Up to this point, Walt had tackled the military, foreign affairs, newspapers, vaudeville, model trains, cartoons, architecture, live action movies, television, Academy Awards, merchandising, The Olympics, and a theme park known as Disneyland. He had expanded the park to add attractions such as It's A Small World, the Matterhorn, the Submarine Voyage, and even The Skyway. Walt even created rides to help showcase companies such as GM, Ford, and Pepsi at the 1964 World's Fair. There he premiered the most lifelike Audio-Animatronic to that point, the Abraham Lincoln figure for "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln".

Where could he go from there?

In 1959, 4 years after Disneyland was opened, Walt was already scouring for the next location. Surveys at that time showed that only 2% of Disneyland's attendance came from the East Coast, and so that's where Walt decided to look. Walt had flown over many locales, and eventually decided on Orlando - it was adjacent to a well-developed network of roads, as well as the future home of I-4 and what would later be Orlando International Airport. The location he settled on was a site of approximately 27,000 acres of Florida swampland.



His vision for the future was bold and risky - Walt was designing his own city, and it was to be a city of the future. Based on ideas culminating from years of research in urban planning, as well as what he learned from Disneyland, EPCOT was to be yet another first of it's kind.


E.P.C.O.T. - Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow



"EPCOT... will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise."
-Walt Disney







(the following paragraph taken from Wikipedia:)
Walt Disney's original vision of EPCOT was for a model community, home to twenty thousand residents, which would be a test bed for city planning and organization. The community was to have been built in the shape of a circle, with businesses and commercial areas at its center, community buildings and schools and recreational complexes around it, and residential neighborhoods along the perimeter. Transportation would have been provided by monorails and PeopleMovers (like the one in the Magic Kingdom's Tomorrowland). Automobile traffic would be kept underground, leaving pedestrians safe above-ground. Walt Disney said, "It will be a planned, controlled community, a showcase for American industry and research, schools, cultural and educational opportunities. In EPCOT, there will be no slum areas because we won't let them develop. There will be no landowners and therefore no voting control. People will rent houses instead of buying them, and at modest rentals. There will be no retirees; everyone must be employed."



His vision was so grand in fact, that this time nobody wanted to help him fund it. After negotiating around the table, he eventually made a compromise: he would allow This vision was not realized. Walt Disney was not able to obtain funding and permission to start work on his Florida property until he agreed to build the Magic Kingdom first.

Until his death in 1966, Walt kept the "Florida Project" at the forefront of his mind, continually coming up with new ideas. Once he died however, his brother Roy postponed his own retirement to try to see the project through.

Roy O. Disney dedicated the property and declared that it would be known as "Walt Disney World" in his brother's honor. In his own words: "Everyone has heard of Ford cars. But have they all heard of Henry Ford, who started it all? Walt Disney World is in memory of the man who started it all, so people will know his name as long as Walt Disney World is here." After the dedication, Roy Disney asked Walt's widow, Lillian, what she thought of Walt Disney World. According to biographer Bob Thomas, she responded, "I think Walt would have approved."



Roy died nearly three months later. The Disney Company was no longer in the hands of the Disney brothers, and Walt's vision of EPCOT was to never be fully realized. While Walt insisted that he never wanted it to be a theme park, that is what it became, and in 1982 EPCOT Center finally saw the light of day. EPCOT was not only a theme park, but more of a World's Fair, focusing both on future technology as well as countries around the world. It was a strange amalgamation of what Walt originally wanted, but in it's own way, it's very much a Disney park.