A month from today, I will return to the world of legitimate printed material for the first time since my days at the Daily Tar Heel when Four Decades of Magic: Celebrating the First Forty Years of Disney World is released. Published by Ayefour, who also released Project Future and Jim Korkis’s The Vault of Walt, this new volume contains twenty-eight essays written to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Walt Disney World.
A number of Disney writers, bloggers, and commentators have contributed to the project, including several good friends of Progress City. I contributed two essays – one, an extended look at the creation of the classic EPCOT attraction Horizons, and the other a brief look at the development of the EPCOT concept from 1971-78. It’s far from comprehensive, but I hope people enjoy it.
The book will be available soon on Amazon, and you can always get the latest news on Ayefour’s website.
Here’s the rest of the lineup from the book:
Foreword by Jim Hill
Introduction by Chad Emerson
The Sunset Boulevard that Was, Is, and Never Will Be – Tom Corless
When is the 3 O’Clock Parade? Then, Now, and Forever – Tom Corless
Tomorrow’s Windows: Looking Back at Horizons – Michael Crawford
A Brief History of the Future: From EPCOT to EPCOT Center – Michael Crawford
The Walt Disney World Monorail System – Jason Diffendal
Spaceship Earth – Jason Diffendal
Much Ado About Hoop-Dee-Doo – Greg Ehrbar
The 65th Year for Mickey, the Very First Visit for Kids – Greg Ehrbar
Walt Disney’s EPCOT and the Heart of Our Cities – Sam Gennawey
Joe & Carl: Two Men Who Built the World – Didier Ghez
Disney Brings Sports to the World – Adam Goswick
Whatever Happened to Beastly Kingdom? – Scott and Carol Holmes
Magic of the Night: The Evolution of Walt Disney World’s Nighttime Fireworks Displays – Debra Martin Koma
Meeting Mickey: Remembering Mickey’s Toontown Fair – Jim Korkis
For Your Pleasure: The Mythology and Reality of Pleasure Island – Jim Korkis
The Relative Truth About If You Had Wings – Mike Lee
Thunder Mesa & the Western River Expedition: A Neverending Story – Mike Lee
History of the Hoop Dee Doo Musical Revue – Chuck Mirarchi
History of the Main Street Electrical Parade – Chuck Mirarchi
History of the Contemporary & Polynesian Resort Hotels – Chuck Mirarchi
Walt Disney World Resorts That Never Were – Lou Mongello
Goodnight, George: A Ghost Story – Foxx Nolte
Another Magic Corner of the World – Foxx Nolte
EPCOT 1939 – Jeffrey Pepper
The Carousel of Progress: What Would Walt Think? – Michael Scopa
An Island Filled with Tropic Beauty, Colorful Birds, and the Mystery of Ben Gunn’s Buried Treasure! – George Taylor
Honoring the Cast: Insider Tributes & Homages – Kevin Yee
You should head over to Alcorn’s site posthaste to investigate, but I’m going to reprint a couple of the photos here because one of them depicts something that I never, ever thought I’d see.
EPCOT’s construction is full of intriguing details, as the inner workings of the park are so massive and elaborate and hidden from the public. Everyone knows about the Magic Kingdom’s Utilidors, but few have seen EPCOT’s Utilidor that runs beneath Communicore:
EPCOT's sole Utilidor, under construction...
Also hidden is the massive carriage that contains all the show scenes and animatronics for the American Adventure; this picture just shows a small part of the machine – it’s a wonder they ever got it to work!
I see Chief Joseph!
Of course back in the day the commands that ran that show came streaming from EPCOT Computer Central in Communicore. Here’s a picture of the very first equipment being installed in Computer Central; the large box you see on the left is one of the binloop machines that used to stream audio in an endless loop to the far corners of the park.
Not depicted: Dancing Cockney guy
But what really caught my eye was this picture. See what you think:
Circle Pines.
What do you see? Well, it’s obviously large trees under construction, and if you read Alcorn’s caption you’ll realize it’s at the Canada pavilion. So what? “But wait,” you might say in a moment of quiet reflection, “where are the giant fake trees in the Canada pavilion?” That’s the thing – there aren’t any. But there were supposed to be. Look at this early concept art for the pavilion, which I appropriated from the fantastic Imagineering Disney:
How Not to Be Seen starring Martin Short
I always thought those towering pines were just artistic license, but there were actually plans to partially conceal the pavilion in a grove of lofty, artificial timber. As you can see in Alcorn’s photo, the trees were even built. But the issue of scale – as you can tell, they were designed to use forced perspective to fit in with their scaled-down surroundings – proved a problem, and they never looked quite right in the eyes of the project’s managers. Eventually Dick Nunis called for the metaphorical and literal axe, and the fake trees of Canada were removed before the park even opened. This makes them an even more ephemeral relic of EPCOTology than the fabled Danish bathrooms.
Looking for some real trees? Well check out this picture, which shows what a cabin at Fort Wilderness looked like circa 1982. Fleetwood!
Or in other words, now we’re blogging in widescreen…
So yes, changes. At last. At long, long last. This has taken me forever but there’s still a good chance that lots of things are broken so for pete’s sake, if you see something say something! Email me with any issues.
There are some other changes on the way, some cosmetic (I still want to style the look to be more appealing) and some more fundamental (I want to make content easier to find, and to bring in some of the better aspects of a hard-coded, more traditional site). And, naturally, more non-stop blathering from yours truly. Blathering… in widescreen!
A recent post on the always-entertaining Retroist blog directed us to a number of home movies that have recently been posted to YouTube as part of something called the “Elmer Gerlock Film Project.” There are several fascinating films dating from the 1950s-80s, with lots of footage of now-extinct sights from Las Vegas’s Strip, Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and other notable attractions in Southern California and Florida. Lucky for us, there’s also EPCOT footage!
This clip comes from 1984, when EPCOT Center was still fresh and new. It’s remarkable to see how different the park looked with its not-yet-grown trees and shrubs; the scale of the buildings appear so much larger and more prominent. World Showcase looks completely different from across the lagoon without all the foliage, and without the awful Swan and Dolphin and the over-sized Tower of Terror looming on the horizon and thus destroying the sightlines. The pavilions themselves have changed very little in all these years, but their effect is totally different in those early surroundings. There’s no International Gateway, either!
Speaking of the park environment, it’s always bittersweet to see the clean, welcoming entrance plaza from the days before Leave a Legacy. And speaking of bittersweet, it really does tug at the heartstrings to see Horizons, World of Motion, and Journey into Imagination in all their original glory.
In World Showcase we first catch a glimpse of the long-lost and much missed double decker buses that transported guests around the promenade. We even get a peek of the fabled Danish bathrooms (at 2:55), which you might remember from our own groundbreaking expose. For a little entertainment, there’s Il Teatro di Bologna in Italy, and the rather campy looking show at the America Gardens theater. Give it up for the performers, though – this was before the theater was covered or shaded, and they were most likely staring directly into the sun!
A last point of interest is the Morocco pavilion, which is still under construction and would open later that year.
So let’s pile in the car, taking a moment to remember the great old brown “national park” style road signs on property, and head for EPCOT Center:
Don’t forget to check out the other related videos, including a stop at the Magic Kingdom. And if you’re looking for more vintage footage, don’t miss these classic home videos from EPCOT in 1983.
Now officially known as New Fantasyland, the expansion has seen many changes
Ending months of online speculation, Disney took the opportunity of a recent Parks and Resorts press event to reveal a number of changes to the previously-announced expansion of the Magic Kingdom’s Fantasyland area. Prompted by criticism of the earlier plan’s heavy focus on character “meet-and-greets”, the so-called “New Fantasyland” unveiled last week will incorporate a new attraction that hearkens back to Imagineering proposals predating the expansion’s announcement in September of 2009.
From the Progress City archives comes this collection of 33 tall tales and true from Disney history. Available in paperback, hardback, and ebook formats.
, George Taylor linked a number of 
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