“Remember how easy it was to learn your ABC’s? Thank the Phoenicians. They invented them!”
Every year, millions of guests arrive at Walt Disney World expecting to experience magic. We get to watch tales as old as time come to life, heroes challenge evil empires, and characters you would only find in a Fantasyland burst into vibrant reality. We expect to meet Mickey Mouse, scream on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, or soar through the dreamscapes of Pandora.
However, what most people don’t realize is how Disney has managed over the years to make learning magical…
Education has been a component of the vision of Walt Disney World from near the beginning, primarily since Walt first pitched his idea for E.P.C.O.T., the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. The vision for an experimental futuristic utopia transformed over time into a park where education was the highlight of guest’s visit. Disney infused the mundane studies of human history, communication, transportation, and geography with pixie dust and produced a park unlike any other. This vision expanded to the exploration of ecology with the opening of Discovery Island, a glimpse into filmmaking at Disney MGM Studios, and finally the study of the natural world in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Disney even had an entire resort dedicated to hands-on educational experiences for guests—The Disney Institute.
What happened?
There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that the vision of Walt Disney World has shifted. Where original stories once made up a majority of the rides, now intellectual properties rule supreme. Indeed, you’ll be hard pressed to identify an upcoming Disney attraction that doesn’t surround an existing character or film series. While IP’s have always been a part of Disney parks even in educational content (such as Epcot’s “Circle of Life” or Animal Kingdom’s “It’s Tough to Be a Bug”), at all Disney parks, it seems like the focus on education is dwindling.
Is Disney’s upcoming lineup a portent that educational entertainment within the parks is disappearing?
The magic of learning
Image: Jett Farrell-Vega
If you grew up visiting Walt Disney World, you might be able to identify something you learned for the first time at Disney parks. Maybe it was the history of the United States at the Hall of Presidents or The American Adventure. Maybe it was the evolution of human communication on Spaceship Earth. For decades, Walt Disney World has proven a paradise for the young and old who love to learn.
Epcot stood heads and tails above all other parks in this regard. In The World of Motion, we learned the history of transportation through whimsical storytelling. In Horizons, we learned how technology would change the ways we live, complete with a choose-your-adventure component. In the Wonders of Life, we learned about the complexity of the human body from biology (Body Wars), to brain-chemistry (Cranium Command), even to reproduction (The Making of Me). In Innoventions, we got to see in real time how the world around us was evolving into this very future with hands-on exhibitions.
Many of these attractions still remain, even if they’ve changed skins. Living With the Land still teaches us about innovation and responsibility in agriculture. Soarin’ Around the World opens our eyes to the sights, scents, and sounds of a beautiful planet. The Living Seas received new life as The Seas with Nemo and Friends, maintaining its educational vision while drawing in younger visitors with the familiar cast of Finding Nemo. In World Showcase, we still get to learn the beauty of human culture through a microcosm of nations.
Image: Disney
Disney’s Animal Kingdom has proven the other significant pillar in Disney’s educational vision. Kilimanjaro Safaris not only transformed our perspective on what a “zoo” could look like, but even with a somewhat heavy-handed backstory (that changed over time), it helped visitors to stop and consider the problem of poaching. The Maharajah Jungle Trek not only brings us up close and personal with tigers, Komodo dragons, and giant bugs but also challenges our perspective on bats as scary monsters (that isn’t glass you’re looking at them through). Even Dinoland U.S.A. for all its foibles still stoked study of prehistory through Countdown to Extinction / Dinosaur. The message of conversation remains steady throughout the park, especially at the narrowly-surviving Conservation Station at Rafiki’s Planet Watch.
In its current state, it is easy to write off Disney’s Hollywood Studios as the least educational of all their parks, but this wasn’t always the case. By opening our eyes to the magic of movie making, Hollywood Studios allowed guests to look behind the curtain, from an exploration of the history of film on The Great Movie Ride to a fun jaunt through the creation of sound effects on the Monster Sound Show. Even the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular still holds a place as an educational attraction since it reveals much about the magic of stunt work. Most notably, Disney’s Art of Animation provided a remarkable open window (literally) into the complex work of animation. I know for myself, my experiences at Disney’s MGM Studios / Hollywood Studios helped launch me into a decades long career in the film industry.
A steady shift
Image: Disney
While it may seem like the shift away from education in Disney attractions came suddenly with the arrival of Marvel, Star Wars, and Frozen, the change has actually been very gradual.
The closing of the Disney Institute may have marked the first fall of the dominoes. For those unfamiliar, The Disney Institute was a Disney resort entirely centered around hands-on learning experiences and workshops. Guests could take cooking classes, learn how to DJ, learn time management, rock climbing, gardening, or even explore Disney’s wilderness conservation lands. Financially, it ultimately proved a failed experiment. This was around the same time as a changing of the guard within Disney management—Bob Iger had just come on as COO and would succeed Michael Eisner as CEO five years later in 2005. The institute still exists as a professional development center, but the original vision of a learning paradise for guests proved unsustainable.
The last Walt Disney World attraction with both an original story and educational focus was Soarin’ in 2006 (which was a copy of its California counterpart; Mission: SPACE opened two years earlier). Since that point, Disney has slowly changed gears to focusing on attractions based on intellectual properties while mainstays from the old days have fizzled out. The Great Movie Ride shut down to become the future Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railroad. Universe of Energy closed to make way for Guardians of the Galaxy. The Art of Disney Animation long shuttered its doors and currently holds Star Wars Launch Bay. Even Spaceship Earth is getting ready to undergo a years long refurbishment with no telling what it will look like on the other side.
A Frozen turning point…
Image: Disney
While it makes a certain amount of sense for Disney’s Hollywood Studios to shift this direction, the two parks that guests always assumed were safe in their educational vision have always been Epcot and Disney’s Animal Kingdom. However, even there, the winds are changing.
For Epcot, the arrival of Frozen Ever After brought a flood of younger visitors and families no one ever expected. We still bemoan that this new attraction was built on the quirky bones of Maelstrom, but there is no doubt it improved Epcot’s attendance. The change didn’t stop with a single attraction. The entire Norway pavilion has slowly been taken over by Frozen, with pockets left here and there of classic structures. Even Kringla Bakery needed a renovation to keep up with guest demand.
On one hand, you can see where Disney is coming from. Walt Disney World is ultimately a destination for families, and with sponsors of major shows and attractions pulling out, the park definitely has needed an attendance boost. It makes sense to add tie-ins to IP’s like bringing Frozen to Norway and Ratatouille to France. The success of Frozen Ever After only proved that the shift works.
Image: Disney
Similarly, no one could have predicted the stellar success of The World of Pandora at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. With only tenuous threads to the park’s vision (except perhaps that Avatar is sort of Ferngully: The Last Rainforest for adults?), The World of Pandora became one of Disney’s wildest successes, skyrocketing attendance. There’s no telling what effect a more universally-known property like Star Wars will have on Disney’s Hollywood Studios after 2019 with the opening of Galaxy’s Edge.
While the shift towards intellectual property-focus is understandable, is Disney taking it too far? Should the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy Coaster have been reserved for Disney Hollywood Studios or is the ride going to be a breath of fresh air for Future World? Is “Epcot Forever”—a show that appears to entirely surround Disney characters and music—a worthy successor to Illuminations, a show that highlighted diversity or is it more heavy-handed IP promotion likely to fall flat with long-time fans? What will this shift mean for Disney’s Animal Kingdom? Should we expect The Lion King to take over the remaining theming of the Africa land or The Jungle Book to become the prominent theme in Asia? Is the whole park basically going to become Zootopia?
Is the educational vision dead?
Image: Jett Farrell-Vega
While Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom are both heading in fairly predictable directions likely to do well for those parks (especially with the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge), what is to become of Epcot and Disney’s Animal Kingdom?
It would be fairly difficult—bizarre, even—for Disney to scrub the educational components from Animal Kingdom. The entire park surrounds a vision of education about nature and conservation, and even in The World of Pandora, this theme is still reinforced. While there is no doubt the park will continue to transform for years to come, certainly bringing more intellectual properties, it seems a safe bet that Animal Kingdom will continue to carry educational theming for the long term, at least in regards to its animal residents and conservation efforts.
What about Epcot though?
The future of Epcot is where things get really murky. At D23 2017, Disney committed to a long term and intensive reimagining of Epcot. On one hand, Bob Chapek, chairman of Disney Parks and Resorts has said, “We want to keep it true to the original vision while making it more timeless, more relevant, more family-[friendly], and more Disney.” There’s a splinter of hope to hold to the original intent of the park, which implies educational attractions. Epcot’s annual festivals certainly are still running with this idea.
However, Don Dorsey, the creator of Illuminations: Reflections of Earth, has voiced skepticism: “The original vision for Walt’s EPCOT is long gone. Even the subsequent revisions have fallen by the wayside. The world is moving and evolving way too fast for a single futuristic vision to last, so other non-future approaches are required and will succeed and change as needed.”
Image: Jett Farrell-Vega
It is entirely possible for Disney’s shift to intellectual property focus to coincide with the educational vision: for example, a Beauty and the Beast sing-along coming to the France pavilion has potential for a mixture of the two. Character meet and greets help stir children’s interest in the countries those characters are from and create an opportunity for learning. The rumor mill surrounding Epcot pumps out wild possibilities almost weekly, from a Future World-themed resort to potential for a long-awaited new pavilion to be added to World Showcase.
However, one has to truly wonder if we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg as far as changes to come. What would a Future World without any focus on the future look like? Will the idea breathe fresh life or doom the park to become a stagnant copy of Magic Kingdom and Disney Hollywood Studios? Are original story-attractions like Test Track, Mission: SPACE, Living with the Land, and Soarin’ Around the World safe, or is it only a matter of time before these are scrubbed in the name of intellectual property promotion? For Spaceship Earth, in particular, the future looks disconcertingly dodgy.
As a whole, the future of Walt Disney World holds great promise, and we are genuinely excited about a majority of the projects they have lined up. At the same time, one can’t help but wonder if we are witnessing the slow death of that special component of Walt Disney World that made education magical… We will have to wait and see.
What do you think about the shifts away from educational entertainment at Disney parks?
