Original subtitles

[pensive music]

- In California

during the 10th anniversary celebration of Disneyland,

an enterprising reporter named Emily Bavar

is looking for Walt Disney.

- Emily Bavar, who works for the Orlando Sentinel newspaper

has this hunch about Walt.

- Somebody has been buying up tens of thousands of acres

in Central Florida at very low prices.

- Mr. Disney, sir, may I have a quick minute with you?

I'm Emily Bavar, Orlando Sentinel.

- They was using shell companies

that have names like Latin American Development Management.

- I'm sorry, I need to get back to this -

- Are you the one buying up the land around Orlando?

- In Central Florida?

What in the world we'd wanna build way out there?

It's too swampy, too humid.

I think everyone knows I'm quite content with Disneyland.

All right?

Thank you.

- She knew it was him because in 1965,

no one knew Orlando was in Central Florida.

Like literally wasn't on most people's mental map.

- Thank you for your time.

- He realizes that the cat,

or maybe in this case, the mouse, is out of the bag.

He's just bought 27,000 acres of swampland.

And if he doesn't hustle, the whole deal can collapse.

[plane buzzing]

- [Narrator] This blank canvas.

- That's where we're building.

- [Narrator] Will lead to a project

of unprecedented ambition.

- [Marvin] This is quite a vision, Walt.

The largest single most visited theme park destination

in the entire world.

Walt Disney World.

- [Narrator] But Walt Disney World will be much more

than just a theme park.

- I need 10,000 acres.

- What are you talking about?

- More land than the size of Manhattan Island.

- [Narrator] It will be an entirely new idea.

- What Walt Disney World will become

is the first ever resort vacation destination.

- [Narrator] And realizing it will take everything.

- The scale of the project was so intense

and the pressure was so high.

- He was racing against the clock.

- [Narrator] Approximately 8 million cubic yards of earth

will be moved.

- You plan to have a train

running through the middle of the hotel?

- Can you do it?

- That's a shockingly daring thing to do.

- [Narrator] Billions of gallons of water

will be redirected.

- Like so much of Disney, we take this for granted.

- They're saying we need to move

the monorail out of the building.

- It's been done all over the world,

but Walt Disney World was the first one.

- The magic is, of course, how did they do that?

And in this case, how did they do it without Walt?

[inspirational music]

- I believe that this nation should commit itself

to achieving the goal before this decade is out

of landing a man on the moon

and returning him safely to the earth.

- During the 1960s, everyone is really thrilled

and excited about the space race.

- It becomes this challenge that permeates our culture.

[rocket zooming]

- Now we were literally racing to space.

We were launching things regularly into the air.

It was this wild time where everything was changing.

- There was this romance of technology

that you saw in TV shows

like "The Jetsons."

- Would you mind if I pass?

- Things that the astronauts are drinking in space

are now available to us in our supermarkets.

- Cars even started to look like rocket ships.

- Science fiction is becoming science fact.

I mean, we're seeing it happen.

- This is when America's can do-ism,

its technology, its optimism

was just going to sweep across the land.

The sky was the limit.

- [Narrator] The nation's largest city

looks to capitalize on the moment

by staging a giant exposition all about the future.

The 1964-'65 New York World's Fair.

- World's fairs start in the mid-19 century in England,

and they all are about the same thing.

Celebrating technology and industrial power

with a little bit of culture sort of sprinkled on top.

- All these various pavilions,

they're filled with ideas and concepts

of what is yet to come.

So 1964 World Fair in New York

is going to be envisioning the future.

[horns beeping]

- [Narrator] Envisioning the future is one thing,

building it is quite another.

- The person in charge is Robert Moses,

the builder of the 20th century in New York.

- The man has built highways, parks, bridges.

Everything he has done in modern New York

is a huge story in America.

- [Narrator] But this project requires creating

captivating, futuristic attractions.

- Robert Moses needs someone that knows

how to entertain the masses

and give them something they've never seen before

and something they won't forget.

- Sir, Walt Disney is here.

- Send him in.

- Walt, welcome to New York.

We're so excited to be working with you.

- Thank you, so are we.

It's wonderful to finally meet you.

- Marvin Davis. - Nice to meet you.

- [Narrator] By the 1960s,

Walt Disney is nationally recognized

as a pioneer in technology and entertainment.

- Kennedy and Walt Disney

are both singing from the same hymn sheet.

Kennedy is counting on and spurring on

the American can-do ethic.

And that's exactly what Walt Disney's been doing.

- Walt Disney is always pushing the boundaries

to embrace the new technology, to embrace the new medium.

If you want someone who's gonna lead you into the future,

it's Walt Disney.

- [Narrator] Disney will create four signature attractions

for the 1964-'65 New York World's Fair.

- We're calling it The Carousel of Progress.

Series of scenes about the advances of technology.

- A person who is as disruptively innovative

as Walt Disney is always looking for the next thing.

- The visitors will board moving carriages,

which will traverse the perimeter of the

exhibit clockwise beginning in the 19th century.

[Marvin faintly speaking]

Taking them through a series of vignettes.

- And then suddenly he's considering

all of the accomplishments that Robert Moses has made

in terms of the layout and design of New York City.

- Figures that we call audio animatronics.

- Walt.

- This is very impressive.

You shaped an entire city.

- Beautiful, isn't it?

It's taken me 30 years.

But the fair, this is a blank canvas.

Imagine what we could build from scratch.

[inspirational music]

- And in that moment,

a light bulb goes off for Walt Disney.

- He sees what Robert Moses has done with New York

and he thinks, "Hmm, what if I could do the same?"

[bright music]

- [Narrator] When the fair opens,

it's more than 50 million visitors

flock to Disney's four attractions.

The Magic Skyway.

It's A Small World.

Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.

And The Carousel of Progress.

- Two thirds of the US population

lives east of the Mississippi

and haven't yet been to Disneyland

'cause it's just too far away.

- So if anyone on the East Coast visited the World's Fair,

one of these pavilions was their lasting memory.

- Walt Disney thinks, "You know what?

Let's explore something on the East Coast,

but I don't want it to be Disneyland II."

- If he was gonna make another park,

he wanted to create something fundamentally different.

- Walt and Roy know that the location of any new project

needs to be carefully chosen.

They engage the same consulting firm used for Disneyland.

- Buzz, good to see you. - Good to see you.

- Can't wait to hear what you have for us.

- Have a seat.

- Roy. Good to see you.

- Walt talks with Buzz Price, who's an economist,

about trying to find a place to build his project.

- You'll see we've outlined

a number of potential regions in the east

for citing a future venture.

All figures use Disneyland as a benchmark.

- Disneyland is a huge success,

but Walt starts to see all of the things

that he doesn't like about Disneyland.

The biggest problem as he saw it

was that he didn't buy enough land.

He could not control what was happening

directly outside the gates.

- Cheap motels and restaurants and gift shops

sprung up that didn't have the same standards

that Walt Disney had for his park.

- So Walt realizes he needs a lot more space.

- And the preexisting tourism numbers

in Niagara Falls are very attractive.

The problem is the climate.

We estimate a six to seven-month operating window at best.

- That may be a deal breaker.

- Walt was the creative force,

Roy was the business force.

- Roy was the big brother

that helps implement all of Walt's visions.

- And he really was a genius

at keeping that company always grounded and solvent.

- Another viable option is Florida.

With seasonal temperatures

comparable to Southern California, Florida may offer-

- Listen, I appreciate these numbers,

but I can't make a decision like this.

I need to see these places for myself.

[plane buzzing]

- [Narrator] Walt and Roy tour several possible sites

recommended in Price's report.

- So he was looking in Niagara Falls,

he was looking St. Louis, Kansas City.

None of them fit into his vision.

- They've zigzagged across the country,

they're leaving their last location completely defeated.

And while on a small plane flying over Central Florida,

Walt happens to glance out of the window.

- Hey, fly lower.

I need to get a better look at this.

[plane buzzing]

[spirited music]

That's it.

- That's swampland, Walt.

- It won't be when we're done with it.

- To look at a swamp and see something

you're going to invest millions of your own dollars in,

you are either a visionary or you've lost your mind.

That's where we're building.

[plane buzzing]

- When Walt Disney is trying to figure out

where to situate this new project,

Florida ultimately becomes the perfect choice.

- It's cheap swampland, year-round sunny,

and it's getting its nice federally funded highway system.

Walt is very conscious of that interstate connection

in highways in building these parks.

- Walt picked Orlando because it was far removed

from a lot of things

and gave him the freedom and the opportunity

to really build something from scratch.

- [Narrator] Back in Burbank,

Walt gathers his team to reveal plans

for his Florida project.

- This is a site for Project X.

It's unobstructed land situated where Interstate 4

will cross with the Florida turnpike.

I need 10,000 acres.

[pensive music]

Yes, 10,000 acres,

and no one there could know Disney's buying it.

- Walt and I need the room for a moment.

- Being the older brother,

Roy was always looking to not only protect Walt,

but to protect the entire enterprise

that they had built together.

- 10,000 acres?

What are you talking about?

Disneyland is 160 acres.

Want a hedge?

Fine.

Let's buy 300, 400.

We do not need 10,000 acres for another Disneyland.

We aren't building another Disneyland.

- Then what are we building?

- A city.

A city of the future.

- Walt would never have settled

for just duplicating what he had already done.

- Ever since the world's fair,

Walt Disney has begun thinking about urban planning.

- You want us to build a city?

- Now, Roy Disney's been part

of Walt Disney Productions since 1923,

but he's been his brother forever.

And he knows that once Walt gets the bone in his teeth,

there's no turning him away.

- But I'm telling you,

we're gonna need to put a Disneyland in it first.

We know how to do that and we know it'll make money.

- So Roy doesn't say no to the impulse,

he just kinda redirects it.

- That's the only way I say yes to this.

- Okay, Roy.

- Walt and Roy have continually made

the impossible possible,

have always raised the bar for what entertaining could be,

what storytelling can be.

- But the idea that you're gonna build a whole city

in the middle of Florida swampland

and actually make money on this,

this is like a whole other order of magnitude.

(knocking)

- Walt, you wanted to start talking about plans.

I thought we could start with some ideas for the new castle.

- No, no, no, no.

I wanna see the designs for the city.

- Roy wants us to work on the theme park.

Don't worry about the theme park.

We know how to build a Disneyland.

We need to think bigger.

- As wild as it sounds to build the city of the future,

it's instructive to think about what's actually happening

in real American cities at this moment.

- [Narrator] In the mid-1960s,

US cities are undergoing radical transformations,

following a blueprint for modernization,

first applied in New York by Robert Moses.

- Robert Moses is a relentless proponent of the automobile.

- Robert Moses rammed his highways through neighborhoods,

lays all those parkways, builds all those bridges.

- In Europe, they say all roads lead to Rome,

so everything comes into the city.

But in American cities, the roads go out.

- And it encourages the dispersal

and movement of citizens from the cities into the suburbs

and making these cities into places of business

as opposed to places to live.

- And as this occurs, a lot of these families,

they're taking their tax dollars with them,

which actually means that cities do go downhill.

- Walt Disney began seeing major urban centers

fall into decay and disrepair,

and he'd felt that he could build the city

from the ground up.

- [Narrator] Walt Disney's futuristic city

will follow a different blueprint.

- Disneyland, a place of hopes and dreams,

facts and fancy, all in one.

- Walt Disney was interested in presenting ideals,

an ideal space and an ideal experience, like Disneyland.

- Disneyland is such a high functioning piece

of urban design.

- There's an emphasis on pedestrian experience

and how one moves through the space,

not just easily, but comfortably.

- Transportation, it's efficient, it's

elegant, stylish, and yet it's so functional.

- And so if he did this for an amusement park,

why not make it a way of living?

- This is the center.

The core of the city.

This is where people live.

- It's gonna be a real community of 20,000 people

living in this absolutely pristine,

ideal, urban environment.

- And he had jobs right next to the city,

so you could work in these industries right outside,

and then go to your home

and live your entire life within this planned community.

- You live there, you work there, you play there.

- And this is how people travel in and out,

not by car, but by monorail.

- You're gonna get to work by getting on a people mover

and also using monorails.

It's basically railroad technology,

but it has that high speed, sleek,

modern science fiction look to it.

And that's what Disney's looking for.

- [Narrator] Walt's vision is that the city's radial design

will prioritize public transportation

and a sense of community.

- It's gonna be a futuristic expression

of all the technology,

all the redesigns of people's lives

in modern America condensed into this one city.

- This is quite a vision, Walt.

- A living blueprint of the cities of the future.

- It's called the Experimental

Prototype Community of Tomorrow.

EPCOT.

[bright music]

- [Narrator] Walt Disney accelerates plans

for his experimental city.

Step one is buying property.

And unlike with Disneyland,

he's determined to secure plenty of room to grow.

- Walt Disney is a major public figure by this point.

- You can't just have him wandering around Orlando

asking about property values.

- Every real estate person

would immediately recognize Walt Disney

and start selling swampland at astronomical prices.

- And so the planning

was really pretty clandestine and complex.

- I understand you can show me around the property.

- They needed to do it in a very discreet and subtle way.

- Well, you're looking at it.

12,000 acres.

- And they did this through shell corporations.

- So, Mr. Davis, what do you think?

- I'll take it.

- Walt and Roy quietly bought up

all these different parcels of land in Central Florida

under assumed names

so that no one would know that it was Disney.

- [Narrator] Disney purchases

over 27,000 acres of swampland,

more than 170 times the size of Disneyland,

at around one twentieth the price.

- The company had acquired more land

than the size of Manhattan Island.

- There are people in Florida who are like,

"What's going on here?"

"Who's buying up all this land?"

"Is it the government?"

"Is it Lockheed, a defense contractor?"

- Mr. Disney, sir, may I have a quick minute with you?

- And then a journalist, Emily Bavar,

very boldly and bravely says, "I say it's Disney."

- She breaks the story and it really forces Disney

to accelerate their process.

- He was worried that it would catch on too quickly

with the news and be really disruptive.

- [Narrator] Walt needs to gain control of the narrative

and generate support for his utopian city.

- Walt Disney, who will bring a new world of entertainment,

pleasure, and economic development

to the state of Florida.

- So he turns to a powerful tool he used in 1955

while building Disneyland.

Television.

- So he, using the same techniques he had used

with the original Disneyland show,

planned this very professionally

high quality produced film about EPCOT.

- Outlying his vision

for this Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.

- That's EPCOT.

That's EPCOT.

[knocking on door] Yes.

- They're just about ready for you in the studio.

- We're calling it the Experimental Community...

No.

Experimental Prototype Community of... [coughs]

Of Tomorrow.

- [Mindy] Walt had been looking really tired.

- EPCOT. [coughs]

- Those who knew him recognized

that he had a persistent cough.

- It was almost like all the energy he could muster,

he gathered for that moment.

- But he was adamant he would make the film.

- I'll see you in the studio.

- We're calling it...

- EPCOT, spelled E-P-C-O-T.

- So he starts with the map,

and it's the same way with the Disneyland map,

and how we're all gonna live in this community together.

- It will be a community of tomorrow

that will never be completed.

- Walt was ready for it.

He wanted to show us what was possible.

- And believe me,

it's the most exciting and challenging assignment

we've ever tackled at Walt Disney Productions.

- [Narrator] But Walt Disney is facing his own challenges.

- Walt had an old polo injury to his neck

and he was gonna go in and have surgery.

- And so people had expected him to go across the street

to St. Joseph's Hospital and have a little something done,

then come back to work.

But there had not been a broad knowledge

of how ill Walt was.

- Walt had smoked almost his entire life.

And during an x-ray,

they discovered that he had lung cancer.

- [Narrator] The outlook is serious.

- Doctors tell Walt he has two years at best.

In reality, he has less than five weeks.

- Roy visited Walt all the time in the hospital.

And Roy always saw himself as Walt's protector.

His purpose in life

was to make his brother's dreams come true.

- Walt was still working.

He was looking up at the tiles

on the ceiling of his hospital room

and sort of planning out EPCOT.

- Here's where the theme park needs to go,

here's where EPCOT needs to go,

Here's where the monorail needs to run.

- He was racing against the clock.

And I think for Walt,

all Walt cared about at that time

was making sure that his visions were seen through

for his brother to carry that vision forward.

- And so Walt laid it out for his brother.

He just had the whole plan there

and they spent hours talking about it.

- The man never stopped.

He never stopped.

He never stopped dreaming.

- That's it.

- That's swampland, Walt.

- Walt, we're a studio

what do we know about amusement parks?

- The whole town is talking about us.

- Let them talk.

Come on Roy.

They're waiting.

- Nobody's gonna pay us

even a penny more for a colored cartoon.

- You'll never see

a second-rate Mickey doll like this again.

- All right, Mr. Cayman, deal.

Heading back to the studio now.

We're going again.

- There's no more money.

We've talked about this.

- I need everyone in this room

not just to think about how your cartoons look,

but how they sound.

But this one's like nothing they've seen before.

You see, he's not just a drawing.

I want him to be somebody.

[gentle music]

[men faintly speaking] [birds chirping]

[gentle music]

- [Narrator] Walt Disney dies on December 15th, 1966.

He was only 65.

- The passing of Walt Disney

really connotes the end of an era.

- There is an outpouring of grief.

This is a man who, for 40 years, had been shaping culture.

- [Narrator] In Anaheim,

Disneyland employees gather in tears on Main Street, USA,

and flags are lowered.

- There was a major question prevailing.

Without Walt Disney,

how does this company continue?

- Mr. Disney, I booked your flights for Orlando.

Would you like to look at hotel options?

I'm afraid there aren't many.

- Not now.

- For Roy, it is this moment of not just personal tragedy,

but upheaval for the company that bears his brother's name.

- The entire company has been based

on this partnership between two brothers.

They're yin and yang.

- Roy was getting ready to retire,

but he realized that if he retired,

there would be no more Disney.

[inspirational music]

- Roy knew his brother's last dream,

last vision was EPCOT.

- But Walt Disney's not here anymore.

So now Roy Disney is stuck with this albatross

of 27,000 acres of swampland in Florida,

and now Roy has to figure out what to do with it.

- He was enough of a realist to know

that the city that Walt envisioned

couldn't exist without Walt.

- It's a massive undertaking

that really deeds one unifying vision,

and that vision is gone.

But the inspiration isn't.

- Walt, if you were starting all over again,

what would you do differently?

[bright music]

- Suddenly in that moment, the universe aligns perfectly

and he realizes what he has to do.

- Roy says, "You know what?

We are going to improve on Disneyland,

learn from all of our mistakes,

and build a bigger, better Disney World."

- Tell me about the hotels in Orlando.

- Disneyland was built in the 1950s at a time

when, for the first time, there were cars in every driveway.

- Disneyland, you could do in a day.

You'd show up in your station wagon, you'd park.

- Go on all the rides, get some souvenirs,

have some lunch and drive home.

It's the perfect place for the automobile age.

However, we are now 10 years down the road in the jet age.

- [Narrator] In the 1960s,

the introduction of passenger jets like the Boeing 707

makes long distance air travel 40% faster and 25% cheaper.

- We can now hop on a jet,

in a matter of hours, be across country.

- It's this new, exciting way to travel.

So American families are looking for destinations

that they can get on a plane, fly to,

stay for an extended period of time, then fly home.

- So Roy decides, we are gonna build another Disneyland,

but we're gonna build hotels in it

and it's going to be the Disneyland for the jet age.

- This was not just going to be a theme park,

this was going to be a destination resort.

- Resorts that existed at the time

draw people to some kind of natural beauty.

- You wanna be at the ocean, you wanna be at a mountainside,

you want to look at a geyser, whatever it might be.

This is different.

- Roy is gonna create an unnatural wonder, Disney World,

and then build hotels around it.

- He wants to create the draw for the resort.

This revolutionary plan has never been done before.

[lively music]

- Morning, Roy.

- Roy's biggest responsibility before that point

was just keeping the company afloat.

The dreams were always Walt's.

[inspirational music]

- Another Disneyland.

- Not Disneyland.

- Now Roy has to be the dreamer.

- Walt Disney World Resort.

- Roy has to be now Walt and Roy.

No pressure though, right?

No pressure.

[pensive music]

- [Narrator] It's five months after Walt Disney's death,

and Roy commences earth moving work

on Walt Disney World near Orlando.

But before building can begin,

8 million cubic yards of earth must be moved,

more than 40 miles of canals dug,

and entire lakes emptied and reworked.

- Disney had not done anything of this mammoth proportion.

- This isn't Orange Groves like in Anaheim,

it's 27,000 acres of swamp.

- You dig a shovel, and water fills that hole immediately.

- Which means you're not starting at zero,

you're starting from about minus five.

- [Narrator] To lay their foundation,

Disneyland's on a novel solution.

- So the entire Magic Kingdom development

was built 14 feet above ground level.

- [Narrator] What will become the park street level

is actually the second floor,

with the space underneath put to good use.

- They built these utilidors,

which are essentially utility corridors.

It's like a theme park basement

where they can have cast members walk seamlessly

from one end of the park to the other without being seen.

- [Narrator] While construction for the park can now begin,

the resort's most significant new elements

have yet to be designed.

The flagship hotels.

- The hotels were very significant because otherwise,

it was just another theme park.

- [Narrator] Two hotels are planned for opening day.

One will feature a South Pacific motif,

the Polynesian Village.

- And the other hotel would be positioned

within view of Tomorrowland.

So the idea was, we need a futuristic hotel.

- But what should this hotel look like?

- Roy wanted to make sure that Disney World

was a reflection of the futuristic ideas of Walt Disney.

- Ah, yes.

- There were old artistic renderings of EPCOT

that Walt Disney and his imagineers

had made with incredible attention to detail.

And there is this early model

with this kind of cool angular design.

- It's a A-frame structure.

So two sides with rooms on either side.

- Which looked pretty cool, pretty contemporary,

but it still was missing sort of an element of Disney magic.

- Yet another idea of Walt's Fantasy city

was the underground transportation hub.

- Suddenly, inspiration hits.

Combine this amazing futuristic triangular building

with monorail transportation to create the idea

that would become the Contemporary Resort hotel.

- The idea was having the monorail

literally swoop right into the lobby of the hotel.

[spirited music]

You could take the elevator from your room down,

get right on the monorail,

and be whisked off to the park.

- It's literally living out the vision

of what EPCOT was supposed to be.

- When I first saw the architectural drawing,

I thought, "Oh boy, that's a shockingly daring thing to do."

- We want a 10 story open atrium with no intruding columns,

500 guest bedrooms, private balconies, and a monorail

running right through the middle.

- Roy asks a firm, U.S. Steel,

to both construct and run this hotel.

- You plan to have a train

running through the middle of the hotel?

- Yes.

- The massive open atrium, the A-frame design,

and the monorail track running through it

presents an incredible array of engineering difficulties,

something that Disney just doesn't do.

- Given the complexities,

naturally, we thought of U.S. Steel.

And I need it ready to open in fall 1971.

Can you do it?

- Yeah, we can do it.

- Wonderful.

I should warn you, we are quite particular.

- [Narrator] To meet Roy's ambitious timeline,

U.S. Steel needs to get creative.

- 1971 seems like it's breathing down your neck.

So the key to being able to meet

their construction timeline was prefabrication.

- [Narrator] Prefabrication has been around for decades.

Beginning in 1908,

Sears Roebuck sold ready to build kit houses

in their catalogs.

But using this building method

for a complex steel structure is unheard of.

- U.S. Steel designed it in this totally revolutionary way

in which they built this steel infrastructure framework,

then built prefabricated rooms

three miles away from the hotel.

- So that means the furniture went in,

the electrical, the mechanical, the plumbing.

They would pop that room unit on a truck

and bring it over to the site.

- It allows them to quickly build the steel frame,

and then slide these modular rooms into place,

almost like a Lego scale world.

- [Narrator] Over 1,000 uniform rooms are constructed

at a rate of roughly 40 per week.

Theoretically, cutting construction time in half.

But things don't go according to plan.

- There are several construction issues

with the rooms that are being made.

They don't interlock the way they are supposed to.

- [Narrator] Extensive alterations are needed,

and costs soar.

Jumping from tens of thousands

to hundreds of thousands of dollars per room.

- They're extremely expensive,

they're behind schedule,

opening day is less than a year away,

but the straw that breaks the camel's back

is something that is close to Roy's heart.

- What are they surveying down there next to the hotel?

- I couldn't find you earlier.

They're saying we need to move the monorail line

out of the building.

- They thought a monorail overhead

would be like a Chicago L chain,

making a big racket and vibration.

- The contractors insisted it wasn't going to work.

- That was part of the design from the beginning.

- To Roy, that vision is more than a design,

or a place of lodging.

It's Walt.

- Well, what do you want me to tell them?

- And he was gonna be damned

if anyone was going to change it or take it away from him.

- I'll tell 'em myself.

They're fired.

[upbeat music]

- Disney had been working with U.S. Steel

to construct the Contemporary Resort.

But as things went on, they started to have disagreements.

- Roy seemed to understand that if you want a job done,

you have to get it done yourself.

- So he ultimately lets the contractors go

and Disney buys out US Steal for $50 million.

Then he turns right around

and he rehires the contractors for a new company.

His company, Buena Vista Construction,

and they're gonna build the project themselves.

- [Narrator] And as Roy always imagined,

the monorail track

runs straight through the Contemporary Resort.

- Bringing transportation into the hotel

was really bringing a Walt Disney ideas into the park.

- [Announcer] When you and your family

visit Walt Disney World in Florida,

come stay in this spectacular hotel.

- [Sarah] That is the first hotel

that has monorails running through it.

- Roy Disney is now the man of unwavering,

uncompromising vision, carrying on his brother's legacy.

- From that point on,

it's Disney that builds its own hotels,

its own resorts, and its own, everything.

- 1971 Disney World

is the largest private construction project

in the United States.

At points there's at least 8,000 if not more workers,

and construction was happening,

at some points, seven days a week.

- Everybody working at a ferocious pace,

doing everything from concrete to paint

to all the technical bits and pieces

happening one after another,

just one on top of another.

- So they really had to scramble

just to make it seem as if they were ready to go.

- But it could not have been more fun.

- [Narrator] The long awaited vacation kingdom of the world

opens to the public on October 1st, 1971.

The Walt Disney World Resort

features the Magic Kingdom theme park,

various restaurants and shops, and two hotels,

the Contemporary and the Polynesian,

all linked together by monorail.

- At the opening of Walt Disney World,

Roy certainly was center stage, but what's interesting

is that his remarks were kept very brief.

- He doesn't grab all the honor for himself.

He makes it about Walt.

- [Narrator] In his opening day remarks,

Roy calls Walt Disney World

a tribute to the philosophy and life of his brother.

- Roy really emphasized

it will be known as Walt Disney World,

not Disney World.

- Because as he said, everybody knows the Ford car,

but not everybody knows that it was Henry Ford

that started it all.

So we are going to call this Walt Disney World

so that everyone would know that it was Walt's dream.

- Roy poured his heart and soul

into the getting that park open,

and he put every bit of his last energy into it.

- [Narrator] Less than three months later,

Roy Disney dies at age 78.

Flags fly at half-staff over Walt Disney World

as they had at Disneyland five years earlier for Walt.

- The world owes a tremendous debt to Roy Disney

for giving us the Walt Disney World Resort

and all the memories that we've built there.

- [Narrator] Walt Disney World

is the most visited vacation resort on earth,

with tens of millions of guests per year.

- Walt Disney World changed the way in which we understand

the combination of living and leisure.

- Your time immersed in the Disney universe

doesn't end at the gates of the park.

It translates to where you stay, where you eat,

what you do after the park has closed,

even your transportation.

It goes on and on and it's ever evolving.

- [Narrator] Since 1971,

the developed area of Walt Disney World

has grown exponentially to include four theme parks,

two water parks, four golf courses, a shopping destination,

and more than 25 resort hotels.

- The Walt Disney World Resort

is a massive sprawling complex

and arguably the hub in the area of Orlando.

- [Narrator] But Walt Disney World's legacy

goes far beyond its home.

- Walt Disney World is incredibly successful

because there's reproductions of it around the world.

- If you look at a resort destination

like the Atlantis in The Bahamas.

- Universal Resort, which is the same basic idea

that you can go and be immersed

in Universals' hotels and into their transportation,

all of these places are really taking their inspiration

from Walt Disney World.

- [Narrator] Disney's resort destination model

is so successful that the company later applies it

to Walt's original park.

Today the Disneyland Resort

includes two theme parks and three hotels.

- The idea of the resort was born with Disney World.

We got this all-encompassing package.

We could stay at a great place,

we could eat at great places,

we can experience really great immersive things.

- Like so much of Disney, we take this for granted.

It's been done all over the world,

but Disney World was the first one.

- This 27,000 acres of swampland and mush

has gone on to become the crown jewel

of the Disney Park empire

and has become the largest

single most visited theme park resort in the entire world.

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