New backstage gate installed at former EPCOT Future World bypass

lazyboy97o23 hours ago

The project never really made financial sense. What changed and what killed the project was the one-two punch of the pandemic killed all park revenue and that its biggest cheerleader was no longer CEO.

dmc4931 day ago

Not to spiral on it too hard but I'm sure the building was hypothetically possible to build - a structural engineering firm isn't going to go too far down the road in their design service and design something that can't stand up, and let's be totally honest it wasn't that radical of a structure. The risk is/was probably in the subsurface conditions which would be defined by the results of a Geotechnical Report, which would define what it takes to hit bearing capacity for all their foundations. The biggest issue we run into in instances like this - a Geotech Report is based entirely on bores pulled by the Geotechnical Engineer which characterize what the subsurface materials are, where bedrock was identified, and a ton of other lab tested information. If the Geotechnical Report was developed based on a small quantity of bores that don't properly characterize the subsurface condition then the strategy for deep foundations has a higher potential to - not fail per say, but potentially cost WAY more because you need to drill further down than anticipated, add more micropiles than expected, thicker piles, etc etc etc (there's a lot of deep foundation solutions). We had a job that had a Geotech Report based on like 10 bores across a large bldg footprint. The bores claimed we would hit bearing capacity at like 25 foot deep across the pad, it turned out we drilled piles and consistently got to 40+ foot deep until we hit got the rating we needed, ended up being a huge premium to the Owner. Long story short they might not have been able to guarantee a level of cost certainty around any given solution that would enable the bldg to continue especially thru the COVID and (just straight up bad) corporate decision making happening at the time. WILD speculation on my part but just my two cents

lazyboy97o1 day ago

I didn’t say they didn’t intend to build it. I said they don’t use design-bid-build and the construction documents were not completed.

DreamfinderGuy1 day ago

Not sure what you're talking about lol I saw them myself and spoke with people involved. They would not have announced and promoted the crap out of such a large project if they had no intentions of building it.

lazyboy97o1 day ago

Disney doesn’t use traditional design-bid-build for large projects. They get the contractor on board well before design work is completed. The construction documents were not complete when the project was killed.

DreamfinderGuy1 day ago

Touching on a handful of topics discussed here in the last few pages... The multi tier Festival Center was definitely possible to build, it was fully planned and sent for contractor bid before the project was canned (unfortunately when ground was already clear). It dawned on me today that that building was a stage, a festival flex space, and a bar with a fireworks viewing upcharge. They built the flex space and the stage there, but skipped the bar. Then it all clicked, Geo-82 is their replacement for the rooftop bar, ironic considering Gamma 1 was supposed to level that whole building. The originally planned festival center did get built, just in pieces in different places. No plans for Wonders of Life as far as I'm aware but they did clean that building up good last year. If you've seen the leaked interior photos from a while back, it's not that bad anymore. It's definitely ready to be reused for another project when and if they should decide they want to. I think whether or not they do will depend on how long it takes them to get around to it. The money to fix WoL was spent recently and they'll want to capitalize on that if they can when working on a new project there. If it takes them another decade, it might seem more lucrative to take that whole building down and start fresh with a structure that's less difficult to design something for.

dmc4931 day ago

lol worse than the epic ones

Timothy_Q2 days ago

What's the current status of the Epcot ones?

Andrew C2 days ago

lol. Bitter Disney fans.

Disney Analyst2 days ago

Oh look… I guess it’s not just Epcot.

ToTBellHop5 days ago

Agreed. It would be a mistake to demo it as you know they'd replace it with a large box.

HMF6 days ago

The mistake was tearing down CC West and being arrogant enough that you thought you could do better than the work of Hench, Sklar etc.

Andrew C6 days ago

It looks awesome too. Imo.

HMF6 days ago

Again, Disney is apparently too stupid to realize they have a property perfect for bringing the pavilion back.