An inclusive global community…communists not allowed

Image: Ricardo Mangual Photography, Flickr (license)

Company leaders such as his brother Roy O. Disney have tried to honor Walt’s legacy whenever possible. That’s why the incongruity of EPCOT Center is so critical to this discussion. Before he died, Walt Disney envisioned a utopia, a place where people could arrive from anywhere on the planet and discover a new home.  He bought almost 50 square miles of land in the greater Orlando area with the express intent of fulfilling this vision.

The politics of the suggestion were amazing then and remain so to this day. Uncle Want wanted to build a community where everyone contributed to the greater good…which sounds a lot like socialism. There was a catch, though. Every member of the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow would work for Disney. The unemployment rate would be zero. And Disney would involve itself in every part of the lives of its citizens. Effectively, it was the polar opposite of socialism: a uniform capitalism. Critics would even throw in some fascism when describing the terms. So, even Uncle Walt’s utopia proved perplexing to the public.

Image: Disney

The one thing Disney made clear is that he wouldn’t be dealing with Russia. As noted during his House Un-American Activities Committee testimony, acrimony existed between an entire country and a single man, Disney himself. As he noted,

“…I think they ran a lot of them in Russia, but then turned them back to us and said they didn't want them, they didn't suit their purposes.”

In other words, communist countries hated Walt Disney’s strident belief in capitalism almost as much as he hated their socialist economic system. When Disney announced plans for what would become EPCOT Center, he described a permanent World’s Fair, which was a sound business strategy given Disney’s dominance at the 1964 New York’s World Fair. Card Walker, former Chief Operating Officer at Disney, once stated, “…the nations of the world may participate on a permanent basis to demonstrate their culture and their products.”

The above was true of everyone…except for Russia. Walt Disney was a man who could hold a grudge, and he was a patriot. Those two strikes were enough to exclude Russia from any potential EPCOT plans, even as China merited at least a modicum of consideration.

A change in philosophy

Image: AK Rockefeller, Flickr (license)

This was an interesting exclusion that Disney itself avoided in the wake of their founder’s death. In 1976, a marketing executive famously noted that people loved the idea of EPCOT Center “all the way from Russia to the Philippines.” This man, Jack Lindquist, would later become President of Disneyland, so he was in a position to know.

The statement signified a dramatic departure from Walt Disney’s Red Scare mentality, even though it occurred during the height of the Cold War in the mid-1970s. By this point, Disney had adapted their plans to reflect a more international corporate philosophy. Even forty years ago, sales revenue revealed the global popularity of the Walt Disney brand. For a permanent World’s Fair to succeed, they’d need to develop a policy of inclusion, which was part of the early impetus for the social policies discussed above that are in place today.

The adapted initial plans for EPCOT Center projected that 10 countries would participate at park launch. Disney expected to cull the list down from the 27 countries they’d initially pitched to have a presence at the second gate. Over time, park planners believed that the permanent World’s Fair would expand to 30 countries, all of whom would share a part of their history and customs with the good people of Orlando, Florida.

This shift away from divisive politics toward an era of prosperity predicated on tolerance and inclusion rings true in spirit to the original Walt Disney vision for the Florida Project. It sounds wonderful in theory and we now know after almost 35 years in operation that it works in execution as well. There was just one little problem, however, and you’ve probably already figured it out.