Behind the Attraction Recap: EPCOT

Do you know what the Wednesday Morning Club is?

If you love EPCOT, you have this group to thank for the entire park.

Let’s go Behind the Attraction once again to explore EPCOT’s origins and how loyal Imagineers maintained Walt Disney’s vision.

A Dying Man’s Wish

Walt Disney died on December 15^th, 1966.

The visionary entrepreneur had announced his jaw-dropping project only a few weeks prior on October 27^th, 1966.

Not many people within The Walt Disney Company’s office knew how serious Uncle Walt’s cancer diagnosis was.

In less than two months, Walt Disney announced the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow but then passed away.

During the time when the businessperson was purchasing the land for the Florida Project, his associates watched with confusion.

Even the most loyal Imagineers weren’t completely certain what the entertainer intended for this land.

They’d asked him to pin down his ideas by creating blueprints for the Walt Disney World campus, including the place we call Progress City.

That’s the EPCOT Disney envisioned but didn’t live long enough to bring into reality.

In his honor, the most trusted people at Disney worked together to create the EPCOT we know and love.

This episode tells the story of the so-called Wednesday Morning Club, a group that included Disney luminaries like Marc Davis, Roger Broggie, Marty Sklar, and Bob Gurr.

Their sole purpose required them to build EPCOT in a way that would have satisfied their leader, Walt Disney.

According to one of the historians shown in the episode, Disney worked on EPCOT right up until the day he died.

So, you can imagine how important this project was to his dear friends. And it’s their passion that saved the day.

As a reminder, Disney announced EPCOT in October 1966. The park wouldn’t open until October 1982.

That 16-year gap underscores the challenges Imagineers faced in honoring Walt Disney’s final request.

The Community Part Collapses

Disney’s Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club quickly deduced that the EPCOT letters weren’t possible.

Specifically, the C part, community, wasn’t feasible. Gurr notes that residents at Progress City would have faced odd challenges.

The club members didn’t want to build schools for the children of the residents or decide how to register them to vote.

These municipal issues would have proven all-encompassing, forcing Imagineers to work too much on the non-fun stuff.

In Gurr’s words, the EPCOT that Disney envisioned “would not work for 10,000 reasons.”

While Imagineers are the world’s best problem-solvers, fixing 10,000 of them is a big task.

I’m not saying they couldn’t have done it if they’d had unlimited time and resources, but they didn’t.

Magic Kingdom opened in 1971 and expanded quickly. Plus, Disney still made movies and operated Disneyland.

The best Imagineers needed to commit their time and resources to viable projects, not Uncle Walt’s blue-sky ideas.

At some point, these individuals needed to follow their boss’ old advice to “stop talking and start doing.”

On October 1^st, 1979, Card Walker hosted the groundbreaking for EPCOT Center, the theme park we now call EPCOT.

During this media event, Walker stated that EPCOT would open three years later on October 1^st, 1982, “at 9:02 a.m.”

On the Clock

Disney’s construction teams had exactly three years (and two minutes) to turn swamp land into something worthwhile.

Meanwhile, the Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club drilled down on Uncle Walt’s ideas.

Disney’s new leadership determined that EPCOT Center – which I will simply call EPCOT from now on – should include two key pieces.

At the front of the park, Future World would include six pavilions. They were:

• CommuniCore
• Journey into Imagination with Figment
• The Land
• Spaceship Earth
• Universe of Energy
• World of Motion

Three of those pavilions remain operational to this day, while two others remain in spirit.

We lost the Universe of Energy so that the Wonders of Xandar pavilion could exist.

Then, the episode details the back of the park, the part Walt Disney would have loved.

The World Showcase reflects his dream for having an international gathering spot akin to a permanent World’s Fair.

Of course, the other thing that would have put a smile on Walt Disney’s face was the sphere shown in many of his drawings.

Yes, Walt Disney invented Spaceship Earth 16 years before EPCOT opened!

Building that structure and everything else listed here required an all-hands-on-deck approach for Disney.

The episode chronicles the many challenges of construction while noting that the Wednesday Morning Breakfast Club had the company’s full support.

Disney even brought in Buckminster Fuller to advise on the project, and that matters greatly here.

Buckminster Fuller’s master philosophical work is a book entitled…Spaceship Earth.

With his help, Disney created a concept Fuller had invented, the world’s largest geodesic sphere, the proverbial Spaceship Earth.

Solving 10,000 Problems

Even without the Community part of EPCOT, building the theme park still required solutions to thousands of problems.

One of the first ones was what to do inside Spaceship Earth.

Disney chose to “tell the whole story of man and communication.”

To make everything more realistic, park officials decided that smell was a necessity.

So, for one of the first times in Disney theme park history, an attraction added Smellitzer effects.

Remarkably, the Smellitzer in use today at EPCOT is the same one Imagineers installed in 1982!

At the World Showcase, Disney was particularly proud of its staffing practices.

Those early pavilions started the phenomenon we know today wherein residents of the countries work in the applicable pavilions.

You’ll find French people at the France pavilion, Japanese people at the Japanese pavilion, and so forth.

In that way, Disney has created an authentic representation of a global society congregating in a single location.

The Imagineers also chime in on whether Uncle Walt would have liked this place.

The narration (defensively) points out that in the announcement video, Disney stated, “Everything in this room may change time and time again.”

Of course, Imagineers rarely have time to stop and smell the roses. They must think about what’s next.

In this case, the “problem” became keeping EPCOT modern and fresh, a vital step for a place called Future World in particular.

Behind the Attraction discusses later additions like the Norway pavilion and Maelstrom and the changes to Ellen’s Energy Adventure, Innoventions, and Test Track.

EPCOT Evolves

Maelstrom oddly opened some doors as it was the first “thrill ride” at EPCOT. Yes, we’re being lenient with the term here.

Still, the arrival of Maelstrom paved the way for Test Track and then later additions like Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind.

That’s how the episode pivots and closes. It shows the addition of the attractions we know and love at EPCOT.

The transformation of Maelstrom into Frozen Ever After was remarkable in that Disney plotted the change BEFORE Frozen’s debut.

If the movie had bombed, which does happen, EPCOT would have ended Maelstrom for a re-theme to an unpopular film.

Of course, we know that’s the opposite of what happened. In fact, the movie succeeded so much that the pressure changed.

Imagineers went from worrying about whether the film would succeed to recognizing its success dramatically raised expectations.

Thankfully, the attraction is a masterpiece, as is the one they discuss next, Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure.

One of the Imagineers describes it as “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride for the 21^st century.”

Hmm, I just realized why I love Ratatouille so much.

Finally, the episode closes with a discussion of the development of Cosmic Rewind.

I consider that a story for another day, as modern EPCOT isn’t and shouldn’t be the focus here.

Instead, what matters is that even though Walt Disney died, loyal Imagineers ensured that his idea for a better tomorrow lived.

Walt Disney sadly wasn’t immortal, but EPCOT is eternal.

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Feature Photo: Disney