Walt Disney had been dreaming about building an amusement park for a few years. His goal was to build an amusement park where children and parents could have fun together. The original idea was to call it Mickey Mouse Park, but this was then changed to Disneyland.

Walt Disney’s ultimate dream was the creation of EPCOT, which he envisioned not as a theme park, but as a living, breathing "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow." In his final years, Disney was obsessed with solving the problems of modern urban decay, such as traffic, pollution, and inefficient housing. His dream was to build a self-sustaining city for 20,000 residents that would serve as a "blueprint for the future." This planned community was designed as a circle, with a central business hub and high-density housing connected by high-speed monorails and PeopleMovers, while cars and trucks would be relegated to underground tunnels to keep the surface safe for pedestrians. Disney famously said that EPCOT would "never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems." Although his death in 1966 led the Disney Company to pivot the project into the theme park we know today, glimpses of his original dream can still be seen in the monorail system and the planned community of Celebration, Florida, which the company later developed.