Epcot
— — the silver ball at the end of the long walk.
Not only on a wall.
“Spaceship Earth holds the front of the park: a geodesic sphere 180 feet across, mirrored at dusk by the lagoon behind it. Past the sphere the lagoon opens, and the World Showcase begins — eleven country pavilions arranged like a slow walk around the water, Mexico to Canada, lantern light to brick. The Tomorrow that Walt drew in 1966 became this softer thing instead: a park about food, gardens, fireworks over the water, and the patience of strolling. Frozen lemonade, Akershus, a long way around. from the studio
Epcot, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Epcot is the second of the four theme parks at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, about twenty miles southwest of downtown Orlando. It opened on October 1, 1982, under the name EPCOT Center — an acronym Walt Disney coined in 1966 for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, his original plan for a working city. The park as built is divided into two halves around a 40-acre lagoon: World Celebration, World Discovery, and World Nature on the front side, and World Showcase, an eleven-country circuit, on the back. The whole site covers roughly 305 acres.
Spaceship Earth, the geodesic sphere that anchors the park entrance, is the structural and visual signature of Epcot. The dome is a Class 2 geodesic sphere 180 feet in diameter, clad in 11,324 triangular aluminium panels designed to shed rain into an internal gutter system rather than the plaza below. It rises 50 metres on six legs and holds an internal dark ride that traces the history of communication. Engineering consultant Buckminster Fuller, who coined the term Spaceship Earth in 1968, was involved during early planning before his death in 1983. No other geodesic sphere of this scale exists as a full structural enclosure.
The park runs a circuit roughly 1.2 miles around the World Showcase Lagoon, with eleven country pavilions in order: Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, the American Adventure, Japan, Morocco, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Each pavilion is staffed in part through Disney's Cultural Exchange Program, drawing cast members from the represented country on yearlong placements. Hours are typically 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. with the evening fireworks at park close. Epcot runs four annual festivals — International Festival of the Arts, Flower & Garden, Food & Wine, and Festival of the Holidays — that cover most of the calendar.