Rare Epcot Concept Art for United Arab Emirates in World Showcase

Disney's upcoming D23 is a true fan favorite! And for this year, the Parks exhibition promises to be filled with expansion plans and concept art for the revisioning of Epcot aka EPCOT Center. Future World and the new entrance to the park will certainly be the focus of most of it, but the under developed World Showcase will not be left in the construction dust! 

Brazil is coming- which makes fans all the more curious as to what happened for the plans once designed. Israel, Venezuela, Spain, and Equatorial Africa were also on the drawing boards, among others. (Look to find concept art for Israel here, Australia here, older concepts for Brazil, art for the Philippines, amazing art for Russia, a beautiful concept for Spain, and of course Equatorial Africa.)

Top view of the model.

Thanks to a recent posting on the WDWMagic Boards by "Herbie" we finally can see the some concept art for the long forgotten United Arab Emirates pavilion designed back for the late 70s by the Imagineers. (Confirmed by the much respected Martin Smith). With a little bit of (poor) Photoshop magic, I was able to clean up the top piece, removing the title words from the plans- just to make it look a little nicer. 

It would have been nice to add one more country to complement the beautiful Morocco pavilion.

The original piece in the folio.

Will we ever see this country added to the line up? I sincerely doubt it. Human rights violations and a tense political environment in the Middle East will probably keep it coming to fruition. Even recently, Princess Haya fled the country with her children to seek asylum. Yet, every country- even ours- has its secrets and shortcomings, so you never know what will happen in the future. It's a beautiful region, rich with history and wonderful people!

One last piece filled with art for a magic carpet ride... only to prove that the real world is as beautiful and inspiring as anything the Imagineers can come up with for Intellectual Property such as Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge. 

(Art copyright The Walt Disney Company.)