Circles of Life: Twenty-Five Years of Epcot Center
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�WE knew it wasn�t a Magic Kingdom �business� and we only went after people who had the right kind of storytelling and design experience to do this. Imagineering had to grow tremendously to be able to handle a project like this� at one time we got up to almost 3,000 people between California and Florida,� Marty Sklar, Walt Disney Imagineering Ambassador explains. �The first thing we had to do was establish Walt Disney World as a place where families would go on vacation so the concentration was entirely on what I call the �vacation kingdom�, Marty continues. �In 1975 when we had just opened Space Mountain and had established the Florida business as a vacation destination, Card Walker [former CEO of the Walt Disney Company] came to me and said �How do we get a hold of Walt�s EPCOT idea?��

With a philosophy that EPCOT would test and use materials from American industry; find solutions for urban issues; generate demand for new technologies and primarily focus on public need and happiness, Walt presented EPCOT as the foundation for Disney World. These philosophies would be delivered with a main urban center which radiated out to residential space and an industrial park complex.

In 1976 Card Walker outlined four basic objectives for what was to become Epcot Center: A showcase for prototype concepts... An on-going forum of the future... A communicator to the world... and a permanent international people-to-people exchange. To assist in resolving those objectives, a series of meetings was held on all the subjects that were to be considered for what was then known as the EPCOT Theme Center (Future World) for example: energy, agriculture, transportation and health. People from academia and industry along with noted individuals who were experimenting in each of those fields were invited. �We had about six or seven of these meetings. Every time it would end up with a summary and somebody in the group would say that the public doesn�t trust industry to tell them the straight story, they don�t trust government to tell them the straight story but they trust Mickey Mouse! So you guys have a role to play in all of this...� Marty enlightens.

IF the 1955 opening of Disneyland set the benchmark for the themed entertainment environment then it would be only ten years before WED Enterprises (the forerunner of Walt Disney Imagineering) would be involved in four projects under the banner of the 1964-�65 New York World�s Fair that would provide both attractions and narrative solutions not only for Disneyland but also as the inspiration for this second model of Disney theme park design. These projects took shape as corporate sponsored pavilions: Ford Motor Company�s Wonder Rotunda - with the �Magic Skyway�; General Electric�s Progressland with Walt Disney�s Carousel of Progress; Pepsi-Cola�s (in conjunction with UNICEF) �it�s a small world� and the state of Illinois sponsored Great Moments with Mr Lincoln. Randy Bright, author of Disneyland: Inside Story, Epcot Center�s (former) director of Scripts and Show Development and Disney Legend, sees this relationship with major corporations as �...help[ing] bring the increasingly complex and sophisticated Disney concepts to reality.�

�Both John Hench [Disney Legend and original Imagineer] and I were heavily involved with the 1964-�65 World�s Fair,� Marty explains. �We had terrific memories of that and how Walt Disney really was the star of the Fair. We started to figure out how we were going to play our part in telling these stories and it evolved into a series of big pavilions, very much influenced by the World�s Fair style.�

Part of that influence would involve the search for the right corporate partners for despite how many attractions were sponsored in both of the Tomorrowland�s open at the time, Future World would become the true home of Disney and Corporate America.

Although the most transparent assistance that the corporations would offer in building these more complex and sophisticated concepts was the defraying of the cost Marty assesses that they bought another value to table: �We were not in any of these businesses and we should be partnering with people who have a vested interest.� That vested interest might produce an end result that works solely to tell the story of the sponsor, but Marty acknowledges how this potential situation was dealt with: �We set up advisory boards � everything we did was reviewed.� These advisory boards for each of the themes ensured that the right balance of message and outlook on the subjects was achieved and included individuals from universities, industry and government as well as other areas. They would prove to be highly influential in what was finally realized with the Future World pavilions.