Oct. 1: EPCOT Center opened on this day in 1982

Walt Disney had a dream. A dream even bigger than the ones he built in his lifetime, and arguably more consequential too. He wanted to establish what he called an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow -- a fully functioning city of the future that would be a "showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise." It was to be a proving ground for all kinds of innovations in living, a perpetual "living blueprint of the future" that would demonstrate the virtues of "proper control of planning and design."

But Disney died before he could realize his vision, and the Disney company decided that it just wasn't equipped to pursue the concept without his strong guidance. That doesn't mean the plan was forgotten, though, and on Oct. 1, 1982, the less socially ambitious EPCOT Center (now simply called Epcot) opened to the public.

Just a few weeks before he died, Walt Disney detailed on film his plan for this Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. The film starts with about five minutes of narration laying out the overall Disney philosophy, then another few minutes in which he talks about his plans for "Walt Disney World" -- a phrase he uses not to mean the Florida amusement park we know today, but a much bigger project of which the amusement park is only a relatively small part, and of which EPCOT is the all-important hub. About 9 minutes 40 seconds in, he begins discussing his plans for the futuristic EPCOT city (which, it emerges, is intended to be within a climate-controlled dome):

And here are tributes to the Epcot that we know today, from its 30th birthday last year: