Although it would have taken more than the wave of a magic wand, it wouldn’t have been inconceivable.Īs Yesterland points out, the Houston Astrodome, which opened in 1965, stood 18 stories tall and covered almost 10 acres. We are going to do this’ and, as luck would have it, I came to the opening of Disney World in 1971.”Įpcot opened 11 years later without a residential district or a dome. Even at 14 it was fun to feel somebody have so much pleasure with something that they hadn’t unveiled yet. “It was amazing but he wasn’t showing it to boast about what he was working on, he was interested in what people thought. He was talking about it being a controlled environment and making it rain if you wanted to. He took me somewhere else and he had a model of it and a bunch of drawings which looked like a town and part of it was under a dome. What is that?’ And he said it’s an enclosed environment. Suddenly I heard ‘what do you think of that?’ I turned around and it was Mr Disney and I said ‘Hey good morning. “This time I was looking at this kiosk and it showed a picture of this cool domed thing called Epcot. Sometimes he would call me in and I would sit down and have lunch with him. Right next to that was where I would sometimes play ping pong with Mr Disney at lunch. It was early in the morning and I was walking past the animation building, past the theater and I was nearly at the commissary where the kiosk was. “I distinctly remember coming to work early one day and there was a kiosk on Dopey Drive which always showed the news of the week. Being there triggered his memories about the original plans. After 50 years in the public eye Russell’s popularity is so great that Disney has to put on a chaperone to prevent him from being mobbed in the parks and nowhere was this more apparent than in Epcot.
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It also happens to be named after a ranch in California which was owned by Disney and used as the backdrop for Russell’s first movie for the studio, Follow Me, Boys! In 1966.įollowing the talk, this author and colleague spent the weekend with Russell, his sister, his business partner and his business partner’s wife. This continues Walt’s legacy of urban planning as it is a high-end residential development at the heart of Disney World, just 10 minutes from its fairytale-themed Magic Kingdom park. It began with a talk to a group of Disney guests at one of its newest developments - Golden Oak. Russell is a mine of Disney details and this soon became clear when he recently let this author into his inner circle. He went on to star in 13 Disney movies, most recently last summer’s sci-fi blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.
It has kept theme park fans and historians guessing about the pioneering plan but light has finally been cast on it by none other than Hollywood actor Kurt Russell who was signed up by Walt himself for a ten year deal in the 1960s. The detailed press release had nothing about a dome either.” None of the artwork showed a dome covering 50 to 75 acres. They have been lost to history and shrouded in mystery.Īs noted Disney history website Yesterland points out, although the plans for the dome were widely reported in the media “on the film, neither Walt Disney nor the narrator said anything about putting the city under a giant bubble. It is today known as Epcot in a nod to the acronym of the original plans. Instead of building the residential district his eponymous company built a park centered around the themes of science, innovation, and cultural exploration. Sadly it never saw the light of day as Walt Disney passed away just two months after the video was filmed. The city would be completely enclosed with a dome covering 50 to 75 acres and completely air conditioned.” Petersburg Times went into even more detail and reported that “the planned development includes an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) planned for 20,000 permanent residents. At the time the media reported that the entire development would be enclosed with the New York Times stating that “Walt Disney Productions today announced it would build the world’s first glass-domed city amid Disneyworld, a $100 million entertainment center.” Echoing this, the Chicago Tribune added that “plans for the world’s first glass domed city, a Disney World, five times bigger than the Disneyland in California, were unveiled here yesterday.”
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