The Lineage of Flushing Meadows Park in Disney World and Universal Studios Florida
My family just did a Disney vacation in Orlando and came back from the Parks at Disney World and Universal Studios. As I biked through Flushing Meadows, I felt a lot of familiarity in the park with the ones in Orlando and found some interesting connections.
As it turns out some similarities are not so coincidental. Walt Disney was a big contributor to the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows Park. He debuted It’s a Small World, Carousel of Progress Ride, Animatronic President Abraham Lincoln and a Sky Ride. These rides were moved to Disneyland and recreated in Disney World after the fair.
That’s not the only thing you’ll see at Disney from Flushing Meadows; the spirit of the World’s Fair was an inspiration for Epcot Center.
The Unisphere was the center of the World’s Fair with parts of the park representing countries from around the world.
Disney wanted to model Epcot Center to be a permanent World’s Fair. Epcot Center features countries from around the world just like the World’s Fair did.
The way I see it, The Unisphere in Flushing Meadow Park and Spaceship Earth in Epcot (below) are cousins and in many ways Epcot Center is a child of the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows Park.
It’s really interesting following all these threads of history embedded in our world and geography that is in front of us as we live our lives.
We spent the last half of our vacation at Universal Studios in Orlando and guess what? We ran into another Flushing Meadows icon.
The climax of the original Men in Black movie took place in Flushing Meadows and featured the World’s Fair Observatory Towers as the alien spacecraft.
Features from the history of Flushing Meadows still ripple today at Orlando’s 2 biggest attractions.
