WHEN the EPCOT Centre opened in 1982 it could not have been farther removed from Walt Disney’s original vision. Disney had wanted to build an “experimental prototype community of tomorrow”, or EPCOT, a Utopian town of 20,000 where a towering city centre would be covered by a dome, where there would be full employment and where new ideas and technologies were always being tested. When Disney died in 1966 that dream died with him. His successors turned EPCOT into a theme park that resembled a permanent world’s fair. Half of it was given over to visions of the future sponsored by corporations. The other half was a “world showcase” containing national pavilions with reproduction architecture—a faux-English pub in Britain, a miniature Piazza San Marco in Italy.

More than three decades after it opened, EPCOT remains hugely popular. It is the sixth-most-visited theme park in the world. It caters mostly to adults: bachelor parties and 21st-birthday drinking binges come for the “drink around the world” challenge, which involves drinking at each nation’s pavilion (avoid the Norwegian aquavit). The technological showcases have withered. The town became Celebration, an idyllic old-timey town a few miles south (see article).

Yet EPCOT, along with the rest of Disney World, has quietly become a proving ground for the future. In place of tickets, most families receive a rubber wristband when they book their holidays to Disney World. The device, which is smaller and lighter than a fitness tracker, contains a radio chip that unlocks hotel rooms, serves as an entry ticket to the parks, lets people onto rides and allows them to buy food and drinks. Disney photographers stationed around the park will tap the wristband and later send the images to a connected mobile app. It is so seamless as to be barely noticeable. It is the sort of technology that Apple and Google have been striving to bring to the wider world. More than 10m of the things have been given out.

Like much modern technology, it is also creepy. Sensors scattered around Disney theme parks allow its computers to keep track of everyone in the park. Each band is personalised. At the main gates, visitors submit fingerprints that are tied to the bands. Yet the families and children at the happiest place on earth barely seem to notice. The bands ease movement and transactions—it is easier to spend money when all it requires is a wave of the wrist. It isn’t quite what Walt had in mind. But with its blend of technology, commerce and entertainment, he would approve.