The views and opinions expressed in this editorial are mine alone, and are in no way representative of those of Theme Park Tourist or its entire staff.
Since the opening of Disneyland in 1955, a visit to “Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom” meant a journey into the “worlds of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.” Whether at Disneyland or its younger sister, Magic Kingdom, the idea of “Disney” as a place was synonymous with princesses and pirates; castles and characters; Peter Pan and Snow White, with Mickey always on-hand.
When it debuted on October 1, 1982, the whole point of EPCOT Center was that it was something different; something revolutionary; something brave. EPCOT Center would dispense with those tried-and-true fantasy connections in favor of a “permanent World’s Fair” rooted in a radical new thesis:
Image: Disney
“Here, human achievements are celebrated through imagination, wonders of enterprise and concepts of a future that promises new and exciting benefits for all. May EPCOT Center entertain, inform and inspire and above all, may it instill a new sense of belief and pride in man’s ability to shape a world that offers hope to people everywhere.”
Time and time again, we here at Theme Park Tourist have recounted the unusual origin story of EPCOT Center, and time and time again, we’ve watched the transformation of its one-time headlining attractions into monolithic Lost Legends: The Living Seas; Kitchen Kabaret; Journey into Imagination; World of Motion; Body Wars; Universe of Energy.
We won’t bother recounting the story of Epcot here, because the end result is the same: One-by-one, EPCOT Center’s ‘80s anchors have been toppled. That in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The problem is the spirit that’s been lost along the way…
Unity
Image: Disney
In World Showcase, EPCOT Center features World’s Fair-stylized pavilions, each dedicated to select nations around the globe. For today, let’s leave behind any talk of which countries are present, or why, or the attractions they contain. Zooming out, the point of World Showcase is clear: harmony; strength in differences; global unity.” A single thread runs through the seemingly disconnected countries of World Showcase, painting a picture of life on earth.
Believe it or not, that same kind of thread runs through Future World, too. In the park’s northern half, it offered pavilions dedicated to areas of science, technology, industry, and enterprise… at its peak:
- Communicore (innovation)
- The Living Seas (ocean exploration)
- The Land (agriculture)
- Spaceship Earth (communication)
- World of Motion (transportation)
- Wonders of Life (health and medicine)
- Universe of Energy (energy)
Image: Disney
The brilliance of Future World has always been its simplicity; mega-sized pavilions, each dedicated to a grand, incomprehensibly complex area of human innovation, with most boasting a lengthy, informative, epic-scale dark ride through that area of innovation from human’s earliest explorations to the future. But the connection between them went even deeper.
One take on the EPCOT Center set-up is provided by way of the “capstone” pavilion – the Lost Legend: Horizons – meant to unite them all. In Horizons, the true “thesis” of Future World is made clear: our future depends on all of those seemingly disconnected topics explored elsewhere in Future World; they’re each a single piece of a much larger puzzle (assembled in Horizons); each a single slice of a pie chart that builds to show the role of science, technology, and innovation in human society.
EPCOT Center, Universe of Energy, Spaceship Earth, Wonders of Life, The Land, The Living Seas, Horizons, World of Motion, Communicore, Imagination. Image: Disney
Okay, so that’s heavy. But look no further than the brilliant (and still prevalent on “throwback” merchandise) visual lingo designers crafted for this park. Each pavilion was represented by a circular emblem and a distinct color, assembling to literally form the larger logo of EPCOT Center. That’s no accident. Though each might offer different attractions and different architectural styles, and different focuses chosen by different sponsors, Future World was all about unity.
That unity has collapsed. And like it or not, Disney characters may be the best chance of bringing it back. Don’t believe me? Keep reading…
In retrospect, there are so many diverging pathways that have led to where Epcot is now… so many that it’s practically chaos theory to trace the lines one-by-one, or to assemble a single narrative timeline of what happened. In short, we’ll boil it down to three issues that plagued the young park.
ISSUE 1: Too smart for its own good
Image: Disney
Intellectually lofty and clearly aimed closer to Walt Disney World’s adult demographic, EPCOT Center gained a reputation as the Disney park kids dreaded spending a day at; the park became a punch line of sorts for how no child would trade a day in Magic Kingdom merriment for educational dark rides through the history of transportation. What child would give up a day on Pirates of the Caribbean for a 45-minute, intellectual dark ride through the formation of fossil fuels? Replace Peter Pan’s Flight with a cinematic retelling of the history of communication from the stone age to the Renaissance to today?
Granted, by nature of reading this, you are probably one of the children who would’ve happily chosen and was shaped by a day at EPCOT Center… But for a generation of Disney Parks visitors, we simply have to admit that the park’s lofty, intellectual ideals simply felt too brainy for a trip otherwise populated by Mickey Mouse, Cinderella, and Snow White.
ISSUE 2: Losing sponsorships
Image: Disney
EPCOT Center relied on a World’s Fair style sponsorship model matching mega-corporations with complementary pavilions; though Disney expected the contribution of deep-pocket corporations to keep the park afloat, many decided not to renew their sponsorship throughout the ‘90s.
That’s why – as we’ll see – the mid-90s were a period of (forced) evolution at Epcot, with Disney suddenly overtaking financial ownership of aging pavilions. What’s worse, Disney didn’t necessarily have the internal capacity to keep these ambitious, industry-focused pavilions stocked with the cutting edge technology that Future World called for, and that sponsors had previously provided.
ISSUE 3: A new style
Image: Disney
When new CEO Michael Eisner came on-board just two years after EPCOT Center’s opening, something was bound to change. The cinematic CEO fresh from Paramount Pictures had ambitious plans. Among them was a controversial sense that Disney Parks needed to evolve. Just as Walt had stocked Disneyland with the stories, characters, and settings that mattered to audiences of the ’50s, Disney’s theme parks would need to catch up to “modern” (that’s ’80s and ’90s) audiences by bringing the stories, characters, and settings that mattered today.
Maybe that’s why Eisner and his team seemed to wrestle with what exactly EPCOT Center should be. Designed as a “character-less” park, EPCOT Center was pulled into a “character” driven era at Imagineering, which is perhaps why the once-clear line in the sand began to shift position. And given the state of Disney Parks finances at the time, Future World began to act as a guinea pig of sorts with a few new strategies at play…
So let’s switch from Issues to Disney’s Strategies for fixing Future World…
STRATEGY 1: Character infusion
Image: Disney
Despite an early moritorium on incorporating Disney characters, they began to creep into the park fairly early. Sure, Mickey and friends began making appearances in their future-appropriate pastel-rainbow space suits early on. Then, animated characters began meeting-and-greeting in the World Showcase countries most closely aligned to their (often fictional) homes. Still, there was a sort of “untouchability” to Epcot’s firmly-held, ambitious, and downright intellectual attractions… Until there wasn’t…
Image: Disney
In 1994, the Lost Legend: Captain EO was exorcised from the Imagination pavilion, replaced with “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience,” based on Disney’s 1989 family film. It’s not that Captain EO rose to the intellectual heights of EPCOT Center anyway (instead being a quick-turnaround attempt by Eisner to draw more young people to Disney Parks by way of big name stars), but “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience” might technically count that as the first appearance of outside characters in Future World.
In 1995, Timon, Pumbaa, and Simba from The Lion King joined as well, taking over the serious Symbiosis film in The Land, now officially cracking the dam that held Disney’s cartoons at bay.
Image: Disney
In 1996, Universe of Energy was quickly converted into the Lost Legend: Ellen’s Energy Adventure, somewhat nonsensibly adding Ellen Degeneres (star of the recently-acquired ABC’s Ellen sitcom), Alex Trebek (from Jeopardy!) and Bill Nye the Science Guy – a similar “quick character fix” as Captain EO has been.
The elaborate, fan-favorite Lost Legend: Journey into Imagination closed in 1998, officially decommissioning two of the brilliant characters created just for the park. The replacement attraction – a Declassified Disaster: Journey into YOUR Imagination– is derided by many as the world ride Disney World has ever hosted. The new version of the ride purposefully pulled in the “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” continuity so that the entire pavilion would be re-themed as the Imagination Institute.
Image: Disney / Pixar
Like The Lion King in The Land, a little “spill-over” of character made it into The Living Seas in 2004, when Turtle Talk with Crush opened. It was merely a taste, though, because in 2006, the Living Seas pavilion was entirely overtaken by Finding Nemo and renamed The Seas with Nemo & Friends – for sure the largest character infusion in Future World (as we chronicled in our Disney•Pixarland special feature), but still a simple character overlay and not an outright replacement of Epcot’s core idea.
So when looking at “Strategy 1,” we have to face the truth: without sponsors to finance pavilions and keep them cutting edge, gentle, subtle infusions of Disney characters (and even entire overlays like The Seas!) might’ve been a fine strategy to move Epcot forward. The problem is, it wasn’t the only strategy…
STRATEGY 2: “Discovery” thrills
With the new millennium on the horizon, it was decided that Epcot needed more than just a character infusion; it needed to be rethought from its core (see Issue 1, above). In a feature dedicated to a never-built overhaul of Future World – Possibilityland: Project – GEMINI – we explored the potential designers saw in transforming the cold, concrete, ‘80s Future World for the 21st century. The idea was that Epcot would become Disney World’s “Discovery Park,” filled with cutting edge, technological thrills. Though that park-wide overhaul didn’t come to be, pieces of it did.
Image: Disney
The park’s transportation pavilion was gutted in 1996, re-opening as a high speed ride whose original incarnation is itself a Lost Legend: TEST TRACK. Fittingly, this thrill ride showcased the new direction for Epcot: replacing epic, educational dark rides with more fast-paced technological attractions that kinda-sorta hinted at a scientific or industrious theme. Of course, no one would expect a thrill ride based on becoming test dummies in an auto plant to meet the lofty awe-inspiring, thoughtful heights of World of Motion… But TEST TRACK was, admittedly, somewhat brainless.
As another example, see Horizons, which was demolished and replaced with Mission: SPACE – a gut-wrenching simulator whose infamous nausea-inducing ride system seemingly exists just to push the boundaries of what simulators can do, and is otherwise a pretty content-free thrill ride. Okay, it’s kinda-sorta about what it would feel like to launch into space, but there’s certainly very little to be learned about space or humanity’s journey towards it from this intimidating thrill.
Image: Disney
Beloved as it may be, the opening of the Lost Legend: Soarin’ in The Land pavilion would probably be classified as another “cute but dumb” addition to the park, kinda-sorta making sense in The Land (what with its emotional celebration of California’s landscapes). That said, the 2016 “upgrade” to the “Around the World” ride film (sending guests over man-made wonders of the world) technically makes it a worse fit for The Land…
So coming out of the 1995 – 2005 decade, Epcot was well and truly transformed. But the problem we’d argue is that that transformation was a piecemeal one, with one of two very different strategies kinda-sorta overlaid overtop of most – but not all – of Future World’s pavilions. And standing here in 2018, that’s the problem. What is Epcot? Well, that appears to be a question set to be answered by the latest attraction under construction at the park… one that appears born of an entirely new, third strategy for Future World… Read on.
STRATEGY 3: Try something else entirely
Image: Disney / Marvel
On July 15, 2017 at the semi-annual D23 conference, Imagineers made it official: the Universe of Energy pavilion at Epcot would power-down for good that August. Its replacement would be a brand new attraction based on Marvel’s sleeper hit superhero film, Guardians of the Galaxy. At least so far, we honestly don’t know much about the Guardians of the Galaxy themed attraction replacing Ellen’s Energy Adventure (except, of course, that the future of the film series it’s based on is in jeopardy – pun intended – thanks to a controversial firing decision made by Disney… oops.)
What we do know is that the ride will indeed be a high-speed roller coaster, and that the absolutely gargantuan 100,000 square foot showbuilding leftover from Universe of Energy isn’t large enough to hold it all, requiring the construction of a towering, outrageously-large connected showbuilding to the east.
Image: Disney / Marvel
What we don’t know is if the ride will – for lack of a better way to put it – have anything at all to do with being at Epcot. In other words, will this roller coaster / dark ride through the Marvel universe have anything to do with energy, or any scientific topic that would make it a fit for Future World? Surely Disney’s designer could send us on a chase through the universe alongside the superhero team in search of energy sources throughout the galaxy, still retaining this as an “Energy” pavilion, albeit using characters to tell the tale…
But in the absence of knowing, further questions have been raised about where Epcot is headed… And for us, there’s one problem at the root of Future World today…
Sum of their parts
Image: Disney / Marvel
At its core, EPCOT Center needed to change. If today, in 2018, the park offered World of Motion, Universe of Energy, and Horizons – all beloved, phenomenal masterpieces of their time – Epcot would be a laughing stock in the eyes of the public and of its most devoted fans. Despite thinking they want Journey into Imagination – untouched and unedited – to return, that’s not really want fans want.
They want those epic, smart, stylish dark rides of Epcot’s earliest days reborn with 21st century sensibilities, storytelling, and special effects. They want what Journey into Imagination (or Horizons or Universe of Energy or Wonders of Life) would look like if born of the same minds but with today’s technology, today’s storytelling, and today’s budget.
Horizons, The Land, Communicore, Imagination, The Living Seas, Universe of Energy, Spaceship Earth, World of Motion, and Wonders of Life. Image: Disney
But more than making each individual pavilion great, they want a day when those circular icons – or new ones – would yet again apply. They want Future World to have a thesis again; a connection; a point. They want to return to the simplicity of Energy, Life, Horizons, Motion, Imagination, Land, Seas, Communication, or something resembling it, each reimagined to be compelling and thoughtful and adventurous and grand and optimistic like in the old days… And that’s a wonderful thing to want, and it could have been the perfect path for Epcot.
But that’s not what Disney chose.
Disharmony
During the ‘80s, ‘90s, and 2000s, Epcot and Future World bowed to the whims of pop culture, sponsorship, and changing leadership.
Some pavilions – like The Seas and now Guardians of the Galaxy – brought in characters to draw the public.
Some pavilions – like The Land, World of Motion, and Horizons – outright decided to overlook their own “thesis” statements in favor of thrill rides.
Some pavilions – like Wonders of Life, Imagination, and Innoventions – practically or even literally faded away from view.
The result was the snipping of the thread that connected the pavilions of Future World; each was overhauled with a piecemeal solution devised in very particular circumstances. One-by-one – but never altogether – they were reimagined.
Click and expand for larger. Image: Disney
Sure, Disney announced that Future World would soon undergo a radical, physical re-imagining (above), doing what that long-lost Project: GEMINI was supposed to do a decade ago – replacing the open, cold, concrete plazas of a dystopian, 80s-born future into a rich, earthy, forested future of water, light, dynamic shapes, and kinetic energy.
But it’s just not the physical Future World that needs adjusted; it’s the foundation. The thing Future World needs – more than any single new ride or attraction – is a new point; something to connect the pavilions even in their differences; a thread to unite them. As it is, the mis-matched buildings have nothing in common; no central message; no central identity. Beautifying Future World won’t solve the core of the issue: the pavilions aren’t connected anymore.
So my argument is simple: setting the best work of “armchair Imagineering” aside (though many – including myself – have engaged in plenty), we have to face the reality that characters should come to Epcot. On the last page, we’ll take a stab at what that could look like…
Character infusion
To incorporate characters into Epcot, Disney faces a particularly difficult challenge: to retain and explain what makes Epcot different from Magic Kingdom or Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
For example, the nature of the Guardians of the Galaxy ride – at least so far! – seems like something that could be placed in Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom or Shanghai Disneyland: a high-speed outer space adventure with comic book characters, set in a recreation of their world. (Albeit, that could change if Disney incorporates at least some content into the ride, which we expect they will.)
Meanwhile, Guardians of the Galaxy will be somewhat nonsensically positioned as neighbors with Finding Nemo – a mis-match juxtaposition you’d only expect in the beige soundstages of Hollywood Studios, not in the ’80s-stylized pavilions of Future World.
Image: Disney
So how to make sure that Epcot stays Epcot? Here’s where our theory comes in:
Assign “ambassadors” to each pavilion. It’s not such a wild idea. After all, real World’s Fair relied on sponsors to slip their message into the pavilions and draw guests in. Why shouldn’t Disney’s pavilions likewise be “sponsored” by appropriate, evergreen characters able to slip their messages into the pavilions and act as “ambassadors” to a larger message?
But here’s the important part: these characters would neither define, nor obscure the “point” of the pavilions. They wouldn’t (and shouldn’t!) be present in each ride, show, and attraction within. The point is not to transform the interior of each pavilion into immersive fantasy worlds like Magic Kingdom! These are still “World’s Fair” style pavilions, now just with an attached intellectual property for inspiration! Hopefully, adding characters as we suggest below would simply help pull the pavilions back to the roots and unite them once more…!
Not buying it yet? Keep reading…
The Energy pavilion
Focus: Energy resources
Ambassador: Guardians of the Galaxy
Image: Disney / Marvel
This one’s written in stone, so let’s work off of it.
Marvel’s superhero team is en route to Epcot as we speak. One of Disney’s first revelations about the new ride was a seemingly innocuous nod that Peter Quill (Chris Pratt’s Star Lord) actually visited Epcot back in the ’80s when he was a child. Though fans wrote that off as a bit of fan-service meant to quell the anger aimed at yet another lost Epcot classic, the truth is that it’s a major hint. The Guardians, it seems, will continue their usual business of breaking the fourth wall, and will probably even note to guests that they know they’ve overtaken a pavilion at Epcot.
We can hope, then, that they’ll acknowledge that they’ve landed at a pavilion about energy. (“Yeah, I saw this when I was a kid,” we can imagine Peter Quill saying in the pre-show. “It was like, a three hour ride past dinosaurs!”) Given that the ingredients are there, it seems possible that the attraction will at least masquerade as a journey through the stars with a purpose. Maybe that purpose will be energy, and guests will disembark knowing a little more about real energy resources. Maybe not. For now, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that – even though Guardians will be the focus – the pavilion might still be Future World’s “Energy” pavilion.
The Life pavilion
Focus: Body, mind, and spirit
Ambassador: Inside Out
It’s long been rumored that Joy, Sadness, Anger, and Disgust from Pixar’s Inside Out are set to overtake the Imagination pavilion, but in this scenario (that is: unlimited funds and Blue Sky power), we see them as the perfect fit for re-opening the park’s forgotten Wonders of Life pavilion.
In fact, couldn’t the interior of the hemisphere pavilion literally become the top of a cranium just as in the film? The interior could take on the glowing, mid-century style of the film’s “Headquarters,” then Imagine if, from that launching point, Epcot finally recieved the epic Omnimover dark ride once planned for the pavilion: The Incredible Human Machine would be a ride through the human body, exploring the wonders of life with massive sets and (of course) a song.
Image: Disney
Avoiding gross-outs and instead playing off the idea of the body working like a machine, this whimsical ride would become a new classic.
Though the Lost Legend: Body Wars has long been scrapped, imagine Inside Out: Emotional Whirlwind, an E-Ticket simulator set in the mind of the film’s protagonist – Riley – up to and including her first school dance. With Audio-Animatronics of Joy, Sadness, Anger, and Disgust on-board (perhaps like C-3PO on Star Tours), guests would come along for the ride, piloting Riley in a new-age take on Cranium Command.
Finally, imagine the return of an Audio-Animatronics show to Epcot (after the departure of Food Rocks), but this time it’s Body Band Jamboree, an “all-natural” musical revue of organs, each singing of their importance in Country Bear-style seranades.
The Space pavilion
Focus: Space exploration
Ambassador: Wall•e
Image: Disney
Mission: SPACE might be the only pavilion we’d recommend emptying out to start from scratch. Despite lowering its gravity, guests just never took to Mission: SPACE the way Disney hoped, and plans to clone the ride at each Disney Resort around the globe were quickly kiboshed once initial reviews came out. Mission: SPACE isn’t smart enough for Epcot, and it makes up the entirety of what could otherwise be a pavilion of multiple experiences, which is why we’d sooner let it go.
Imagine if, instead, stepping into the pavilion felt as if you were standing on the Axion – the intergalactic vessel from Wall•e. The pavilion would, of course, connect to the new space restaurant under construction, and we’re not proposing that that restaurant should now have Wall•e projections outside the windows. Rather, Wall•e is an ambassador to learning more about space exploration. Sure, one such exploration might be an anchoring LPS dark ride called Wall•e: The Stellar Journ•e where guests ride on an 8-passenger trackless, circular vehicle called a Glide•r, traveling through the history of humans’ fascination with space, the birth of space exploration, the Space Race, and eventually making it to the stars for a “Define Dancing” ballet across the Milky Way for a look at what our future in space may hold.
The Engineering pavilion
Focus: Engineering design process
Ambassador: TRON
World of Motion was about transportation, so for years and years, we’ve assumed that’s what Test Track is about, too, even if it’s focusing on a single, solitary, minute element of transportation. Actually, that might’ve been true when the Lost Legend: Test Track first opened in 1998. That version of Test Track was exactly what it purported to be: a fun thrill ride casting you as a crash test dummy traveling through an industrial test facility warehouse that kinda-sorta said something about a microcosm of the transportation industry.
Controversial as it may be, I’d argue that the new Test Track is the superior of the two when you consider Epcot’s direction.
The new Test Track – while perhaps a bit too self-serious – isn’t really about transportation at all. Rather, it adds in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math, simply using the ride itself as a vehicle (no pun intended) to get guests thinking about the engineering design process – design, build, test, redesign.
Naturally, part of that transition was to undo the industrial warehouse vibe of orange traffic cones, reflective signs, and the general malaise of the realities of auto testing in favor of the sleek, digital “SimTrack” where guest-created designs are tested and ranked for their Capability, Efficiency, Responsiveness, and Power. That’s why, rather than thinking of Test Track as a transportation-themed ride, it’s really an engineering-themed ride that’s already 90% of the way to admitting its TRON influence and using that influence in its post-show to expand upon the engineering / computer science world it set up.
The Imagination pavilion
Focus: Creativity, art, science, and literature
Ambassador: The Muppets
Image: Disney
If Dreamfinder and Figment don’t return (which, by the way, they really should and could, even in this “character-based” Future World), imagine what The Great Muppet Imagination Ride would be like… Let’s imagine it’s a 12-minute, Audio-Animatronic dark ride with Kermit, Piggy, Gonzo, Rowlf, Rizzo, and more. Can you imagine hearing the Muppets sing “One Little Spark” as they lead you through realms of Literature, Art, Performing Arts, and Science to collect “sparks” of imagination? Imagine Muppets acting out great moments in story and song, guiding you through the process of inspiration and creativity!
Image: Disney
Naturally, the post-show area (currently the 75% shuttered ImageWorks) would become Muppet Labs, entirely dedicated to hands-on interactive experiences in color, light, sound, music, touch, and more; a playground for creativity and puppeteering. Perhaps the pavilion’s 3-D theater could even host a new Muppet*Vision 3D, seemingly forever endangered at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and due for a re-write (especially now that Disney owns the Muppets).
While Dreamfinder and Figment will forever be a piece of Epcot’s DNA and are much preferred by most, the truth is that the Muppets might be a spectacular crew to takeover this pavilion in Dreamfinder’s absence.
The Adventure pavilion
Focus: Environment, culture, and exploration
Ambassador: Up!
Image: Disney
Since it opened, The Land pavilion has been… well… unusual. Designers initially selected the topic for a pavilion because a logging company was interested, and plans for a grand, glass pavilion celebrating seasons and biomes was drafted. But when the logging company axed their support, Kraft Foods stepped in, requesting that the pavilion be re-cast to talk about agriculture, nutrition, and food (hence, Living with the Land, Symbiosis, and the Lost Legend: Kitchen Kabaret). So for as long as it’s been around, The Land hasn’t really been about… well… the land.
In this armchair Imagineered version of Epcot, it might be recast as the “Adventure” pavilion, dedicated to exploration and environment. Imagine Soarin’: Legendary Journeys as a globe-trotting adventure past the Wonders of the Ancient World… The odd, modern “airport terminal” queue might become a redwood forest leading to a “rusted” old zephyr hangar containing the hang-gliders.
Image: Disney
Meanhile, imagine Living with the Land repurposed as Wilderness Explorations – a dark ride alongside Carl, Russel, Dug, and Kevin as they earn Wilderness Explorer badges by visiting unimaginable natural wonders leading to Paradise Falls – enormous physical sets in those vast Epcot greenhouses! Similarly, the Symbiosis theater could become a live entertainment venue, like Tokyo DisneySea’s Hangar Stage.
Re-defining The Land pavilion as dedicated to “Adventure” opens entirely new doors while playing off of the strengths of the pavilion, and having Russel and Carl involved simply lends color and character to the pavilion, even if they’re not at the center of every attraction within.
The Oceans pavilion
Focus: Ocean exploration and wildlife
Ambassador: Finding Nemo
Image: Disney / Pixar
Long before Nemo came around, the original ideas for the Lost Legend: The Living Seas pavilion centered around tales of Poseidon, leading guests into a larger-than-life underwater grotto to board Omnimovers for a trip through the oceanic world. Eventually, the pavilion’s more epic, mythological cues were downplayed in favor of the Seabase Alpha many of us know, with Hydrolators and (today) cheesy ’80s “science lab” decor.
Admittedly, Nemo & Friends was a “cheap and cheerful” way to overlay The Living Seas pavilion with quick intellectual property. And with a simple coat of teal and orange paint, the obviously-80s “Seabase Alpha” became a somewhat-excusable part of the Marine Life Institute. Admittedly, that’s a fine overlay and Nemo remains a popular property.
Image: Disney
If you really wanted to re-invent this “Oceans” pavilion, think of what else you could use… It’s easy to imagine The Little Mermaid (which practically would just need the pavilion built as originally imagined, just swapping Poseidon for Triton). Think bigger… How could Moana and Maui be an ambassador for the pavilion? How would the Seabase be rethemed for them? Or, how about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea?
A new picture
While each of these pavilions is radically different, and each has a different intellectual property as its “ambassador,” they all share something: a commitment to a larger area of science and innovation. In an era without sponsors, the idea of Epcot being a proper World’s Fair showcasing the powers of enterprise and the most cutting edge technologies is simply over. But that doesn’t mean that the era of being brainy is.
Image: Disney
Future World as a living showcase of industry didn’t work.
But by celebrating human achievement and innovation, the park can still be Disney World’s “Discovery Park,” just with a fresh, evergreen thesis. And best of all, this new strategy unites the piecemeal fixes of the past, re-connecting the pavilions. Animated “ambassadors” revive Epcot’s languishing identity, but never overtake the real “meat and potatoes” of what each pavilion should be about; they don’t block the pavilion’s central message or define it; they support it. That’s what makes this park – if characters are infused correctly – different from Magic Kingdom or Hollywood Studios.
Epcot can still educate; it can still inspire; it can still invite. Characters have long been seen as a death of Epcot, but they may be the most realistic path forward for Epcot now…
What do you think? Would bringing characters to Future World make sense, if it’s done thoughtfully and if those characters are merely “ambassadors” to a larger picture? Is there a more reasonable way to unite Future World going forward, given that Guardians of the Galaxy may cement characters within the park’s northern half forever? What do you hope for Future World?
