Sizing Up EPCOT: How does it compare to the World’s Fairs?

Posted June 8th, 2008 By: Jackie Steele

Recently over at the “Come to the Fair” World’s Fair discussion group on WDWMagic.com, a member  asked about the size of the Disney parks, compared to the great World’s Fairs. So I did a little digging, and was able to come up with a bit of data.

Official numbers released by the mouse show that EPCOT currently covers a little more than 300 acres of land. (In case you’re curious… Disney’s Animal Kingdom is 400 acres; Magic Kingdom is 140 acres; and Disney’s Hollywood Studios is 130 acres).

The Disney parks are considerably smaller than the World’s Fairs that are typically thought of in connection with Disney/EPCOT. New York’s 1939 World’s Fair was huge; its 1,200 acre footprint was roughly four times the size of Epcot. The 1964 New York World’s fair was 650 acres, a little more than twice the size of Epcot.

Other expos not often compared to Epcot, but still with similar themes, included Montreal’s Expo 67 (900 acres, big enough for three Epcots), and 1962’s “Century 21 Expo” in Seattle (75 acres, a scant one-quarter of the size of Epcot). And just to throw in a fun little historical note, the Disney parks are also smaller than Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, which covered nearly 690 acres. That’s the world’s fair that Walt’s dad helped build.

The World’s Fair that Epcot matches most closely in terms of landmass was the 1929-30 Exposicion General d’Espana in Barcelona, which covered a little more than 290 acres.

In case you’re curious, the biggest World’s Fair I’ve seen statistical data on was Saint Louis’ Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904, which occupied more than 1270 acres. The smallest I know of was the 1879-80 Sydney International Exposition, which only occupied about 15 acres.

But if you think Epcot was dwarfed by its 1939 and 1964 predecessors, there is one other way to look at it. If you consider the amount of land originally purchased and reclaimed by Disney for the original plans for EPCOT (the city, not the park), then the Florida project blows even the biggest world’s fair out of the water. Had the entire Florida Project come to fruition as originally envisioned, its approximately 25,000 acre “living showcase” would have been about 20 times bigger than NYWF39… which itself was at the time the largest land reclaimation project ever attempted. But that’s an EPCOT comparison for another day.

Special thanks today to a few sources who helped make this article possible. Many of the facts and figures in the article were found in Erik Mattie’s book, “World’s Fairs” (published in 1998 by Princeton Architectural Press). Other info was culled from The Expo Museum and from official data from the Walt Disney World Resort.

By the way… it’s World’s Fair Season again! Expo Zargoza begins June 14, 2008 in Zaragoza, Spain.

Filed under: 1939 WF, 1964 WF, Animal Kingdom, Disney Studios, Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Uncategorized