Cue nerdgasm! I just received yesterday from Ebay a print of the 1982 map of the Disney EPCOT theme park. Just $24 (plus shipping) for theme park bliss! Well worth the price.
EPCOT officially opened on October 1, 1982, so this is the initial set of offerings in the park, with a few still pending. I didn’t get to EPCOT until 1991, but this still pretty much matches my memory of the experience.
As a nerdy, scifi obsessed kid, EPCOT was like walking into my ideal world. Not only was this a showcase of “cutting edge” technology of the time, it was also a “trip around the world.” I had been to a couple of World’s Fair’s before this, so EPCOT felt in some ways familiar to me.
This visit to EPCOT probably triggered all sorts of dreams and obsessions for me that exist to this day — from my fascination with the United Nations to my love of retro-futuristic aesthetics to my interest in virtual worlds / virtual reality.
So having this map in my home feels so right.
