Acquired
03:49:04 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:49:04] S0: was. The ambition. [03:49:05] S1: So one, it starts with a brand new airport of the future paired together with a vast entrance complex and park. Two, there will, of course, be a theme park, a new Disney World Magic Kingdom theme park that was initially intended to be five times the size of Disneyland just for just for the theme park. Three, a 1,000 acre industrial park intended to house satellite r and d offices for America's greatest companies. Think everybody that Walt is partnering with at the World's Fair, Ford, GE, Pepsi, all the companies that are corporate sponsors back at Disneyland. He wants them Monsanto. Yeah. Monsanto. Move their most advanced r and d teams to this new city in Florida. And then four, most important, the heart of the whole project is Epcot. But, again, not the Epcot you know today. So Walt Epcot was going to be, in his own words, a living blueprint of the future where people actually live a life they can't find anywhere else in the world, a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise. And, basically, it is a sci fi city.
03:50:34 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:50:34] S0: Meanwhile, I gotta say, they couldn't open most of Tomorrowland for 1955 when they opened Disneyland, and they're having a really hard time keeping up with the pace of technology. I walked through Tomorrowland even today, and I'm like, this all feels really dated and nothing like Tomorrow. I think Walt himself has a famous quip on this, which is tomorrow comes a lot faster into today than we can kinda keep up with. So you could imagine if they actually built this thing, it it very quickly would would not feel like the future. I mean, you you plow a bunch of CapEx into concrete and futuristic concepts. New stuff gets invented real fast, and then it's ugly and old. That's a good point. [03:51:11] S1: But perhaps you haven't heard the vision for what this city is yet. [03:51:15] S0: Please. Please lay it
03:51:15 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:51:15] S0: Please. Please lay it [03:51:16] S1: on me. Okay. It will have a radical radial design plan. So the city itself is gonna fan out like spokes on a wheel from a domed central downtown hub. Yes. You did hear that right. A 50 acre enclosed climate controlled, fully domed central downtown city that will have no surface streets, fully pedestrian walkways. Monorails. Well, yeah. Yes. The the only motorized forms of transportation will be monorails and this new concept of people movers. And then below ground, there will be a vast network of tunnels, a multilayered tunnels underneath the ground for cars and industrial vehicles to circulate throughout the city. On the edge of this downtown dome, there'll be high density apartment buildings. Surrounding that, there is a vast green belt of parks and recreation facilities. And then finally, in the outer ring of the city is low density single family home neighborhoods. And the plan is that 20,000 people will live here in this city with full self governing infrastructure, so schools, public services, everything, and it is all gonna be founded as a new city in the state of Florida. This is unreal. [03:52:52] S0: Self governing, but in a special district carved out and controlled lawfully by the Walt Disney Company.
03:52:52 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:52:52] S0: Self governing, but in a special district carved out and controlled lawfully by the Walt Disney Company. [03:53:00] S1: I mean, it sort of sounds like a I don't know if it's a utopian or a dystopian film or both. Yeah. It's definitely ambitious. So on 11/15/1965, Walt, along with Roy and the then governor of Florida, Hayden Burns, hold a press conference where they announce that Disney has been buying land in Central Florida [03:53:30] S0: Under various subsidiaries and obscured names, so no one would catch on to what they're doing. [03:53:34] S1: Yep. And that a very large new Disney project will be coming to the state. That planning has already begun, and they will be seeking public approvals. [03:53:47] S0: They bought 27,000 acres. That is the size of San Francisco. [03:53:53] S1: Yes. Yes. Twice the size of Manhattan. It's almost 40 square miles that they have purchased in the middle of Florida, and it's all swampland right now. It's uninhabitable. And so in May 1966, so a few months later, they get government approval to drain the swamp and prepare to build Walt's vision. [03:54:19] S0: Let's go.
03:54:19 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:54:19] S0: Let's go. [03:54:25] S1: If only. So in October 1966, Walt records a film of a pitch, a full reveal for the Epcot Vision. We'll link to it in the show notes. You should absolutely go watch this movie. It is the second to last recorded appearance that Walt makes in his life, and he has no idea. The last one, think, is a day or two later. And he ends the video with speaking for myself and for the entire Disney organization. We're ready to go right now. Unfortunately, he dies about two months later. His death is both incredibly fast, incredibly unexpected, and, of course, kind of a slow motion disaster that's been brewing his whole life ever since he started chain smoking in France when he was 17 years old. [03:55:27] S0: I mean, he was notorious for his hacking cough. That is how people knew that he was approaching if you were in a building on the Burbank Campus.
03:55:27 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:55:27] S0: I mean, he was notorious for his hacking cough. That is how people knew that he was approaching if you were in a building on the Burbank Campus. [03:55:34] S1: Yeah. You'd hear him hacking. So that summer in 1966, Walt had started experiencing pains in his body. He assumes that it's all the stress from, you know, all these new projects that he's working on, or maybe it's old polo injuries that he has, or maybe it's this nagging cough. But obviously it's cancer eating away at him. Finally, in November 1966, so right after recording the Epcot pitch video, he checks himself into the hospital where doctors find a pretty massive tumor in his lungs. They do emergency surgery to remove it. He comes back to the studio afterwards, and the company announces publicly that Walt is back. They say he's gonna recover, but the cancer has metastasized, and the doctors tell him, hey. You probably only have a couple weeks or months to live. His health goes downhill quickly, and on 12/15/1966, just ten days after his 60 birthday, Walt Disney passes away. Right in the middle of this Epcot thing. I mean, like [03:56:42] S0: The thing is What [03:56:42] S1: a sliding door moment. [03:56:44] S0: He was always escalating bigger and bigger and bigger. It would have always been right in the middle of the biggest thing he's ever done. [03:56:53] S1: That's such a good point.