Things might be slightly quieter around here than last week, as I’m busy with couple of upcoming projects that, as always, tend to grow exponentially in scope. As a tasty preview I thought I’d share this rendering, from circa 1976, depicting a concept for the entrance to the Mexico pavilion in World Showcase.
By this point, the World Showcase and Future World Theme Center concepts had been combined into one gated attraction, and EPCOT Center began to slowly resemble the park we know today.
Pretty swanky, eh?
Wow! That is a really cool rendering. The Little Mermaid drawing in the previous post pales in comparison. It goes to show the difference between Disney 1976 and 2008. Come on people — get off the computer and get out those markers and paints!!
Where did you find this image?
It was published in the 1976 Walt Disney Productions annual report. More commonly seen renderings from that year are the famous images of the Rhine River Cruise and the Venezuelan Pavilion.
As I said, by this point Future World and World Showcase had been combined into a single park, but the design at the time had guests actually entering through World Showcase – Showcase would serve as the “Main Street” for the park.
Omnispace: You’re right about WDI needing to put down the mouse and pick up the paintbrush. I thought the same thing when posting the Treehouse renderings tonight – almost everything conceptual that comes out of WDI today has a cartoony feel, and everything has that very digital look to it. Where’s our generation’s Herb Ryman or John Hench?