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Walt Disney's E.P.C.O.T film (1966)

The Original EPCOT · 961.7K views · 2013-09-23 · 25:49

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Overview

The 1966 film Walt Disney recorded weeks before his death, laying out his plans for the Florida Project and especially EPCOT, a planned city of the future. It uses models, concept art and animation to describe the circular city, monorails and people movers.

On Hacker News

HN cites it in discussions of planned cities and urban design as the original source for Disney's utopian EPCOT vision.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2014–2019

Topics

Transit, cities & urban planningTech company stories & documentariesDocumentaries & storytelling
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epcotwalt disneyurban planningutopiamonorail

What people said

Tempest1981 · 2017-11 · Recommendation

The full EPCOT plans are interesting. A circular city layout, with layers. Density in the center. People taking monorails to work, and WEDway people movers locally. Designed for biking and walking. Cars only used on weekends. Details about 10 min into this video: [VIDEO]

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blotter_paper · 2019-05 · Reference

And those legal machinations were arranged by a lawyer who used to be a CIA recruiter. I'll add this video of Walt Disney's original plan for the land, in which Disney World is overshadowed by the (u/dys)topian city he called EPCOT (later mangled into the showroom we know today by his brother and investors who were scared of costs and didn't see reliable earning potential in running a city) with a timestamp to when the fun starts: [VIDEO] This is the stuff that inspired BioShock and similar settings (I believe I read an interview years ago where one of the designers mentioned it as an influence, but I wouldn't know where to find a link).

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padobson · 2015-11 · Reference

"Industry pundits predicted that no one would sit still for a cartoon feature. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs proved otherwise and blazed the trail for the industry." Nobody knew how to make serious money on short animations, animated features, or theme parks before Walt Disney. He did it all though. He also wanted to try out the utopia thing[1], and it's maybe the 20th century's greatest missed opportunity. If you haven't read Walt Disney's World[2], it's my favorite biography on the great man. [1] [VIDEO] [2] [LINK]

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Sources

Video by The Original EPCOT, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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