Disney Imagineers Carefully Select EPCOT Pavement But Prefer We Don’t Notice

EPCOT continues their massive transformation! When visiting the park, you’re quickly confronted with the massive amount of construction taking over the Future World portion of the park as Disney Imagineers are hard at work transforming the space into new “neighborhoods”. What may seem like an unpleasant thing to work around at the moment is really pixie dust for what’s to come.

Disney Imagineers are ensuring they are carefully selecting all the details, right down to the pavement we will be walking on… but they prefer for us to not notice! Creative Portfolio Executive at Walt Disney Imagineer, Zach Riddley, took to social media to share a little insight on what goes into something as simple as the pavement selection in the parks.

As shared by Zach Riddley: “Continuing to look at the inspiration and design details of EPCOT, today I’m sharing a story about paving. It’s a surface you don’t often pay direct attention to, but the color and texture of the ground under your feet are a primary surface for storytelling. Cobblestones, brick, curbing, scored concrete, patterned terrazzo (like the new flooring coming to Club Cool and Creations Shop that I’ve shared previously) all work to immerse you in a believable place. But we actually prefer you don’t notice the ground too much! It’s all part of the bigger composition of placemaking that makes each of our parks and neighborhoods special. For EPCOT we set out to find new paving materials to define this texture for World Celebration. We wanted warm grays in a range of hues to complement the silvers and off-whites of Spaceship Earth and many of our new World Celebration facades. Here you can see some of the material and samples the team evaluates when thinking about scale tone, reflectivity and overall colors. Funny how something as simple as pavement can be so important to achieving an environment that just “feels right.””

Do you notice the Disney pavement while strolling through the parks? There are certain areas where we have, but in general we are looking all around rather than down. Of course, we can’t help but remember what we called EPCOT’s pixie dust pavement that could be found in the Future World portion of the park before construction. We’re hopping Disney brings back at least some of that special pavement!

We’ll keep you posted as EPCOT’s transformation continues to unfold. In the meantime, get ready to experience EPCOT’s latest news with the debut date of the new nighttime spectacular, Harmonious!