EPCOT - Part II

00:00This is World's Greatest Con. I'm Brian Brushwood.

00:05If you want to see the face of a man who knows he's won, look no further than Walt Disney's face in the 1966 Epcot pitch film.

00:16We know what our goals are, we know what we hope to accomplish, and believe me, it's the most exciting and challenging assignment we've ever tackled at Walt Disney Productions.

00:29Today I want to share with you some of my ideas...

00:33He's surrounded by maps and graphs twice as tall as him.

00:37Walt is introducing his plans to the public for the very first time, and he is confident that once the public sees what he has planned for them, they will fall in love with the dream of Disney.

00:50And when I watch this presentation, all I can see is a deep dive into exactly what Walt's brain is thinking of on October 27th, 1966.

01:04This pitch is a masterful piece of filmmaking.

01:07When Walt begins to explain what Disney World will look like from an aerial view, the camera is locked off on not one, not two, but five different parks.

01:19This is already way bigger than Disneyland.

01:22But as Walt begins to speak, the camera pulls back to reveal.

01:30But as you can see on this master plan, the theme park and all the other tourist facilities fill just one small area of our enormous Florida project.

01:39And the camera just keeps zooming out and zooming out and zooming out until finally you see Walt all the way down at the bottom, looking like one of his own seven dwarves compared to the scale of what he purchased in Florida.

01:54According to this scale, I am six miles tall.

01:58Now, that's 12 miles from here up to here.

02:03And the whole area encompasses twenty seven thousand four hundred acres.

02:09That is 43 square miles, twice the size of the island of Manhattan.

02:15Those five theme parks, the map of Disney World is the size of Walt's head alone.

02:22The rest of the map is more than twice as tall as he is.

02:27He needs a dang fishing pole just to be able to point all the way up to the top.

02:32According to Walt's map, everything that we know of as Disney World is tucked into the smallest corner at the very tip top.

02:40Walt knows everybody wants another theme park.

02:43Everybody is going to go for Disney World, but he knows he needs to sell everyone else, the public, government officials, even his own employees on his vision of Epcot, the heart of everything he wants to do.

02:57And this film is how he's going to pitch it.

03:02Unfortunately, Walt's wrong about one thing.

03:07Epcot isn't the heart of Disney World. He is.

03:13Walt Disney is the living, beating heart of this organization.

03:19And so what happens when the heart is gone?

03:23In this film, you do see the face of a man who knows he's just one, but you also see the face of a man who doesn't know that one week after filming, this will be diagnosed with lung cancer.

03:39Watch this Epcot film because Walt is a month and a half away from his 65th birthday as he stands on his Florida project set.

03:48And while he doesn't know it, he's also a month and a half away from dying.

03:55Walt, the heart of the company, is about to exit the picture.

04:01His brother, Roy, we've always referred to as the money guy, but for this story, let's call him the hands.

04:09At this point, Roy is ready to retire.

04:13He's 73, for crying out loud.

04:15And when Walt dies, the heart of the company is gone, leaving only the hands.

04:20And he knows there's a billion questions of direction that he wishes Walt could give him.

04:27But he also knows he's the hands and he's got plenty of work that needs to get done.

04:34What happens when the heart's ripped out?

04:37The hands do what hands do.

04:40Roy pushes back his retirement and gets to work.

04:44They have to win the hearts and minds of everyone.

04:48Roy is about to pull off one of the most brazen plays for power from a private company ever to take place.

04:56The Disney Corporation is going to seduce the public with Walt's dream.

05:01They're going to seize government, municipal health services, even energy policy to create the city of tomorrow only to deliver the theme park of today.

05:16And creating an independent government within the United States without one shot fired, that just might be.

05:31The world's greatest con.

07:01Think about the cultural impact of losing Walt.

07:07Three years ago, he discovered the land to build his dream on and the very same day JFK died.

07:15Three years later, when good old Uncle Walt dies.

07:19The impact is almost as strong.

07:22Two days after Walt dies, Roy and the rest of the Disney family have his body cremated.

07:29The holidays would buy them some buffer time, but the rest of the team needs to figure out something out fast.

07:36Yes, Disney World was going to happen, but for the success Walt wanted, Epcot needed to happen, and that's a lot less certain.

07:46Lucky for them, they were starting out on the right foot. Let's back up.

07:54It's late 1965 and Walt, after being outed by the press, confirms the existence of his Disney World plans.

08:03He lets the governor of Florida announce it at a press conference in October just before Walt joins him the next month on stage to shake the man's hand.

08:14One year later, in 1966, Walt's dead, but not before shooting this vital Epcot film.

08:23So what did the Disney company do for those 12 months in between?

08:30The short answer, they moved and fast, they worked and did lots of it.

08:36It wasn't enough to have the land locked down.

08:40Walt's vision required total legal control of the property, both so the parks could function at the scale he's looking for and to make it so that nobody could tell him what to do.

08:50Meanwhile, Walt's Project Winter team have a huge list of issues with the lot, starting with the state of the land itself.

08:58Yeah, it's 26,000 acres, but it's Florida swampland.

09:01In the summer, 75 percent of it is underwater, but they have good news.

09:09Florida Statute Chapter 298 allows them to form a drainage district for their land.

09:16No need to change a law.

09:17No convincing voters or lobbying representatives.

09:19All they need is some paperwork and they can move that water however they want. Bridges, you bet.

09:24Canals, why not need a dam to stop that water from flowing? Go ahead.

09:29And to Disney's relief, the process is as easy as it sounds on paper.

09:34In May of 66, the Reedy Creek Drainage District is approved by a local court.

09:39The team gets to handle the draining without any kind of reporting to any government.

09:44You have to imagine Walt is loving this total power over the land he bought, no ifs, ands or buts.

09:51He gets to pick what happens.

09:53Want an island here? Go for it.

09:55No government body can breathe down his neck. One problem down. What's next?

10:00Now it's getting tricky.

10:02Walt's team informs him that they need to persuade the state of Florida to pass a new law protecting the company's intellectual property.

10:11All those knockoff parks surrounding Disneyland, those couldn't happen again.

10:14And the current laws on the books were just too weak. Great, simple requests.

10:20Ring, ring, government, please let us protect our IP.

10:23Walt wants to take it a step further.

10:27His head is still in the clouds of Epcot.

10:30And so he just jots down, oh, 20 more things he would like.

10:34Little things like total control over water, sewer, public utility, roads and bridges that come off of public roads onto his property, pest control, firefighters, his own waste collection facility, an airport alongside the ability to build whatever transportation and parking facilities he deems fit, the right for eminent domain, which Walt says is already kind of gifted to him through his drainage district.

10:57Oh, and while we're at it, maybe an exemption of state statutes, county ordinances, any other regulation when it comes to building on this land.

11:05Let's say he could just build whatever he wants as long as it's on his property.

11:08Oh, and how about the ability to levy taxes on people and to impose liens on unpaid taxes?

11:14You got to pay for things somehow, right?

11:17Oh, and nobody gets to vote because that would make things too confusing and slow things down.

11:22And finally, if this is going to be the city of the future, why not just write in there that he can work with any energy method both existing and to be invented in the future in perpetuity? Yeah, who knows?

11:34We may want to build a nuclear reactor at some point.

11:38All of that was way more than what Walt, the heart of the operation, had asked from California.

11:45Roy, the hands of the operation, he's concerned.

11:48Florida was friendly to businesses, but this was a whole new level.

11:52So Roy, the former CIA agent Hallowell and the general counsel Foster need to convince Walt that they have the right tactics to pull this off. Hallowell begins.

12:04First off, he points out that the county doesn't even have building ordinances asking for an exemption for something that doesn't exist. Piece of cake.

12:13Second of all, Disney World is going to need a ton of new materials that most other factories don't need.

12:20General Electric is going to what?

12:21You need bricks to build buildings?

12:24Disney World and Epcot are going to require unique plastics to build an incredible amusement park, a city of the future.

12:32Tell the Florida government that this stuff is way over their heads and watch them sign away any rights to oversight.

12:38While we're at it, why stop there?

12:40I mean, Disney has the drainage district now, right?

12:44And what exactly is drainage?

12:46You could argue water supplies or drainage.

12:49Sewage, that's definitely drainage.

12:51I mean, technically, even roads are a type of drainage.

12:56Florida has done this kind of thing in the past, giving extra powers to pre-existing districts.

13:00Why wouldn't they grant the same thing to Disney?

13:04Hallowell finishes with the most important proposal.

13:06Get Florida to do the legal mumbo jumbo it takes to incorporate the drainage district, handing all the power over to Disney in the process.

13:17Now, to convince Walt that this is the solution, Foster steps in and he pulls a deliberately obtuse, boring, bullet point, index card based presentation that crawls by.

13:30Index card by index card, the man explains to Walt what the drainage system will or won't accomplish.

13:39And when Walt has clearly had enough of this slow presentation, Foster gives him a shortcut.

13:45Municipalities, all you got to do is get the state of Florida to hand over as much power as possible and they can create a super district that can control the future of Disney World.

13:57And most importantly, your precious little lap guard.

13:59And with your cooperation, I'm sure this experimental prototype community of tomorrow can influence the future of city living for generations to come.

14:17It's an exciting challenge.

14:19Speaking for myself and the entire Disney organization, we're ready to go right now.

14:27Shortly after that meeting where they decided the tactics they would use to gather as much power as they could, Walt shot that Epcot film designed to convince government employees and the general public of his wild, crazy dream.

14:42A week later, he was in the hospital.

14:45Weeks after that, he had a lung removed and a few more weeks he was dead.

14:52But that film, that plan, that.

14:55vision that was entrusted to Roy.

14:58That and the last few handful of notes on the project.

15:04But truly, Walt was gone now.

15:061966, those 12 months had been crucial for the planning of Disney World.

15:14But from now on, their leader wouldn't be around to see it through.

15:18They only had Walt's ghost to guide them.

15:22Whether Walt was alive or dead, Roy's problems were still the same.

15:29As 1967 kicks off, Hallowell confirms with Orange County that, yes, Disney would still seek chapters for two municipalities in the area.

15:39With Roy leading the charge, his first decision was an easy one, a way to honor his dead brother the only way he knew how, by renaming the park before a single brick was laid.

15:50Disney World was dead.

15:51Long live Walt Disney World.

15:53Roy's second order of business?

15:56Tackling this whole Epcot problem.

16:05Everyone knew that Epcot was a Walt thing.

16:09Walt was fine with the parks, but his passion was his experimental prototype community of tomorrow.

16:16Roy's passion was pulling off whatever crazy idea Walt was onto this time.

16:23So Roy gathers Project Winter and tells them what they're all waiting to hear.

16:28The battle is far from over.

16:30We're going to finish this project, and we're going to do it just the way Walt wanted it.

16:35Don't you ever forget it.

16:36I want every one of you to do exactly what you were going to do when Walt was alive.

16:41But watching that tape, Roy still felt concerned about pulling off that kind of vision.

16:47He'd watched Walt spend his last days on Earth obsessing over Epcot, not saying goodbye to his family, not asking about production on the new movie.

16:57For Walt, there was nothing but Epcot.

17:00The day before he died, he stared at the ceiling, counting out the tiles by square miles of his park, pointing at the highway, the monorail, every little detail.

17:13Roy could feel that passion driving him.

17:16Who was he to say no to his brother's dreams?

17:21The money man taking creative control?

17:24The best way to honor Walt's legacy would be to carry out the plans as best he could.

17:31So it's time to get to work.

17:34He just has to go to Governor Burns and ask for...

17:38Wait, wait, where is Governor Burns?

17:40Wait, who the hell is this guy?

17:42I pledge you progress without new taxes.

17:45I am unalterably opposed to the ultraliberals who promise you higher and higher and higher taxes.

17:52But I need your help.

17:54Your vote to bring sound administration to Florida's $2 billion a year business.

17:59Vote for the man with a plan. Vote Kirk, Governor.

18:03Turns out, as much as Hayden Burns tried to present himself as the ticket to Florida's economic future by hitching his wagon to the Disney company, that wasn't enough to stop his own party from primarying him over his segregationist views.

18:16So when Burns loses his own primary, he refused to throw his support behind the more liberal candidate, which resulted in an easy victory for a tough-on-crime Republican named Claude Kirk Jr.

18:28That was bad news for Roy and the team, because Burns had been more willing than any other politician to bend over backwards to impress Florida voters.

18:37Kirk, however, already has a narrative in mind.

18:40In fact, he flies all the way out to Anaheim, California, just to check out Disneyland, looking for crime.

18:47Crimes that he can blame the Disney corporation for bringing in.

18:52We're trading a friendly politician who's eager to make people forget about his views on race for a politician who greeted death row inmates on the campaign trail by telling him he would be the one signing their death records if he was elected.

19:07Things are not going great for Roy.

19:10No matter what, they're going to have the drainage district from before Walt's death.

19:18Who knows how much power they're going to have to cede to this new guy.

19:23What they needed was a silver bullet.

19:25Somebody who knew both sides of the business.

19:28I mean, if only there was some actor turned politician that they could get on super short notice.

19:33Thank you and good evening.

19:35I have spent most of my life as a Democrat.

19:39I recently have seen fit to follow another course.

19:42I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines.

19:45And as it happened, while Governor Kirk was on his fact-finding mission on the hunt for Disneyland-related crimes in Anaheim, he got an invite to meet a fellow governor, California Governor Ronald Reagan.

19:57And to nobody's surprise, Reagan was about as pro-Disney as they came.

20:04And in classic Reagan fashion, he makes his pitch to Kirk on all the positives of Disneyland, how it helped California's economy, how it bolstered tourism, and how things were about to be very different for the state of Florida.

20:19Disney wasn't the enemy.

20:21He could boost the entire economy, winning him re-election just like that.

20:25Maybe that meeting was all it took to sway Kirk.

20:29But even that wouldn't be enough.

20:32Because Roy knew that to win over the rest of the House and the Senate, he's going to have to think the way Walt did.

20:41He's going to have to go to the and prove to them that they couldn't live without that Walt Disney World.

20:46And that Walt Disney World couldn't live without the freedom to do whatever it needed without any government intervention. One problem. Roy wasn't Walt.

20:55Roy wasn't charismatic like Walt or charming like Walt or TV ready like Walt.

21:09How would he be able to sell thousands of strangers on the promise of Walt Disney World, let alone the insane ideas behind Epcot?

21:19Luckily, this problem had a very simple solution.

21:21Roy wouldn't need to sell anyone on these streams.

21:25Walt could, even from the grave.

21:28We're back to that magic, bizarre film.

21:33On February 2nd, 1967, the Walt Disney Company held a major movie premiere in Winter Park, Florida, at the glorious Park West Theater.

21:46All the stars came out.

21:49Roy Disney, Florida, Governor Kirk, and every single Disney executive involved in Project Winter.

21:55Notably missing from the crowd was the film's cast.

22:00But it didn't matter.

22:02The audience was still pumped to be there.

22:05They were about to see the final performance of one Walt Disney World.

22:09Welcome to Disneyland, USA.

22:17This was all a Disney dream a dozen years ago, a far out project that was totally unproved.

22:43Today, 60 million people have come here from every state in America and from almost every nation around the world.

22:53In town square on Main Street.

22:55This thing is a masterpiece.

22:57It starts out slow, as an unseen narrator welcomes the audience to Disneyland.

23:04It's brilliant, because if you're going to sell an audience on the impossible, make them realize that the impossible has already happened.

23:12Disneyland grew out of Walt Disney's own feeling that an amusement park should offer more to the entire family.

23:20Here was no mere amusement park.

23:21Here was a whole new concept in entertainment, where parents and children could have fun together.

23:28Again, Disney's selling the simple idea of Walt as a visionary.

23:33And if his vision of Disneyland was such a success, what does he have in store next?

23:42Before long, we're introduced to Walt himself one last time.

23:47And now, here is Walt Disney.

23:49Welcome to a little bit of Florida here in California.

23:56This is where the early planning is taking place for our so-called Disney World Project.

24:01As you can see on this map, we have a perfect location in Florida, almost in the very center of the state.

24:09In fact, we selected this site because it's so easy for tourists and Florida residents to get here by automobile.

24:16Now, in larger scale, there's no reason to hold back secrets anymore.

24:19Walt is proud of why he chose Florida for his site, and he wants Florida to be proud too.

24:26He starts bragging about the size and scope, the space of Disney World, the things that are going to make it better than its predecessor by a million times over.

24:35Today, I want to share with you some of our ideas for Disney World.

24:39Of course, there will be another amusement theme park in Florida, similar to the one in California.

24:44In fact, just this little area alone is five times the size of Disneyland in California.

24:50More importantly, he starts talking about the future plans for utilizing the space, including adding airports, entrance complexes, a transit system that ties the whole thing together.

25:01And then he just can't hold back anymore.

25:05The most exciting, the far, the most important part of our Florida project.

25:09In fact, the heart of everything we'll be doing in Disney World will be our experimental prototype city of tomorrow.

25:17We call it Epcot.

25:19There's that word again, heart, the heart of Disney World.

25:24Epcot isn't to be some silly side project.

25:30It's the only thing that matters.

25:33Just like how Walt, when he was alive, was the only thing that mattered to Disney.

25:40Epcot will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry.

25:48It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and new systems.

25:58I don't believe there's a challenge anywhere in the world that's more important to people everywhere than finding solutions to the problems of our city.

26:09Walt has him eating out of the palm of his hand now.

26:13The audience is on the edge of their seats.

26:15Walt Disney himself is going to solve every problem society has faced over the last 50 years, and he's going to do it from beyond the grave.

26:22But where do we begin?

26:24How do we start answering this great challenge?

26:27Well, we're convinced we must start with the public need, and the need is not just procuring the old hills of old cities.

26:38We think the need is for starting from scratch on virgin land and building a special kind of new community.

26:45So that's what Epcot is, an experimental prototype community that will always be in a state of becoming.

26:52It will never cease to be a living blueprint of the future, where people actually live a life they can't find anywhere else in the world.

27:03And there it is, the only thing Walt will ever need to say about Epcot to sell people on his dream.

27:10It's a place where people can live if they can't find anything else.

27:14It's the American Dream 2. 0.

27:16Imagine Roy watching this from backstage, his palms sweaty and his racing knowing that he's about to follow Walt Disney.

27:26He's going to have to walk out on that stage and give his sales pitch for some kind of Disney-fied utopia.

27:34He's going to have to face making Walt's dream a reality just after Walt sold it better than he ever could.

27:41And you have to do it while facing government regulators.

27:46We don't presume to know all the answers.

27:49In fact, we're counting on the cooperation of American industry to provide their very best thinking during the planning and the creation of our experimental prototype community of tomorrow.

28:00And most important of all, when Epcot has become a reality and we find the need for technologies that don't even exist today, it's our hope that Epcot will stimulate American industry to develop new solutions that will meet the needs of people expressed right here in this experimental community.

28:20Well, that's our basic philosophy for Epcot.

28:23By now I'm sure you're wondering how people will actually live and work and move around in our community of tomorrow.

28:32So in the next few minutes we'll go into detail about some of our preliminary sketches and layouts.

28:39Remember though, as I said let's have a look.

28:41The brilliance of this pitch is all of the reversals he pulls.

28:49It's not surrounded by miles and miles of swampland.

28:54It's a guarantee that you'll never need to build a fence.

28:58It's not that cars are banned.

29:00It's that you get to live the carefree life of a pedestrian at all times.

29:06It's not that you can never retire.

29:08It's that you'll always have full employment.

29:10Finally, Walt returns to close the deal.

29:13Walt the Hardware had pulled it off one more time.

29:17I believe we can build a community that more people will talk about and come to look at than any other area in the world.

29:29And with your cooperation, I'm sure this experimental prototype community of tomorrow can influence the future of city living for generations to come.

29:38It's an exciting challenge.

29:40A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for everyone who participates.

29:44Speaking for myself and the entire Disney organization, we're ready.

29:49The audience erupts in cheers, Roy takes a deep breath, this is the moment, he channels his inner Walt, waves to the audience and says four simple words, wasn't that a dream?

30:11Now, the night's far from over, of course, Roy speaks on stage about the project, giving some additional financial information, stuff that wasn't included in the pitch, he is at his core, still the money man.

30:31Other members of the team come on stage to explain the drainage district, and then they explained to the crowd that they've asked Florida for two municipalities, Buena Vista and Bay Lake, and they're asking for a law to create the Reedy Creek Improvement District.

30:45It was three bills, they told the audience, that would allow Walt's wildest dreams to come to life.

30:52It was also these three bills that would give the Disney Corporation complete control over the land.

30:58Every single thing Walt asked for, drainage, power, water, public transport, airports, fire and emergency systems, police, their own coroner.

31:08Oh, by the way, did you know that according to the Walt Disney World coroner, nobody has ever died at Walt Disney World? Isn't that weird?

31:23Well, it's true, at least according to the Walt Disney World coroner.

31:27In exchange, all the company was asking for from the public, the taxpayers, was wider highways to handle the influx of all the massive traffic they were going to bring in.

31:41Hallowell made it clear that this was a very simple ask.

31:45They just needed bigger roads.

31:47They weren't looking for gimmicks, no tax concessions, and they didn't have any secret curve balls.

31:52Meanwhile, Governor Kirk, seeing that reaction, how the crowd just went nuts to the pitch, it does the politics thing.

32:00He explains that this project will bring in $6.

32:036 billion in economic benefits for Florida over the first 10 years.

32:07And all they had to do was just give Disney the rights to, you know, do whatever the hell they want in Central Florida.

32:17And again, the crowd cheers.

32:19Roy had done it.

32:20He had effectively pulled off the magic trick of his life.

32:25He brought Walt back from the grave for one last show.

32:36He'd won over two different governors.

32:38And thanks to the financial boon Disney was promising in exchange for power, only two months after his brother died, Roy was living up to everything Walt had wanted.

32:47And this act didn't turn out to be a one night show.

32:52From here, Roy and Kirk hit the road as a duo.

32:56They gave presentations in Jacksonville.

32:58They filmed their own intercuts for a television version of Walt's Epcot pitch.

33:02Two months later, there's a bill sitting in the Florida House of Representatives.

33:06That morning, Halliwell shows up to play the presentation for the lawmakers.

33:11Those three very simple itty bitty laws ended up weighing in at a whopping 481 pages of legislation, covering everything from the foundation of two new Disney owned cities to, yes, the ability to switch to nuclear power to light up the park if they wanted, or any other future technology.

33:33The only thing the state was still on the hook for was collecting taxes and inspecting When Governor Kirk finishes the deal on May 12th, he jokes to Roy, oh, you forgot to include a provision for a crown for your brand new kingdom.

33:51Everyone laughs and the deal is done. Wait, that's it?

33:54No struggle to win over lawmakers one at a time?

34:00No wheeling and dealing?

34:03No long winded debates about what the project could mean for the future of Florida?

34:10They just play this magical Epcot film, pass out 500 pages worth of privileges, and the government just says, yeah, sounds great, here you go.

34:20Roy and Halliwell play it cool.

34:23They maintain that what they got passed wasn't anything out of the ordinary for corporations, especially ones trying to build on large lots of land.

34:34But that's only true if you're looking at the drainage district.

34:37What these two men had done, along with that last minute pitch from Walt, was unprecedented in this country.

34:45They just scored the ability for Walt Disney World to function as its own pocket government with a board that looks an awful lot like it had more power than either of the two counties it took up space in.

35:03Oh, and the government didn't take long for some of the members of Congress to feel buyer's remorse on what they've been sold by Disney.

35:12In fact, some of them immediately started saying they hated the plan from the start.

35:16So how did the legislation get to Governor Kirk's desk without a fight?

35:20You know the answer. Walt Disney. The ultimate salesman.

35:23Without that Epcot film, there's no way the public would have felt so enthusiastic about a society where you give up your rights in exchange for Walt's greater good.

35:40But Walt knew exactly what people would want to hear.

35:43And that's why he got total control.

35:47At this point, it was checkmate.

35:51Any representative that didn't follow through would be run out of town.

35:57They'd be replaced with somebody more likely to grant them their dreams.

36:01Worse, any negotiations would have scared Disney away.

36:04Didn't matter that the company knew it had nowhere else to go.

36:08The government agencies in charge of drawing up these details were terrified that Disney would leave under any amount of pushback.

36:15There was just too much momentum.

36:18How do you know when a con is happening?

36:22It's when you hear the phrase, and that's why I need your money right now.

36:32Walt Disney World is a tribute to the philosophy and the life of Walter Elias Disney.

36:38And to the talents, the dedication, and the loyalty of the entire Disney organization that made Walt Disney's dream come true.

36:55May Walt Disney World bring joy and inspiration and new knowledge.

37:00So we're back at that moment.

37:03October 1st, 1971, when by God, Roy Disney had done it.

37:08We're back to the opening ceremonies at Disney World, when anything still feels possible.

37:14They have complete control of the land, the government, and the goodwill of the people.

37:21Disney World is here.

37:22Only, yes, it is pretty far from Walt's vision, isn't it?

37:27I mean, yeah, there's a park there, and it's probably how Walt envisioned it.

37:37But I keep going back to that map, the one that towered over Walt.

37:42Magic Kingdom being the tiniest sliver of his vision.

37:45The rest of that incredibly expansive space taken over by Epcot.

37:49Of course, Walt's been gone for nearly five years now.

37:55And try as he might, Roy can't seem to get the board to approve any of the plans for the city of tomorrow.

38:06They have the land.

38:07They have the rights.

38:09But the project just can't get off the ground.

38:12And when Roy passes away just two months after these opening ceremonies, that's when the possibility of Epcot dies too.

38:20Whatever dreams the Disney brothers had, whatever vision Walt saw while he was counting tiles in his hospital bed, it's never going to happen.

38:32Yes, a group of aspiring Imagineers, they did dust off the plans in the mid-70s.

38:40But this time it was not going to be about finding the solutions to all of America's problems.

38:47It was just about building a second park.

38:49Epcot, the park, the one you and I know, opens on October 1st, 1982.

38:54And in every way, it's pretty much the exact opposite of Walt's dream.

38:59Walt, who marched out of St. Louis because he didn't want to sell beer.

39:04Congrats, now Food and Wine Festival is the best part of Epcot.

39:10And keep in mind, I love it.

39:12That new Guardians of the Galaxy ride is super dope.

39:15But what a twist.

39:17After landing the plane and having all the ingredients, nobody could be bothered to make Walt's actual fantasy come true.

39:25But what if Walt didn't die?

39:28What if decades later, the experimental prototype City of Tomorrow was a real place?

39:45We can't know for sure what it would be like, but we could look at some, I guess in real estate they would call these comps.

40:05Because ultimately, Epcot was a self-contained company town.

40:07And that means we could compare it to other company towns.

40:11See how well they did.

40:14You ever hear of Fordlandia?

40:17Henry Ford had this grand vision.

40:19He needed rubber for his tires, so he bought up a huge chunk of Brazil.

40:26And he had a grand vision of American values there, so he did bonkers things like insist on regular square dances and forbid the sale or consumption of alcohol.

40:37That second part led to riots.

40:39But they could make that rubber, right, for all of his tires.

40:46Except that they planted the trees too close to each other.

40:53They couldn't make it.

40:54Then, whoopsie doodle, World War II comes along, synthetic rubber is invented, and now here's a company town, City of Tomorrow, with no export.

41:01It's a husk, a ghost town.

41:03Or what about this one?

41:05You ever hear of Toyota Japan?

41:08No, not the car company.

41:10I mean this city, Toyota.

41:13Used to be called Koromo, but it changed its name to Toyota in 1959 to honor the car company.

41:20Because they brought all those factories and the jobs.

41:25Toyota, the company, lends a hand in urban planning stuff.

41:28It's got a big Toyota stadium.

41:31But yes, although Toyota is the big dog in town, this is not a self-contained City of Tomorrow.

41:39This is a closer parallel to, I guess, Detroit.

41:43Like yeah, there's one 800-pound gorilla, but that's not the City of Tomorrow.

41:48But both of those first two at least had an export.

41:52Did you notice that Epcot doesn't seem to have any exports?

41:57It would be a place to showcase ideas?

42:02I guess another way to put that is to expand a philosophy of American capitalism?

42:08This is where it gets freaky.

42:11Because if I'm thinking of a town with a charismatic leader with a singular vision trying to build a community for tomorrow that doesn't really export anything?

42:23A place where you're gonna live until you die?

42:26Let's go down to Guyana, a little town called Jonestown. No exports?

42:31Everybody living in a perfect model of what the future should look like?

42:36Until they all drank cyanide-laced Kool-Aid?

42:39But that's not very Disney.

42:42Let's go full Disney.

42:44Let's go to the version that Michael Eisner wanted to pull out.

42:48You know, one that's kind of Epcot-like, where you could live on campus, have direct access to the parks.

42:57That town does exist. It's called Celebration.

43:00The people who live there love Disney.

43:02But if Epcot was supposed to be the city of tomorrow, Celebration is old-school Americana to its core.

43:09It's looking backwards, not forwards.

43:12And the thing about Celebration is once Disney built it, they just handed the community the keys.

43:21Twenty years later, there's leaky roofs?

43:23Some of the houses couldn't even be sold.

43:27Look, man, I'll just say it.

43:29I think Epcot was a very bad idea.

43:33It was a closed-off community that was a company town that had zero exports.

43:40Unless imagination is an export.

43:49But even then, they had no plans for training people up. No higher education.

43:55Couldn't be a hub of intellectual design.

43:58And there's only so many goofy plushies it's possible to sell.

44:03It's the perfect solution to a problem that didn't exist.

44:08I think Epcot, as it was originally conceived, was a terrible, terrible idea.

44:14If you ask me, the best thing to happen to Walt's legacy is that his vision of Epcot never came to pass.

44:27However, for all my pessimism, we'll never know what would have happened if Walt kept hands-on all the way through creation.

44:39There's part of me that sees like a force ghost Walt lighting a cigarette from the beyond and...

44:49his head saying, Ryan, you just don't get it.

44:52I had it all figured out.

44:54And that's what's fascinating.

44:56I can't let go of that 1% chance that Walt could have done it.

45:01This is the guy who took cartoons and made animated features worthy of Oscars. So many Oscars.

45:13This is the guy that took filthy old carnivals made them a hundred times bigger and functional all year round.

45:21Tourist destinations for more than half a century.

45:24Everybody doubted Walt and everybody kept being wrong.

45:27So I guess here's where I'm at.

45:30On paper, the original conception of Epcot was a terrible idea.

45:35But by God, if anybody could have pulled it off, it was going to be this singular man, Walt Disney, the leader who had Florida fall in love with his dreams so hard, they handed him the rights worthy of a government.

45:57And no matter if they got squandered or not, Disney's dream of Epcot and all of the ridiculous wins they got as a result of it, that might just be the world's greatest con.

46:13This episode of World's Greatest Con was written by Will Sattelberg and me, Brian Brushwood, your humble host.

46:25The show is executive produced by Justin Robert Young.

46:40Production and research by Dog and Pony Show Audio in Austin, Texas.

46:50Credit to Married to the Mouse by Richard E.

46:53Foglesong and Buying Disney's World by Erin H.

46:56Goldberg, which along with other contemporary news articles, retrospectives, and archive videos made for the bulk of our research.

47:17Of course, you have questions that we want to answer as many as we can, so hit us up at world's greatest con at gmail.

47:25com Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker.

47:30Dog and Pony Show Audio