Greg Maletic
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The Florida Project Film
The film is just over twenty minutes long, and is divided into four sections. The first is an introduction, narrated by the same gentleman who voiced most of the Disneyland TV specials of the era, laying the groundwork for the argument to be made: that Disneyland is a wonder, and a foundation for bigger and better things. Next comes Walt, standing in front of detailed maps and models, outlining his vision of what Disney is intending to build in Florida. Thirdly, we're back to narration describing some details about EPCOT and its nearby industrial park, accompanied by animation and artists' renderings. Finally, we're back to Walt to wrap things up, leaving us with an enthusiastic, "we're ready to [start building] right now!"

As defined in the Florida Project film, the Disneyworld (not yet "Walt Disney World") master plan includes several elements: an "airport of the future," a Welcome Center that all visitors would pass through, an industrial park, a "planned residential community" (EPCOT), and a theme park with resort hotels (the only part of the plan that was actually built.) Each of these major segments of the master plan is connected by updated version of the Disneyland Monorail.

No details are expressed concerning the "airport of the future," or of the Welcome Center. Only a few details are given concerning the theme park area of Disneyworld, stating only that the park would be nearly identical to the park found in Anaheim. The focus of the film is, of course, EPCOT.

EPCOT itself is built in a radial design, with a "Business and Commerce Center" at its heart. (This building is what you always see in the artists' renderings, with its slender, glass-covered hotel jutting up from its center.) Inside this center are a hotel, convention facility, offices, themed shopping (a la the World Showcase of today's "real" EPCOT) theaters, and nightlife activities. The film is quite eager to point out that every single one of these activities occurs under roof, in climate-controlled comfort. This huge roof isn't just a roof, however: it's actually a second story outdoor "recreation deck" with parks, tennis courts, and the like.

From the city center, PeopleMover trains expand radially outward to the rest of EPCOT, first to apartment housing, then to a "greenbelt" of parks and activity areas, and finally to low-density residential housing. It's implied, though not explicitly stated, that the residents of EPCOT are those who work somewhere in Disneyworld, either as a Disney employee or as one of the employees of the non-Disney firms located both in EPCOT and in the industrial park. No gasoline-powered transportation exists in EPCOT; rather, all non-electric vehicles--those owned by EPCOT residents when they need to leave their community, as well as delivery vehicles with supplies for the community--travel under the city on a multi-level traffic system.

The film spends a couple of minutes on Disneyworld's industrial park. Here would reside the real, functioning offices of some of America's most prosperous corporations. Portions of each corporate suite and/or manufacturing facility would be devoted to allowing visitors to tour and see American commerce in action.

Finally, Walt concludes the film:

That's the starting point for our Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. And now, where do we go from these preliminary plans and sketches? Well, a project like this is so vast in scope that no one company alone could make it a reality. But if we can bring together the technical know-how of American industry and the creative imagination of the Disney organization, I'm confident we can create--right here in Disneyworld--a showcase to the world of the American free enterprise system. I believe we can build a community that more people will talk about and come to look at than any other area in the world. And with your cooperation, I'm sure that the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow can influence the future of city living for generations to come. It's an exciting challenge; a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for everyone who participates. Speaking for myself and the entire Disney organization, we're ready to go right now!

Watching the Florida Project film, I was whisked back to my childhood memories, not just of what EPCOT was going to be like, but of what all of our futures would be like. It's an intoxicating film, with beautiful illustrations and a Disneyworld "master plan" that is ambitious and thrilling. The extensive planning of roadways, PeopleMovers, and monorails almost sounds like it could work. For a moment I felt myself wondering: why didn't the Disney organization try and build this?

But the more I thought about the film, the more I got hung up on a few issues…large ones. I'm not trying to throw water on the party here: I would like EPCOT to have worked as designed. And it's a bit unfair to criticize the plan's impracticality when (as Disney says several times during the film) it is a work in progress. Problems apparent during this first phase of planning would certainly get addressed at a later date, if not solved. But this is my impression of the plan, as told in the Florida Project film…so here goes:

Visitors are more important than residents?
The EPCOT of the Florida Project film is all about transportation, efficiency, and the satisfaction of those who would visit the city. But something important has been overlooked: there is virtually no mention of the people who would live in EPCOT. Beyond stating that they'd be active participants in the city's success, working to make the resort live, and riding the PeopleMover around, the film devotes very little time to them. This stands in stark contrast to the visitors to the city: they're mentioned on many occasions, and in fact the only building that had seen any serious design effort--the city's central hotel--is built specifically for them.

At least twice in the film, Disney mentions how impressed visitors to the city will be when they visit, but the film doesn't pay more than lip service to the idea that its inhabitants' happiness is paramount. How that's accomplished is left as a detail to be filled in later. And problematically, the tough part of building EPCOT is not where to place the PeopleMover stations for optimal traffic flow, but how to provide satisfying lives for its citizenry. The film gets these priorities backwards.

Are transportation ills really the biggest problem cities face?
More than anything, the film is about the transportation systems the city's occupants and visitors would use. Though transportation is a significant issue in any metropolitan area, it's rarely been the most important issue. Yet this is really the only issue that EPCOT seems to want to solve. (Even in the ‘60s, it's hard to imagine the mayors of any of the country's ten largest cities claiming that transportation was the single largest issue they faced.)

And the facts about Disney's transportation technologies are stretched a bit in the film. For example, the narration claims that:

EPCOT's PeopleMover is a silent, all-electric system that never stops running. No single car can ever break down and cause a rush hour traffic jam in EPCOT. Because the cars run continuously, there will be no waiting in stations for the WEDWAY PeopleMover; the next car is always ready.

The concept behind the PeopleMover--that it never stops--is an interesting one, but it doesn't solve the problems the film claims it does. I bring this up only because I hope the Disney people didn't really believe what they were saying here. Imagine for a second what happens when a PeopleMover car breaks down: every vehicle in the system has to stop! It's actually far worse than an automobile-based system, where the individual mobility and intelligence of each of the vehicles on the road (provided by the driver) automatically routes around obstacles to keep traffic flowing. No such luck with the PeopleMover. And the idea that there's "no waiting"…anyone who's spent more than a half-hour at Disneyland knows that this is a fallacy. Yes, cars are continuously arriving at the station, but if people arrive continuously at a faster rate than the cars, then people wait, just like they do at the queues for Space Mountain or Peter Pan's Flight. Certainly Disney knew this, but somehow felt that the promise of all-electric mass transit wasn't good enough on its own; the story had to be juiced a bit to make it deliver more than it was really capable of.