Many people want to leave their stamp on the world, and early in the 21st century, Walt Disney World offered its visitors the opportunity do just that. According to Disney, Epcot’s Leave A Legacy Sculpture is “a tribute to a unique moment in time – the dawning of the third millennium.” Purchasers could contribute their images to this “unique artistic expression” that is currently displayed in the main entrance to Epcot, right in front of Spaceship Earth.
Since the sculptures have been erected, many people have called them an “eyesore” and there are rumors that they may be moved. So you may wonder who in their right mind would have paid good money for their image to be displayed in a 1 inch by 1 inch tile among half a million others. Well, back in 2006, my husband and I were walking into Epcot and somehow became convinced to do just that.
While my memory of the actual purchase is a little sketchy (I have no idea how much they cost, or how we decided to do it), we did purchase two tiles: one with our name and date of purchase and one with our images. At that point in our lives, a trip to Disney World was still an occasional event, and we mostly forgot about the tiles once we purchased them.
At some point after our trip, we received two transparencies in the mail with the image and location ID for our tiles. I slid them into a drawer and didn’t think about them for a while. Our next trip was in 2009, but we did not even think to check them out. Over the years, our Disney World visits became more frequent, and I eventually remembered our Leave A Legacy tiles.
Our first visit to see our tiles was in 2011, and then we visited for the second time just this summer in 2016. This most recent visit was more of an event, since we now have two kids who were somewhat interested in looking for the tiles and then taking pictures with them. It was a fun activity for a few minutes, and it was nice to share something with our kids that happened before they were born.
Our tiles have been at Epcot for 10 years now, and I honestly can’t recall how long we were promised they would stay there. We’ve enjoyed seeing them, but we don’t really think about them very much. While I’d like my purchase to remain standing, I wouldn’t mind if they moved it to another part of the park or somewhere else on property.
So…what do you think of the Epcot Leave A Legacy Sculpture? Did you purchase a tile? Do you want the sculpture to stay or go?
