Walt Disney was always fascinated with American History. Walt did his best to sprinkle bits of Americana throughout his Disneyland park, with Main Street and Frontierland showcasing various stages of America in it's development. It's also well known that he greatly admired President Lincoln, and was responsible for having his Imagineers create the first Audio-Animatronic Abraham Lincoln. This figure debuted to stellar reception at the 1964 New York's World Fair, and would later help to solidify Disney's future lifelike animatronic work within attractions such as Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion. Believe it or not though, Disney had larger plans for Disneyland prior to the development of the Lincoln project.



He originally wanted an additional street to run between Main Street and Tomorrowland, which would have been called International Street. This street was actually a small precursor to today's World Showcase at Epcot. In it you would have found yourself venturing amidst international architecture and eating foods from around the world. Plans to debut International Street were eventually set aside as the park opening neared so that Walt could focus on making sure Tomorrowland was ready to open (which still mainly consisted of half completed exhibits). There was even a banner up for the first year and a half promising that International Street would open in 1957. When the idea became too expansive, Walt decided it would be out of place on Main Street and instead would be better suited elsewhere inside the park (though it was never built).



Walt's next idea was to replace the concept of International Street and split it in half. These two new sections would have a focus on Americana, which fits Main Street's turn of the century feel perfectly. The first addition would have been Liberty Street. This area was to run halfway behind the length of Main Street buildings that are on the right side as you walk towards the castle. Inspired by the days of colonial America, Liberty Street would have included Paul Revere's Shop, a wharf complete with a docked colonial barge, a diorama on the Declaration of Independence, a recreation of the Libery Tree that stood in Boston, and the main attraction: The Hall of Presidents. The second area, a cul-de-sac known as Edison Square, was also planned to exist behind where the Corn Dog Truck sits near the end of Main Street today. This area was to have focused more on the dawning of the electrical age - and would instead find itself incorporated into several exhibits throughout Tomorrowland.









The Hall of Presidents (or One Nation Under God, as Walt referred to it) was an ambitious project in itself, but no project was too ambitious for Walt Disney. He envisioned a giant hall with wax figures of every President throughout American history. While Walt continued to dream, wax figures made way for possibilities of Presidents in animatronic form. What's more, he wanted each of them to showcase their personalities through their movement and speeches.



The Hall of Presidents and Liberty Street continued to get pushed back, as money was spent elsewhere and audio-animatronic technology became more viable. Years passed, and Imagineering continued to work on the ideas they had for this upcoming section of the park. Eventually Walt abandoned the project entirely. Instead, he focused on a revamped version of Tomorrowland which saw the addition of the Disneyland Monorail, the Matterhorn, and the Submarine Voyage in 1959.



Years later, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln was so successful that it became a permanent show within the Main Street Opera House in 1965.



When Walt died in 1966, plans for Walt Disney World continued without him. As Imagineers attempted to craft an even larger version of Disneyland, they decided to not include New Orleans Square due to the real New Orleans's proximity to Florida. Instead, they looked back at design work done for Edison Square and Liberty Street, and after much revision, the outcome was Liberty Square.

(Various bits of information were gathered from around the web including Wikipedia, ImagineeringDisney.com, and http://www.mouseplanet.com/8167/The_Liberty_Street_Story_1959)

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.

Most of you know Walt Disney. You might not know him personally, though many people grew up watching him on television and knew him as good ol' Uncle Walt. I too remember watching him on t.v. when I was a kid, more than twenty years after he died in 1966.

Walt Disney was a man, mythical to some to some, godlike to others, but even still unknown to many people today. Over the past few years I've read four different biographies of his life, and in all honesty he really was extraordinary.

Before I get to my trip, I'd like to give you some background on what Walt Disney World is, how it came to be, and what it was SUPPOSED to be - but it all starts with Walt.


"I just try to keep up with him. I'm afraid if I'd been running this place we would have stopped several times en route because of the problems. Walt has the stick-to-itivess."
-Roy Disney

"I was fortunate. I had an older brother. And he's still with me. And I still love him. I argue with him. Sometimes I think he's the stubbornest so-and-so I ever met in my life. But I don't know what I'd do without him.
-Walt Disney

To quickly recap Walt's life would be too lengthy. I'd really recommend you pick up Bob Thomas's book "WALT DISNEY: AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL", which was the best of the four that I read.



I will simply say that he began his work as a cartoonist for a newspaper, then eventually opened a cartoon studio with him brother Roy. Walt was the idea man, and a poor businessman, while his brother Roy risked every penny for Walt (often times going into heavy debt). Contrary to belief, Walt and Roy usually lost more money that they made, and Walt always sought after the 'next best thing'. Walt would spend days to convince Roy, and Roy would have to convince the banks. They might have lost a lot of friends over the years, but they always seemed to find someone else to borrow money from.

They had a few successes along the way: The Three Little Pigs, The Old Mill, and Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs (which gave them the money to open a full fledged movie production studio). The popularity of the Walt Disney cartoons spread around the world, and everyone had heard of either Mickey Mouse, Snow White, or Donald Duck (who was popular in South America).

In the 40's, Walt started to think outside of film. The story goes that he was sitting on a bench at a small amusement park watching his daughters on a merry-go-round. He thought about the dingy little park, and looked at the other parents who sat around while the kids played with themselves. Walt claimed that this is where his idea to open a theme park sprang to life.

"What this country really needs is an amusement park that families can take their children to. They've gotten so honky tonk with a lot of questionable characters running around, and they're not too safe. They're not well kept. I want to have a place that's as clean as anything could ever be, and all the people in it are first-class citizens, and treated like guests."



For years he worked on making this idea a reality, and eventually on July 17th 1955, Disneyland opened to an overcrowded capacity. It was the first of it's kind: a theme park, meant to transport you to another place or time.



But like always, Walt eventually craved something more. Disneyland was a nice start, but his dream of having a cozy surrounding was crushed when seedy hotels began to spring up around his fantastical park. It was time that he made a fresh start, but he needed to find an area large enough for something of a bigger scale. He would be sure to buy enough land next time in order to make sure that history wouldn't repeat itself...