The company is risking $800 million on a big new amusement park at Disney World. But this one is designed for adults, and management is admittedly a little nervous.
After a decade and a half of planning and two years under construction, the biggest and most expensive venture ever attempted by Walt Disney Productions is well on its way to realization. The newest addition to Disney World near Orlando, Florida, EPCOT—for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow—will be twice the size of the park's Magic Kingdom and cost more than $800 million, making it one of the largest one-shot projects ever built by a private corporation.
Even for the master of the theme park concept, EPCOT is a big gamble. Scheduled to open in October 1982, merely to break even it will have to attract substantially larger crowds to Walt Disney World than the complex is getting now, and visitors will have to stay longer and spend more money per day. Given the uncertainties of the economy and the ever-rising price of gasoline (virtually all Disney World visitors arrive by automobile), there is no guarantee that it will be able to do so.
Yet from the viewpoint of company management, it is a risk that must be taken. Over the past decade, Disney's primary audience—the five-to-thirteen age group—has shrunk from 18,2% of the U.S, population to 13,5% today, and that decline continues. At the same time, the percentage of adults over 25—traditionally poor prospects for Disney's type of entertainment—is climbing rapidly.
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