars.

Would guests have paid that for such a short experience?

We will never know because nobody in Imagineering wanted to fool with the idea.

Imagineers delayed the swamp ride in favor of completing Magic Kingdom.

Then, they worked on expansion attractions like Space Mountain and Pirates of the Caribbean.

After that, Disney’s staff moved directly to the creation of the EPCOT theme park, which had its own rides.

Building another one outside the park would have proven counterproductive.

So, Disney kicked the can down the road again. Once EPCOT was finally completed, the swamp ride idea was nearly 20 years old.

By then, park planners had waited too long for an idea of questionable quality in the first place.

Under the Dome        

There’s a satirical Disney site that is often the bane of my existence because people don’t realize the stories are fake.

So, word spreads on social media of absolutely ludicrous Disney rumors. Then, I have to fact-check them and explain why they’re wrong.

A recent example is this utterly fake “report” that Disney World will add an “anti-rain dome.”

What the people who wrote this couldn’t have known is that this fake story was almost real.

If you watch the original EPCOT announcement video, you’ll notice images of a 50-acre domed area.

According to the narration, “This entire 50 acres will be completely enclosed, protected day and night from rain, heat and cold, and humidity.”

Yes, that Steven King story, Under the Dome has a basis in Disney lore, as does The Simpsons Movie.

Remember that time that Homer Simpson accidentally trapped the entirety of Springfield in a dome?

That was legitimately Walt Disney’s initial plan for EPCOT!

The explanation for why is obvious. Disney knew that the frequent rain, humid climate, and swamp land weren’t conducive to industry.

A dome would have kept Progress City cool in a climate-controlled environment safe from rain.

Also, Disney could have used technology to keep out the swampy smell you still occasionally notice at EPCOT today.

Once Walt Disney died, the many, many, MANY environmental concerns and questions about dome living ended those plans.

Everyone other than Walt Disney understood that a domed city wasn’t a good idea. They just couldn’t tell him while he was alive.

Thanks for visiting MickeyBlog.com! Want to go to Disney? For a FREE quote on your next Disney vacation, please fill out the form below, and one of the agents from MickeyTravels, a Diamond Level Authorized Disney Vacation Planner, will be in touch soon!

Feature Photo: DIsney