In the earliest days of Epcot, The Living Seas embodied all that elevated Imagineers above ordinary theme park designers. While it wasn’t quite what initial blueprints had suggested, this pavilion garnered lavish praise when it opened. But it became a standard aquarium over time, losing traffic gradually throughout the years.
Left with no other option, Epcot officials revived The Living Seas via theming. Disney introduced a beloved character as the host of the pavilion, and the results undeniably justified the decision. Let’s go behind the ride to learn how Imagineers reinvented The Seas with Nemo & Friends.
The experience: Two Pixar attractions in one building
The trick: Re-theming an infotainment attraction into a character-driven one
The history of The Living Seas pavilion plays a role in the arrival of The Seas with Nemo & Friends. You may not know this, but it wasn’t the first Finding Nemo-based attraction at this site. Turtle Talk with Crush replaced the Earth Systems exhibit at the old site.
To Epcot loyalists, this move seemed blasphemous. Disney discarded an educational attraction for an improv comedy show starring that surfing turtle from Finding Nemo. It’s like turning on PBS for Amanpour and Company, only to discover that Sesame Street is playing.
Here’s the thing, though. People adore Sesame Street, just like they love Finding Nemo. Until 2010, that movie earned the most box office in Pixar history. Of course, an interactive live performance with a character from the film would prove popular.
Park officials doubled down on the strategy. While they’d planned the attraction anyway, the success of Turtle Talk with Crush caused Disney to prioritize the construction of a new ride at the pavilion. The Seas with Nemo and Friends, the attraction, now anchors the pavilion of the same name. It’s a bit confusing, but Disney wanted kids to associate the building with Pixar.
The only exterior re-theming required was a paint job and some annoying birds. The “Mine! Mine! Mine!” seagulls stand guard outside the ride entrance, luring in guests who don’t mind hearing the same word repeated 10,000 times. To be fair, It’s a Small World has trained Disney guests to tolerate such nuisances.
The experience: Changing a Seacab into something more Nemo-y
The trick: Repurposing ride carts to make them adorable
Imagineers faced a weird problem in remaking The Living Seas. The pavilion’s existing equipment needed to stay. The reasons were both financial and structural.
Understandably, cast members didn’t want root around with one of the largest aquariums in the world. The marine sections of the pavilion require 5,700,000 gallons of water to operate. It could get messy and pricey to mess around with any of that stuff.
To build a new ride in this building, Disney needed ride carts, which it already had. The former Seacabs sat unused, and they would have no future purpose with the relaunch. In truth, they’d struggled with leaks for years and needed to go anyway.
So, Imagineers made due with what they had. They repurposed the flawed Seacabs into Clamobiles. Both utilize Omnimover technology to transport guests on a time-controlled journey through the dark ride’s set pieces. The differences in the vehicles are primarily cosmetic.
The formerly bland rectangular two-seaters have added surrounding shells. The texture now mimics the appearance of a clam, with beige colors and ridges throughout the shell. The taller ride cart also features back support that was lacking on the Seacabs.
To address the leaking issue, the updated ride has altered the path with 280 feet of new track. It no longer carries guests through the middle of the aquarium, which formerly provided underwater views on both sides. Instead, it’s side-facing toward the attraction, controlling the line of sight while hiding almost all of the marine views.
You only get to gaze into the aquarium at one point on the ride now. It’s a necessary change that mortifies some. The educational aspects of this aquarium are virtually invisible during the pavilion’s anchor attraction. But it does have Nemo and Dory!
The experience: A digital Nemo hides in an actual ship
The trick: Digital projection that displays on any flat surface
The brilliance of The Seas with Nemo & Friends is how organic it feels. You enter the world with Marlin and Dory search for Nemo. It doesn’t exist in real life, but Disney immerses you in this story so deeply that you buy into the illusion.
Part of the reason that you willingly go along with the fiction involves the implementation. Imagineers constructed detailed set pieces for the attraction. The coral reef is artificial, at least until the last few seconds of the ride, but it looks real from the Clamobile.
With a believable backdrop in place, cast members played with evolving technologies to tell the story even better. An animation of Nemo (and friends) gets digitally projected into the appropriate scenes. Some of what you watch on the ride is real, while other parts require this projection.
In one memorable scene, Bruce the shark spots Nemo in a shipwreck. While a vegetarian by nature, Bruce has always wanted to eat Nemo as a light snack. He wonders whether clownfish taste funny, after all. Having failed on his chance in the movie, Bruce tries again in this sequel story of sorts.
Bruce exists in two forms on the ride. He’s a computer animation on a standard display, but Imagineers also physically recreated him at one point. It’s a 3-D effect where a shark seems to lurch at the audience. Since Bruce is navigating a sunken ship, he can’t quite reach you.
Nemo acts fearless around Bruce and even taunts him. This series of events leads to a subtle but extremely impressive Imagineering trick. A physical ship sits in front of a digital projection screen of Bruce. You would expect Nemo to appear in the latter part of the ride.
Instead, Nemo moves in and out of the holes in the ship, the thing that an Imagineer physically built and placed on the staging area for the scene. Nemo gets digitally projected in these gaps, building an illusion that he’s swimming through something that exists in the real world.
While digital projection anchors several Disney nighttime presentations today, its usage on The Seas with Nemo & Friends was genuinely groundbreaking.
The experience: A righteous swim through the East Australia Current
The trick: straightening the ride path and building a long wall of TVs
Generally, when you’re on a dark ride, you view the proceedings from a distance. You’re almost aloof in that you’re far away from what’s happening. That’s by design, as Walt Disney himself planned dark rides to work this way. He wanted to control perspective by giving riders one place to look.
By keeping the ride cart away from the action, everything seems larger than life. It’s a storytelling technique that’s been a staple of Imagineering since the very beginning. The Seas with Nemo & Friends daringly flips the script.
Perhaps the most memorable part of Finding Nemo the movie involves an underwater surfing session. Marlin and Dory encounter Crush and Squirt, who want to help them locate the missing clownfish. They ride the wave, so to speak, to shorten their journey, although it ends badly when a whale swallows them.
Imagineers wanted to simulate this sensation during the ride experience. Unfortunately, surfing on dry land is impossible, and Disney certainly wasn’t going to let park guests inside any part of the aquarium. So, some enterprising cast members came up with an inventive solution.
At one point, the ride path straightens. All Clamobiles follow in a straight line down this stretch. A giant wall of digital displays tells the story in front of the Clamobiles. It’s not all the same display, as an attentive rider will notice when a shadow falls across the screen. It’s a subtle hint that you’re at the gap between monitors. You’ll never notice unless you’re looking for the gaps, though.
The experience: Surfing in tandem with turtles
The trick: A big screen and narrow perspective
Instead, you’re too busy immersed in the action. You feel this way because of the viewing angle. Rather than leave the ride carts far away from these monitors, Imagineers threw out the rule book and went a different way. The Clamobile travels exceptionally close to the display. With such a tight perspective, you’re drawn into the action in an unprecedented manner.
Disney has timed the onscreen animations to coincide with the movement of your vehicle. Crush and Squirt teach Nemo what they previously taught his father. The three of them “grab shell” as they surf the current, and their speed matches that of your Clamobile. You believe that you’re following them through the water because of your front-row seat for the action.
The experience: A starfish quips while real fish frolic
The trick: Adding a bit of Nemo flair to the aquarium
This Imagineering trick goes hand-in-hand with the Nemo ship effect. Disney wanted to honor the history of The Living Seas, even though the company had commercialized the pavilion’s anchor attraction. For this reason, the last section of the Omnimover travels past an open part of the aquarium tank.
During The Seas with Nemo & Friends, guests still get to view sharks, dolphins, and other inhabitants of the massive aquarium. However, Pixar characters appear, too. Some of the windows digitally project fish from Nemo’s school in front of the real marine life.
The end of the ride becomes an oddly serene experience, as In the Big Blue World from Finding Nemo: The Musical provides the calming soundtrack. Imagineers want children to understand that Nemo has safely returned home after another adventure, and everyone’s so happy that they sing along!
As a magical touch at the end, a talking starfish says good-bye in his own inimitable way. Frozen in place, this starfish’s only functional body part is his mouth. He quips to guests about the absurdity of living at The Seas with Nemo & Friends. He complains about the repetition of the song, asks for help, and loudly tries to go to his happy place. It’s an insidious bit that causes guests to smile as they exit the ride.
The concept of infotainment has evolved over the years. In the earliest days of Epcot, some of the attractions were a bit preachy for this reason. Since then, Imagineers have gotten better at combining seemingly disparate concepts like an aquarium and a Pixar movie. The Seas with Nemo & Friends aptly demonstrates this progression and is one of the most underrated rides in the world.
