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RCA Leads The Way!

Here’s to the future and you!

In the lead-up to the creation of Epcot Center during the 1970s, a common refrain from Disney publicity was that, in many ways, Walt’s futuristic dream for the city of EPCOT had already come true in the Florida swamps. The underlying systems and technologies in use at […]

America!!

It’s the 4th of July in Progress City, and that means pageantry!

So here’s some pageantry.

It’s the thrilling dedication of the American Adventure at Epcot, which took place on October 11th, 1982. Thrill to the oratory of Card Walker! And the pavilion’s two sponsors, American Express CEO/Chairman Jim Robinson and Coca-Cola President Don Keough. […]

Promoting Spaceship Earth, 1982

Making the rounds on Twitter last weekend was this remarkable video, made by the Bell System in 1982 to promote their sponsorship of Spaceship Earth at the newly-opened EPCOT Center. The “Chronicle News Update” contains a chat with AT&T president William Ellinghaus, who presided over the pavilion’s opening ceremony, as well as Disney CEO Card […]

Let The Games Begin…

Over at the Walt Disney Family Museum’s blog Storyboard – which you should be reading regularly by now – I’ve written an article about the Disney studio’s contributions to the VIII Winter Olympic Games in 1960. It’s an interesting and rarely-told part of Disney lore, and an overlooked step in Walt’s progression from Disneyland […]

EPCOT: Origins – The Tripartite Plan, 1975

By 1975, Walt Disney Productions had given up any pretense that it was ever going to build Walt’s city of the future in Florida. The stirring images of Progress City had disappeared from their promotional materials, and by July of that year a Disney spokesman publicly stated that “the concept that was originally envisioned is […]