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FUTURE WORLD
1975
JUNE 12,2024
I like to think that I have encountered several pivotal moments in my career as a narrative designer and architect of illusion. Two of these significant shifts began when I had been working for several years at WED (Walter Elias Disney, the theme park design division of Disney). A headhunter recruited me to become the Director of Design at Six Flags, where I was tasked with spearheading a proposal for a theme park in Paris—long before Euro Disney was even a concept. Afterward, WED brought me back to work on EPCOT.
Future World Plaza by John DecCuir
Marty Sklar, John Hench & John DeCuir pondering the future of Future World
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I recently visited EPCOT and witnessed the new developments in the Communicore area. It reminded me of a conversation I had with Ray Bradbury many years ago. We actually started working on Communicore before Spaceship Earth, as it was to be the central information hub for EPCOT. It was to house a show called Future World Theater, which eventually morphed into Spaceship Earth with Ray Bradbury's help. In the sketch above, you can see the monorail encircling Communicore and bringing guests to the main hub of EPCOT for an overview of the project. Below you can see john Hench, Marty, and I operating in the shadow of the Communicore rendering.
It was unusual to propose an amphitheater-style 10,000-seat presentation arena, situated in the center of the EPCOT hub; however, it addressed the challenges of guest arrival capacity that conventional ride systems couldn't service at peak arrival times. These available ride systems would and do often force guests to return later for what was intended to be an introductory show. It was a contradiction that John Hench & I often debated.
The amphitheater concept allowed for an at arrive-any-time nonstop show that looped and ran continuously throughout the day. Guests could enter at any point in the performance, with narration that allowed them to quickly grasp the history of various world communities. The show included highlights such as the Egyptian Mystery Parades at Karnak, Cleopatra's entry into Rome, and New Year's Eve in Times Square. All culminating in a World of Tomorrow dream city.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, Future World Theater ultimately ended up on the cutting room floor. However, it did inspire the more conventional ride system for Spaceship Earth, which told the story of humanity's urban anthropology from a very different perspective. My last months at WED before starting my own company were spent mapping out the Spaceship Earth concept with Ray Bradbury.
WORLD SHOWCASE - As early as 1974, Disney announced its intention to launch World Showcase. It was always intended to precede the opening day of EPCOT. Its evolution is a fascinating story, which we will address on another page. Here, you can see the iterations of World Showcase morph from its original contemporary design of pie-shaped pavilions. (Coffee break, tongue-in-cheek conversations referred to this first design as the "LAX version." It didn't take long for Harper Goff to step in and bring the story of each pavilion to life, creating the beautiful themed facades that now invite guests as they stroll along the international promenade. My office was two doors down from Harper's Office when he suggested to Card Walker that the themed facades were a better idea, but Tony Baxter tells that best story.
In 1976, a decision was made to merge EPCOT and its precursor project, World Showcase, despite John Hench having reassured me earlier that EPCOT opening would follow World Showcase by 10 years or more. Given the lack of international financial support for World Showcase and the apparent corporate enthusiasm for EPCOT, it was decided not to abandon World Showcase but to merge the two parks and open them together. We explored several options for combining these two major projects.,,
FROM THE 1976 ANNUAL REPORT - " Marty Sklar, John Hench & John DeCuir of WED enterprises discuss the emerging concept for the EPCOT center, combining the World Showcase and the EPCOT Future World Theme Center.
The sketch below, which I was especially fond of, showed the world showcase pavilions gathering not separately as two parks but merged around Communicore, paying international homage to the EPCOT concept. The three major gateways between the pavilions led to three future world "lands" very similar to the Disneyland layout - SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, COMMUNITY & COMMUNICATIONS & THE ARTS.
AN EARLY DECUIR SKETCH SHOWING THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD GATHERING AROUND COMMUNICORE
The World Showcase pavilions never blended into Future World; instead, although adjacent, they remained distinct and separate from one another. This arrangement positioned EPCOT's Future World as the "main street" leading to the World Showcase, rather than the other way around. The ambition for Communicore, as Ray Bradbury had envisioned, was to create a New Idea Wall Street, where guests could invest in Future World technologies. Unfortunately, cyber technology was still in its infancy at that time, and the necessary tools to realize this dream simply did not exist. Now, with the emergence of AI, this concept has finally become achievable, waiting to be realized.
A DECUIR SKETCH SHOWING THE "NEW IDEA PLAZA" IN COMMUNICORE
Today, Imagineers are fortunate to have a whole new design vocabulary at their disposal for creating a Communicore II. They now have the cloud, holographic lenses, artificial intelligence, advanced algorithms, virtual kinetics, and more.
I'm confident that Ray will be observing from above, reporting to Walt how his dream is evolving in the Imagineering laboratory as Imagineers address the challenge of discovering new ideas and worlds of the nation will gather to celebrate better ways of living.
Best wishes to today's Imagineers and good luck
POSTSCRIPT - "Given Ray Bradbury's penchant for the appropriate metaphor, he said one morning, 'You know, Communicore needs to be like a Wall Street for new ideas - a place where ideas leave the world of mental imaging and take shape in model form. Let's build models of these new ideas and see if anybody votes for them or invests in them sufficiently for them to enter the real world."
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SPACESHIP EARTH EMERGING FROM THE FUTURE WORLD THEATER CONCEPT IN THE HEART OF COMMUNICORE
Of course, this was in the very early days of computer modeling, and we had no idea that the next generation of digital modeling would allow us to put on headsets and actually walk through a virtual model of a new idea, sort of like riding through a new idea on a future world Disney dark ride."