Walt Disney World, the $400million holiday project covering 43 square miles of Florida, is now open. But it is also still under construction, and will be for the next 50 years or more, for Disney wanted it to contain a "city of the future," whose inhabitants would live a life possible in no other part of this planet.
BETWEEN Walt Disney World and Cape Kennedy there are just 50 miles of forests, lakes, and marshes, dissected by great white motorways. From the air one can see in this corner of Florida two works of man reaching for the sky.
These two are very different in appearance. The first is a cathedral of steel and cement, one of America's great space rockets. The other is a blue-and-white castle, whose Gothic spires are almost obliterated by the heat haze – or perhaps it is just a vision of a far-off childhood.
One is a work of triumphant technology and the other a new poetic vision for mankind. They are like two worlds ready for take-off. Everyone knows that from Cape Kennedy begin the journeys to the moon and planets. But it is too early to say what is starting at Disney World.
One thing is certain. At Disneyland, over in California, there was nothing behind the facade of the greatest and most imaginative funfair in the world. In fact, to look behind the facade and see the pumps, the motors, the wires, and the little men like ourselves inside the characters and costumes of Disney's dreamworld was just a melancholy and disillusioning experience.
At the new Disney World there is a larger and more modern funfair, but as well as this a step really has been made toward the community of the future.
Here, man will rediscover nature as it was on the first day of creation; he will be projected into the world of his childhood dreams; and he will also see his desires as "homo technoligens" being fulfilled – he will be living in a futuristic environment.
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