Back in 2016, Walt Disney World announced that EPCOT would be getting a complete overhaul, with new rides, theming, dining options and more designed to make the park feel “more Disney, timeless, relevant, [and] family-friendly”. Now while a lot of what Disney originally planned to do with EPCOT didn’t ever actually come to pass (The Mary Poppins Attraction, Spaceship Earth re-theme and Play Pavillion were all canceled), a lot did, and to very mixed results.
New attractions like Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout, Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, the short-lived Harmonious, and the newly-opened Journey of Water Inspired by Moana may have all been received very differently, but they had one thing in common: They were all based on recent movies, mostly from the past decade, which were something, historically, that had not been a large part of EPCOT.
Perhaps expectedly, this new direction for the park felt off-brand to many Disney fans, especially as EPCOT traditionally had a focus on real-world places and experiences, with only minimal representation of characters pulled from Disney movies. With all of these film-focused attractions opening in the last few years, many felt that the park’s original theme of scientific and cultural discovery was being lost, and the park was beginning to feel more like the Magic Kingdom or Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
However, now that all of these changes have been made, and Disney has gauged reactions to them, it seems like the park may be in for a little course correction in the coming years.
Boosting non-IP attractions
One of the biggest surprises at the recent D23: Destination D event was the announcement that Test Track was being re-themed to more closely follow the original World of Motion concept, which was an opening day attraction at the park, but evolved into Test Track in the mid-90s. It was also announced during this event that the current Soarin’ Around the World film would be phased out for an undetermined amount of time in order to bring back the original Soarin’, which ran from 2005 – 2016.
Though these moves might seem unrelated, they both seem like somewhat of a thematic course correct for EPCOT, giving a nostalgic boost to some of the few remaining attractions at the park that are not explicitly tied to IP, and are giving fans of this park who have been critical of its shift towards movie-based attractions something to look forward to.
Imagining the future
There have been plenty of new additions to EPCOT over the past several years, but there are still more changes on the horizon before the end of the year. Next on the calendar is the opening of Dreamer’s Point this December, which will celebrate Walt Disney’s legacy as the “original dreamer” with a statue and garden area near the front of the park.
Around the same time, new nighttime show Luminous: The Symphony of Us, will be opening at EPCOT on December 5. In addition, CommuniCore Plaza and CommuniCore Hall, which will function as a home base for festival entertainment, are still set to open before the end of the year, though a date has not been announced. All three of these new additions hearken back to EPCOT’s original theme, (especially CommuniCore Hall, which is named for an opening day EPCOT attraction) and are further proof that Disney’s initial plan to make EPCOT another park with mostly movie-based attractions just didn’t work.
After all of these projects are completed, it might be easy to assume that EPCOT’s transformation will be done. However, given the mixed responses to several of EPCOT’s new attractions and its attempt to course correct right at the end, we’d bet more will be announced for this park in the future, especially since nearly a third of the $60 Billion Disney has pledged to invest in its parks and entertainment division is going towards Walt Disney World.
While there’s nothing officially on the calendar just yet, given the nostalgic re-theme of Test Track into World of Motion, and the final three projects finishing up this year, it seems likely that any future attractions that are announced for this park will be more in line with its original theme, and the attractions that were constructed as part of the “new EPCOT” announced in 2016 will simply be an outlier as the park returns to something more closely resembling its original theme.
