As anyone who’s reading Theme Park Tourist can tell you, when you really simplify it, EPCOT is primarily known for three things: not changing enough, changing too much, and earning the resentment of Disney Parks fans for both.
Beginning as Walt Disney World’s “permanent World’s Fair” when it opened in 1982, EPCOT was an intellectual park whose Future World pavilions were renowned for their lengthy, in-depth, animatronic-filled dark rides – many of which are immortalized in our in-depth Lost Legends series. That began to change in the ’90s, when Disney began to evolve the park to bring in high tech rides and more characters, papering over classics and creating a piecemeal park of ’80s architecture, ’90s colors, and semi-scientific thrill rides.
It was 2017 when Disney announced that they would at last do what fans had hoped and feared for years: give EPCOT’s Future World a full, master-planned reimagining. Some parts of the five year effort (like Cosmic Rewind, the “Beacons of Magic” lights on Spaceship Earth, the return of pavilion icons, and the park’s redesigned entrance) are obvious successes. Others (like Journey of Water and Harmonious) were more divisive.
And sadly, thanks to the pandemic’s interruption, some parts of the plan didn’t come to be at all. Whether it’s the announced plans for Mary Poppins in the U.K. pavilion, the Play pavilion, and Celebration pavilion planned for the park’s center, or rumors of the inevitable reimaginings of a Journey into Imagination E-Ticket and Coco joining the Mexico pavilion, EPCOT today doesn’t look the way Imagineers or their fans had hoped way back in 2017…
But like it or not, Disney CEO Bob Iger proclaims that EPCOT’s long-running reimagining is officially complete as of December 5, 2023 thanks to the unveiling of World Celebration – the last of three “neighborhoods” created from chunks of the former Future World. Yep, after many years, the fences have fallen around EPCOT’s center, and where Innoventions and the Fountain of Nations once resided, something very new has arisen.
World Celebration
As this hand-illustrated before and after graphic from our friends at Park Lore shows, the center of EPCOT has changed drastically. That’s on purpose. EPCOT has long been criticized for feeling vast, concrete, cold, and barren. “The 21st century as envisioned from the 1980s” turned out to be… well… a lot less warm and natural than we actually hope for the present and future to be.
The east side of the renamed World Celebration isn’t much of a surprise. The refreshed Connections Cafe & Eatery and Creations Shop are recent reincarnations of the park’s former Quick Service and Retail hub (formerly, the Electric Umbrella and MouseGear). Both gave fans a very clear peek into the aesthetic of the “new” EPCOT – homages to the ’80s and embrace of its architecture, but filled with a whole lot more modern sensibility – glass, steel, wood, and warmth.
The west side of the space – formerly Innoventions West – was demolished in 2021, ending nearly forty years of the two mirrored, parentheses-shaped buildings reigning over the park’s center. Initially, that was supposed to be for Journey of Water Inspired by Moana (an interactive walkthrough grotto that technically belongs to the neighboring “World Nature” area) and…
…a new, elevated “Celebration” pavilion, serving as a hub for the park’s many festivals and offering (no doubt, upcharge) elevated viewing of the park’s lagoon-set nighttime spectacular. Given Disney’s significant draw-down in financial investment during and after the pandemic, it wasn’t much of a surprise when Imagineers announced that they’d – eh hem – changed plans, painfully re-building a structure resembling Innoventions West in the space they’d only just cleared out.
The result was a re-oriented space with the new CommuniCore Hall (its name a throwback to the name of the parenthetical buildings pre-Innoventions). The warehouse-style Hall is meant to be a sort of mini expo center whose contents can shift depending on EPCOT’s then-current festival. It also encompasses CommuniCore Plaza – an audience area oriented toward a small stage for live music or festival demonstrations.
The bulk of the park’s center, though, is what’s being called Celebration Gardens – really, a series of distinct seating areas and relaxation spaces tucked around a new central planter.
Celebration Gardens is about as different from the old Innoventions area as it could be; it’s a glowing, natural landscape that resembles a well-appointed, 21st century city park. There’s plentiful seating – all wood and steel – among concrete. In this oasis, there are towering, stylized metal trees; curving pathways lit by light-up sprigs; symmetrical planters; mini-stages for performances…
Its fans will say that the new World Celebration – the heart of EPCOT – is a community space. By day, it feels like this space fulfills an important need for the park. Charging ports suggest that Annual Passholders could come here, grab a coffee from Connections, then find a seat embedded in a planter, plug in, and “work from home” from EPCOT.
It’s a space that feels like it’s fitting a lot of briefs – it’s futuristic, but cozy; accessible, but unique; retro, but modern, just like EPCOT itself.
By night especially, Celebration Gardens transforms. It’s a space that’s intensely colorful and discoverable… After sunset, stained glass lights illuminate; so do wooden sculptural gourds. Trees undulate with color, and wooden sprigs stuck into the ground suddenly reveal themselves as lights.
And of course, the retro ’80s EPCOT “globe” logo embedded in the ground illuminates, synchronizing with the mini-shows presented through Spaceship Earth’s pinpoint lights. And for those who mourn the loss of the iconic LED-embedded tiles displaying otherworldly symbols around the Innoventions area by night, rest assured: the new area includes its own pinpoint lights, sending colorful patterns sweeping through the area.
WOW! The EPCOT Anthem Spaceship Earth Show from World Celebration Gardens is probably the coolest when viewed from INSIDE the World Celebration Gardens area. Here’s a small clip (We will have the full segment on our YouTube channel soon):#DisneyWorld @WaltDisneyWorld #EPCOT pic.twitter.com/TVN0YKxGv6
— ThrillGeek (@thrillgeek) December 6, 2023
And of course, to cap it all off, this new expansion includes a bronze statue of Walt himself. Following in the vein of “Partners” (at most Castle Parks) and “Storytellers” (developed for Disney California Adventure’s rebirth), we find “Walt the Dreamer” situated on a concrete bench looking into the heart of EPCOT.
The plaque nearby contains an associated quote: “… always be in a state of becoming.” (It was a quote he used to describe the original Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow urban living concept whose name would be revived for the EPCOT Center theme park years after his death.) It may just be a bit of fan service (and an odd fit given that EPCOT is definitely not the EPCOT Walt was talking about), but statues of Walt have come to mark major park reimaginings at WDI, so it’s expected.
Look – when it comes to EPCOT, nothing can please everyone. EPCOT isn’t a “theme park” in the same way that the rest in Disney’s portfolio is. It plays by different rules; it has a different atmosphere. It’s an expo. So through that lens we ask: what do you think of the new Celebration Gardens? Did Disney hit a home run in this new central space for the park? Or is this area yet another chip away at what made EPCOT special? Let us know in the comments below!
