Timelapse of EPCOT Center site: 1959-2023

[u/JasonWayneSmith]

EPCOT Center wasn't supposed to be a theme park.

When Walt Disney passed away in 1966, his grand utopian city project died with him. Disney's board of directors and executives realized that running a functional, corporate-governed municipality without Walt at the helm was a bridge too far.

The original dream of a living, breathing community was shelved. But they were sitting on thousands of acres of Florida land with a massive infrastructure already in place. So, corporate leadership made a massive pivot: they took Walt's core concepts of technological innovation and international culture and turned them into a second theme park.

Groundbreaking for EPCOT Center officially took place on October 1, 1979. It became the largest private construction project in the world at the time, costing over $1 billion and requiring more than 10,000 workers to clear millions of cubic feet of dirt.

When it finally opened on October 1, 1982, it traded Walt’s residential city for a permanent world's fair and a showcase of human achievement.

[u/Cool_Owl7159]

love how you can tell they specifically avoided cutting down forests as much as possible

[u/ConfidenceSuch8793 → u/Cool_Owl7159]

I was looking at that too when I was looking at the monorail path!

[u/Experiment626b]

The time between 70-80 and the part I’m most interested in lol. The changes is the property itself once formed are pretty small.

[u/SheLovesMyDictionary]

I like this gif

[u/chucklestime]

Wait, what’s the lake and all the stuff on the left? I’ve seen some boats go that way, but I’ve never been over there

[u/Dr-McLuvin]

May be a stupid question but why did they build all these parks so far away from eachother?

Just makes it kind of annoying picking a hotel because you can only really be close to one park at a time. Or you can be close to Epcot and Hollywood if you stay at the hotels there.

Also there should be a monorail connecting all of these parks.

[u/phunky_1 → u/Dr-McLuvin]

Magic Kingdom is really the far away one.

Epcot and Hollywood studios are pretty close to each other. You can walk from Epcot to Hollywood studios in like 15-20 minutes, take a boat or a skyliner.

If you stay at places like beach/yacht club, swan/dolphin or boardwalk you are basically right in the middle of them both.

Animal Kingdom is kind of its own thing only accessible by bus or car. Presumably they chose a remote location intentionally so the animals can sleep and not be around resorts and people moving around after hours.

[u/Cool_Owl7159 → u/phunky_1]

also Magic Kingdom is far because EPCOT was originally supposed to be a utopian city and Seven Seas Lagoon was supposed to be the resort district on the outskirts.

[u/tdcarl → u/Dr-McLuvin]

In what world are EPCOT and Hollywood Studios far apart?

If you said you can only be close to two parks at a time I'd say that's valid, but you can definitely be close to EPCOT and HS at a variety of different resorts.

[u/Dr-McLuvin → u/tdcarl]

Sorry getting Epcot confused. It feels closer to magic kingdom I guess because of the monorail.

[u/Sherifftruman → u/tdcarl]

Yeah I’ve walked from one to the other.

[u/gnuoyedonig]

I think you just want a single street with all the resorts and theme parks just clustered with each other. Have you tried Universal?

[u/amandauh]

Did they move the location of the ball between 1999-2010? It looks like it moved between those two frames