Main Entrance Communicore Plaza Area Loop

This is the sound of arriving at EPCOT Center in its first years. From opening day — October 1, 1982 — the walk from the entrance turnstiles, across the plaza beneath Spaceship Earth and on into the CommuniCore courtyard was scored by the EPCOT Center main entrance loop: the great Future World pavilion themes, arranged as one continuous welcome. This recording runs 28 minutes and 30 seconds — the complete loop, matching the 28:31 running time documented by park-music archivists.

Inside the EPCOT Center Main Entrance Loop

The loop is a tour of the original Future World in music:

• “Energy (You Make the World Go ‘Round)” — Universe of Energy (music by Robert Moline)
• “Golden Dream” — The American Adventure (Robert Moline)
• “It’s Fun to Be Free” — World of Motion (Norman “Buddy” Baker)
• “Listen to the Land” — The Land (Robert Moline)
• “One Little Spark” — Journey Into Imagination (Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman)
• “Magic Journeys” — Journey Into Imagination (the Sherman Brothers)
• “Universe of Energy” — Universe of Energy (Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn)

Nearly every pavilion those themes come from is now gone or transformed beyond recognition — which makes this loop a time capsule as much as a welcome mat.

The Loop’s Later Years

The medley greeted guests for the better part of two decades. A reworked entrance loop replaced it around 2001, folding in newer themes from a changed park, and the entrance received an entirely new soundtrack in 2021. The complete original loop was never released commercially: the 1983 Official Album of Walt Disney World — EPCOT Center carried only a three-and-a-half-minute “Main Entrance Medley,” a small taste of what played in the plaza. Full recordings like this one survive thanks to collectors. Fragments of the old medley were still heard around the entrance and ticket booths until 2021.

CommuniCore was the loop’s second home. The twin crescent buildings flanking the plaza south of Spaceship Earth housed EPCOT Computer Central, where SMRT-1 the robot chatted with guests, along with early hands-on exhibits about the computer age. The entrance medley followed you from the turnstiles right into that courtyard, so its themes are tied to CommuniCore as much as to the gate itself. CommuniCore closed in 1994 to become Innoventions, but for the park’s first decade this music, that courtyard, and those exhibits were a single experience.

Two stops on this loop already live in our archive: the Magic Journeys load music from the Imagination pavilion, and Symbiosis, the film from The Land. Give them a listen next.