Disney World’s urban design is great, but it could have been even better

Walt Disney World is one of the most visited places in the world; in 2019, nearly 58 million people visited the four theme parks. And similarly, the same number of people flew into Orlando International Airport in 2023, making it one of the United States’ busiest airports.

Disney World presents an interesting dichotomy between the dense, walkable environment the resort provides and the typical car-dependent landscape surrounding it. While it may not be the primary force driving people to spend thousands on their stay there, Disney’s urban design and planning plays no small part in why it is so enjoyable for many.

Orlando as a whole

Unlike Disney World itself, Orlando is not very walkable. In fact, one study found Orlando was the least walkable city in the entire country. According to this study, it would take more than 11 hours to walk between Orlando’s five most popular landmarks – more time than it takes to fly to Paris.

The study’s methodology might not be the most scientific, but it’s not the only one that’s come to this conclusion. Another study by Smart Growth America placed Orlando 33rd out of 35 cities in its walkability rankings.

Orlando isn’t alone in these struggles. Many places all across America are entirely car dependent and unwalkable. Perhaps this is why when many come to Disney World, they’re not prepared for the amount of walking required.

This has even given rise to a condition known as the “Disney rash,” which arises due to prolonged exercise in the heat, and commonly occurs in people walking around Disney World. Some preventive advice, from Verywell Health, is simple: “get used to exercising.” 

According to author Tom Vanderbilt, this car dependency has made something “depressingly obvious: public transportation [is] now ‘fun,’ an attraction in a theme park.” The abundance of parking at Disney’s facilities makes this clear, that for many the public transit is something to be enjoyed only within the parks, and that cars are the way to get to the parks.

Walt Disney’s vision

Although many drive to the parks, plenty of people fly into Orlando and take various shuttles to the parks, such as MEARS, despite not being officially affiliated with Disney. Disney is no stranger to moving people efficiently – nearly 250,000 people use the public transit in Disney World daily, with the monorail system making up almost 150,000 of those riders.

Walt Disney knew that an effective transit system would be vital to the success of the resort or any of his endeavors, and he knew that cars were not conducive to such a system. He is quoted as saying:

This transit system sees use today at Walt Disney World Resorts, but Disney himself imagined an even grander scale network in his planned magnum opus, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow – EPCOT.

Although never built as Disney himself envisioned, EPCOT was a planned city and community that would have housed around 20,000 people, and was not based on any existing city. EPCOT was to demonstrate “to the world what American communities can accomplish through proper control of planning and design.”

The plan for EPCOT

The city was designed with a central hub and radial spokes branching out from this centralized area, with various means of transit. The city would feature all amenities one might expect – shops, hotels, restaurants, parks, recreation areas, etc. The real focus, however, was on transportation, which differed starkly from much of America at the time, especially with the rise of the personal automobile in the 1950s and 60s. 

Disney was not entirely against the automobile, as stated earlier. In fact, one of the main reasons he decided to build Disney World where he did was because of its ease of access by car, located only a few miles south of Interstate 4 and Florida’s Turnpike (known at the time as Sunshine State Parkway).

However, Disney knew cars were not the ideal transportation method for a variety of reasons. Anyone leaving their home in EPCOT would “drive down a street reserved for motor vehicles” to eliminate conflicts with pedestrians, as explained in Disney’s 1966 promotional film for EPCOT.

In EPCOT, “the pedestrian will be king, free to walk and browse without fear of motorized vehicles.” In the central city, which Disney envisioned encapsulated within a dome to protect it from the elements, cars would not be allowed – the area would be entirely pedestrianized, and only electric vehicles would be allowed to travel above the city. Note here that electric vehicles does not mean electric cars – Disney had his own idea for this electric transportation.

The major means of transportation for everyday people in EPCOT was to be a combination of the monorail and the WEDway PeopleMover. The monorail was to provide long distance rapid transit throughout various parts of the resort, such as EPCOT and to the park and planned industrial complex. The PeopleMover was designed for intercity travel and would have been the main way people traveled throughout the city.

EPCOT’s transit

These two methods would be the “heartbeat” of EPCOT, and would converge at a central terminal located beneath the major hotel and commercial hub. The PeopleMover would be the most efficient way of getting people around the city, in Disney’s eyes.

As Disney claimed, the PeopleMover was silent and never stopped. Because power was supplied to the PeopleMover by motors embedded in the track, completely independent from the car, there would be no breakdowns or traffic jams. Furthermore, because the cars were constantly moving, there would be no waiting in stations and minimal headway.

These tracks traveled above the downtown streets, never interfering with pedestrians, and arrived at the next station in minutes. They also extended to all parts of the city, from the busy central district to the low-density, single-family home neighborhoods on the outskirts of EPCOT.

Nowadays, low-density suburban neighborhoods are mostly car-dependent and contribute to urban sprawl. This was a problem Disney wanted to fix – in his words, “I don’t believe there’s a challenge anywhere in the world that’s more important to people everywhere than finding solutions to the problems of our cities.” Disney took this into account when designing the suburbs of EPCOT, and they are anything but car-dependent. 

In the plan, residents would be able to travel to PeopleMover stations which were “located conveniently just a few steps from where they live,” a walkable solution nearly directly to the doorsteps of the people. 

These homes would be located in green areas with recreation for adults and play areas for children. These areas would be connected to the homes with “footpaths reserved for pedestrians, electric carts and bicycles… always completely safe and separated from the automobile.”

Disney’s view on cars

This separation from the car was a central component of Disney’s design philosophy for EPCOT. He was upset at the “second-rate Las Vegas” near Disneyland, with the auto-dependency of Harbor Boulevard leading to plenty of low-budget facilities popping up near his theme park that detracted from his vision. 

Although Disney might have been less than enthusiastic about cars, he knew that they still had their place. According to the promotional film, “Automobiles and trucks will not be barred from EPCOT. In fact, a vast armada of vehicles will continuously flow through the heart of the community, traveling below the pedestrian level on roadways reserved for specific types of vehicles.”

On the bottom layer of the city, beneath the pedestrian areas, would be a dedicated truck route for supply vehicles, with easy access to loading docks and service elevators. This dedicated level would reduce conflicts with other vehicles and ensure all trucks on this level were here for business only.

A middle level would be dedicated for personal automobiles, with parking adjacent to the roadway. In Disney’s vision, “no stoplight will ever slow the constant flow of traffic through the center of EPCOT.”

It’s unclear exactly how this would have played out; perhaps there would be roundabouts at intersections, or perhaps there would have been no stops along the roads so that destinations were reached by PeopleMover or foot only. EPCOT’s design seems like it may have solved the last mile problem, but the city was never fully built, so we might never know.

Despite the dedicated spaces for cars, “automobiles and freeways will not be EPCOT’s major way of entering and leaving the city.” Disney wanted the PeopleMover to be the primary method of transportation, and noted that “most EPCOT residents will drive their automobiles only on weekend pleasure trips.”

The PeopleMover cars would have been “considerably smaller than full-size passenger cars would be for city use.” It’s no secret that cars today are constantly getting larger and more dangerous for pedestrians, so perhaps the smaller PeopleMover cars would have been safer, if there were ever any pedestrian conflicts to begin with.

The Disney of today

Although the grand ambitions of EPCOT were never fully realized, Disney’s transit lives on, and ridership is among the highest in the entire country. Even Robert Moses, whose policies have played no small part in the rise of car-dependency in the United States, wrote that EPCOT would be the “first accident-free, noise-free, pollution-free city center in America.”

Similarly, renowned urban planner James Rouse praised Disney’s design, claiming that “the greatest piece of urban design in the United States today is Disneyland.”

Disney even had plans for a large-scale “airport of the future” directly south of EPCOT that would have provided closer access than Orlando International Airport (MCO), but these never came to fruition, and the land remains undeveloped.

As mentioned earlier, despite the strong public transit and walkability that Disney World offers, Orlando and the surrounding areas near Disney are anything but an urbanist paradise. Progress is being made, but it’s not without its hurdles.

Back in the 1980s, there were plans to spend nearly $650 million on a maglev train that would take riders from MCO to EPCOT in just seven minutes. Disney decided not to allow the project to go through, and instead offered to redirect the train to what was, at the time, a cow pasture.

More recently, Disney pulled out of a deal with Brightline to build a high-speed rail station at Disney Springs. Brightline has decided to continue by building a station close to Disney Springs, but it’s not on Disney property.

Fortunately, transit is improving in Florida. Brightline offers high-speed rail connecting Miami to Orlando, and has partnered with MEARS to shuttle guests straight from MCO to various Disney World Resorts. This is especially convenient since Disney discontinued the Magical Express, which functioned similarly to the MEARS shuttle.

Transit to and within Disney World isn’t perfect, but it is improving. Perhaps the allure of a dense, walkable environment where one doesn’t have to worry about transportation, and where there is plenty to do and see everywhere you look, is part of the appeal of Disney World.

Had Walt Disney lived longer, perhaps EPCOT as he envisioned it may have been a reality. Although it never happened, his prototypes, and what we see today in Walt Disney World, demonstrates the efficiency of public transit, and how we might think differently about designing our cities and building for the future.