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Disney Parks

Is Dubai creating Walt’s original idea of Epcot?

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Dubai water fountains

The Prime Minister of Dubai seems to believe in “Go big or go home.” He also believes in making dreams a reality. Where else can you find the tallest building in the world, an island created in the shape of a palm that is a housing development or an indoor ski resort?

The Bur Khalifa building has 163 floors and stands 2,722′ in the air. It is the tallest building in the world! It is obvious that it has the tallest elevator in the world. What a fast ride that is!
Tallest building in the world
Burj Khalifa

If you run out of land, why not create new islands in the shape of a palm tree and build homes on the newly made land?

Dubai Palms Island

The Dubai Fountain is another attraction that would make the water show at The Bellagio jealous.

Dubai Fountains

Let’s not forget that indoor Ski Slope including ski lifts. It’s inside of a huge shopping mall where the “mountain” is 25 stories tall. The air is just a little bit below freezing, so you get the whole ski resort effect.  It has 5 slopes of varying difficulty including a black diamond run. There is also a snow play area for those that aren’t into skiing which includes toboggan runs and an ice cave.Indoor ski resort in Dubai
Dubai Indoor Ski Slope

Hyperloop

In Dubai, they don’t like to be outdone. Five years after Elon Musk talked about his Hyperloop, Dubai decided they wanted to build one. The proposed Hyperloop between Dubai and Abu Dhabi will ferry passengers along the Arabian coast at speeds of up to 1,200km/hour, (746 mph) cutting a 140km journey from 1hr 20mins to just 12mins. Around 10,000 people will be able to travel each hour.  RedherringThey have the resources to do this. People who said that their Palm Island couldn’t be built were sa(n)dly wrong as they built it despite all odds.
There are several reasons the UAE has been chosen as Hyperloop’s petri dish. Dubai is home to the world’s third-busiest international airport, behind Atlanta and Beijing. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are both being developed as “smart cities”, and each aims to reduce carbon emissions by 75% by 2023. Hyperloop is the “logical next step” towards that goal, Hyperloop One’s Marcia Christoff says. (Redherring)

Dubai Expo 2020
Dubai water fountains

Ok, but what about the original Epcot and Dubai? One of the closest similarities to the original Epcot will be the Dubai Expo in 2020. The expo is designed similarly to the original version of E.P.C.O.T. Center with a central hub and various buildings extending out from that center section. Look at the picture above. What does it remind you of?

Dubai Expo 2020
Mobility Pavilion

Instead of Walt’s people movers at Epcot, there will be hyperloop tubes underground quickly connecting each section of the Expo.  There will be Pavilions showcasing over 40 different countries, not just 11 countries like at Disney’s Epcot.  That’s nothing, there is currently a Museum of the Future whose webpage states:

“We will be a showplace for a new era – a center of creativity and hope where you can see, touch and shape our shared future. Combining elements of exhibition, immersive theater and themed attraction, the Museum of the Future invites you to look beyond the present and take your place within possible worlds to come. “ Dubai Expo 2020

How about a pseudo Walt Disney quote?

“The future belongs to those who can imagine it, design it, and execute it. It isn’t something you await, but rather create.”
HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai

Maybe Walt was reincarnated as the Prime Minister of Dubai!

We may have lost our chance to build what Walt originally wanted to build. What Walt originally wanted to do was stated by him so clearly

“It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise.”
Walt Disney

In my other post ‘HEY ELON MUSK, BUILD THE ORIGINAL EPCOT!’ I suggested that Elon Musk take on another project. Why not, he seems to be able to manage running multiple companies. Elon has some great ideas and has been compared to Walt Disney who said “When you are curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.”  I’m glad that someone is on the road to creating something that may be more than just an Expo, Worlds Fair or a Theme Park. Maybe Dubai can pull it off.

Dubai Expo 2020 sounds like an incredible event, one that I would love to attend, if I could afford to stay there. It opens on October 20, 2020, 10/20/2020. Make plans to attend. It should be an event of a lifetime!

Disney Parks

Hey Elon Musk, build the original EPCOT!

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Since Elon Musk is in a way a modern day Walt Disney, how about Elon taking his business ideas and actually create a real EPCOT, the way that Walt Disney imagined it, not a theme park.

What was Walt’s original Epcot idea?Epcot logo in multi colors

Walt said “EPCOT will be an experimental prototype community of tomorrow that will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise.”

epcot artist concept transportation

I’ve wanted to be a part of Walt’s original EPCOT idea since I heard about it. I remember in October of 1966, just 2 months before Walt’s death, Walt airing his whole EPCOT idea. What a concept I thought. I want to be a part of this. In 1966, Nasa was in the midst of the Apollo program, eventually headed to the moon. Walt wanted to play a part in it, if nothing else, to get people excited through his animation team explaining the dream to America. What Walt really wanted was to see what the brightest minds of our country could come up with. Walt saw the advances that science was making. As scientists, first there has to be an idea, an aha moment, then the testing of the hypothesis, and finally the creation. EPCOT was going to try and bring together the brightest minds as well as those with incredible imagination.  Brad Bird, the director of ‘Tomorrowland’, the Disney movie about a boy that invented a rocket pack that ended up in a sort of EPCOT, was a tribute to the original EPCOT idea.

Fast forward 50 years to today. With Elon Musk’s ‘The Boring Company’, he could actually use this company to accomplish the underground roads that Walt’s crew conceived to keep traffic out of the city. Elon seems to be echoing many of the thoughts that Walt had, creating underground tunnels to mitigate traffic in high congestion areas, primarily in EPCOT. Musk’s new company hopes to increase the speed of these tunnel boring machines 10 fold to reduce the cost of the whole tunnel boring process.

musk boring machine

Walt also saw the direction that our cities were headed and wanted to build a city that showed what was possible, for those that wanted something different, something that was forward thinking. Elon has also said that he wants to do something to stop our dependence on fossil fuels, thus helping with climate change. This is forward thinking, not just thinking about the present, but to the future.

It’s obvious that Hyperloop, one of Elon’s other projects could also be integral to a modern day EPCOT. It would be Walt’s version of the WED PeopleMover on steroids.  I actually had this idea when I worked at a fossil fuel testing facility 30 years ago. I’m glad that Elon is pulling this off. We can use low pressure air to move pods, much like the drive through bank teller pods that you put your money in to make a deposit. This would be a great way to get people in the city to the place they need to go.

hyperloop project terminal

Creating EPCOT would be a small scale prototype city, one that if it works on a small scale could be applied to larger cities. If the main purpose of this new EPCOT would is to be an incubator of ideas, it would hopefully spurn other cities to follow this lead. Instead of declining cities and wringing our hands about the future, it would put a more hopeful slant on our existence, being excited about what would be thought of next. Heck, EPCOT could stand for Elon’s Prototype Community of Tomorrow.

I realize that I’m not the first person to make this connection, but maybe if enough of us keep planting this bug in Elon Musk’s team, they may realize that there is some merit to it.

I’ve often thought that maybe there would be enough people out there who wanted to see this become a reality and to put together a ‘Go Fund Me’ site, but really a ‘Go Fund EPCOT’ site. If the likes of Elon Musk or Richard Branson, who are billionaires don’t think that creating the original concept of EPCOT is for them, maybe the rest of us who do believe that there is merit to the idea could create a collective entity that is funded by individuals like you and me. Sounds far fetched, but then again isn’t that what EPCOT was in the first place?