When Was Disney World Built?
Thousands of individuals living on the east coast have visited Walt Disney World, a themed resort conceived by Walt Disney himself—and many have wondered, when was Disney World built? As a matter of fact, Walt Disney World was in production for a long time before it was completed in 1971, and the dream of what Walt Disney World was to become was never realized by the creator of the Disney empire himself. Over a decade after Disney World was conceived, the dream of a resort even larger than California’s Disneyland opened to visitors in sunny Florida. For those who have been there and experienced the thrills and excitement of the resort, the rest is history. However, the idea for Disney World begins much earlier than when the doors of the park were first opened.
If you’re asking “when was Disney World built?” you must understand that the world-renowned theme park loved by so many today is very different from Walt Disney’s dream, an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.
While this community would contain many elements of a theme park, Walt Disney’s original dream was to create an actual community entirely without the problems of chaos and violence of most cities in the United States. The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, known in short as EPCOT, was Walt Disney’s dream. EPCOT was to be a grand city planning experiment that would encompass the best of American society. Corporations would be allowed to inhabit the central hub of a small city that would house workers and innovators from all around the world, and their families.
Although Disney’s business partners wanted another theme park similar to Disneyland, an astounding success out west, Walt Disney wanted only a small portion of his community to be a theme park. The rest of it would be the community of the future—homes and businesses large and small that would demonstrate what future cities would look like.
EPCOT Center and its Future
Walt Disney died before his Community of Tomorrow could be created. He could not secure funding for anything but the theme park of his venture, known as the Magic Kingdom, the first park of the Walt Disney World Resort to be opened to the public. Although his community-planning initiative died, many of the innovations he conceived remained. The Peoplemover and the Monorail that he wanted to integrate into his community were now incorporated into the designs for Disney World. EPCOT center was named because it was originally built to demonstrate some of the ideas that Walt Disney had for his community of tomorrow. Today, it is just called Epcot, and it was the second of the Disney theme parks to become Disney World.
When Was Disney World Built?
Of course, when the idea for EPCOT was abandoned following Walt Disney’s death in 1966, the building blocks for a new Disney creation were already in place. These plans would result in a theme park the likes of which the world had never seen before and the results provide the answer to the question of when was Disney World built.
Roy Disney, the brother of Walt, decided to push forward with Walt’s dream of creating a Disney World in Florida. Once he obtained clearance from authorities and the courts, Disney World began to be built.
Walt Disney World finally opened in 1971, after years of planning and half of a decade after Walt Disney’s death. It included many of the facets of the Disneyland resort, but also included a Polynesian Resort, a Contemporary Resort, and a Wilderness Resort. Walt Disney’s vision of EPCOT had not come to fruition, but his concept of a Magic Kingdom, where dreams could come true, was perfected in this resort. Even Walt’s wife Lillian believed that Walt would have loved the final product of his dream.
Only a few months after the resort opened in 1971, Walt Disney’s brother Roy passed away in his late seventies. Walt Disney World would eventually become the world’s biggest recreational resort.