There’s a certain mystery to the closed portions of the Walt Disney World Resort property. Urban explorers and Disney enthusiasts alike have ventured into areas such as the abandoned River Country water park and the defunct Discovery Island zoological exhibit in order to see a side of Disney normally blocked from public view. These are places that were once “on stage” in Disney parlance, and now they are not. What has changed? Are they still how we remember them? Could Disney reopen them if they were so inclined?
In October of 1989, the Wonders of Life pavilion opened at Epcot. In January of 2007, it closed for good. And yet, despite its doors being opened to the public for occasional events, including the annual Flower & Garden and Food & Wine Festivals, the current state of the pavilion is largely unknown. Yes, portions of it are used for seminars and classes, but what about the rest?
There are rumors strewn across the Disney-centric corners of the internet suggesting that some of its former attractions have been removed. Some, allegedly, are still operable. The status of others is completely unknown – immune even from rampant internet speculation.
Which rumors are true? We will likely never know. So rather than try to speculate on what the Wonders of Life pavilion is like now, let’s look back at what it was – remembering some of the most charming and unique attractions Disney ever offered.
5. The design
The original plan for Epcot included a life and health pavilion, but a lack of sponsorship pushed Disney to hold off on the plans until 1989. Nowadays, Epcot’s pavilions are mostly home to singular attractions (i.e. Test Track, Mission: Space, Spaceship Earth, arguably), but Wonders of Life was different. It featured two marquee attractions and a number of smaller diversions, activities, and films.
The pavilion took on the look of a carnival or a fair – bright colors and big-top-style architecture gave it a sense of festivity and fun. Imagineers must have thought that something as sterile and cold as health would be off-putting to vacationing families if it weren’t couched in an aggressively “fun” visual aesthetic. Personally, I remember loving the pavilion as a kid, so in many ways they were successful in that aim. But, considering how poorly the building aged (seriously, look at all that teal – could it be any more 90s?), that particular design choice may not have been the best one.
4. The main floor
The main floor wasn’t just aesthetics and a place to shuttle you from the door to the attractions – there were experiences here for guests to enjoy as well. The Sensory Funhouse was, as its name suggests, an exhibit designed to stimulate guests’ senses and explore how people are affected by touch, sight and sound. Coach’s Corner offered interactive video training in various sports such as tennis, baseball and golf.
Perhaps the most visually appealing exhibit on the main floor was the Wonder Cycles, which were stationary bicycles with TV screens attached. The screens played a video that would be synchronized to the speed of the bicycle, speeding up and slowing down as the guest did the same with the pedals. This created the sensation of actually biking through a scene. The bikes had multiple course options for the guest to choose from, including the Rose Parade in California and a ride through Disneyland.
The main floor was busy, both literally and in terms of design, but the effect was something like a jolt of energy – which was fitting in the pavilion about life and health.
3. The shows and films
In addition to the diversionary exhibits, Wonders of Life featured a few smaller-scale shows and films. Goofy about Health was a clip-show-style movie that used segments from the classic Disney shorts to teach guests about the importance of staying active. The Anacomical Players were actors who played health-themed theater and improv games, usually to the amusement of the gathered crowd.
But the central film in Wonders of Life was The Making of Me, a 16-minute movie starring Martin Short. In the film, Short explained the human reproductive process by telling the story of his own creation, from his parents’ meeting until his birth. Shortly after its debut, Disney made sure the theater featured plenty of warnings about the content of the film, as some families found it too frank in its discussion of human sexuality. It was mostly comical, and didn’t go too much into detail, but still guests were warned about possible objectionable content.
All in all, it was a pretty ambitious project for Imagineering – one that would only have been undertaken then, when Epcot was still primarily a park designed to educate its guests, rather than simply entertain them.
2. Body Wars
Beating Star Tours by just a few months, Body Wars was technically the first motion simulator built on Walt Disney World property. Both used the same technology, but according to guests and conventional wisdom, Body Wars offered the comparatively rougher ride.
Body Wars told the story of a company called MET (Miniaturized Exploration Technologies) that specializes in a a process by which doctors could be shrunk down to work inside a human body. Of course, on this day, MET is showing its technology to the public, beaming guests underneath the skin of a patient to examine a large splinter. This might surprise you, but things don’t go totally according to plan.
The ride’s film was directed by Star Trek alum Leonard Nimoy and featured Tim Matheson and Elizabeth Shue. When the ride first opened, its expansive queue was full to the brim, leaving guests with lengthy wait times. The experience, for most, was worth it – for many, it was the first motion simulator they’d ever ridden, and the wait was merely tangential. Over time, as the technology became generalized and duplicated, and as Wonders of Life slowly declined in popularity, so too did the line for Body Wars.
In its final years, it was made a seasonal attraction, opening only when the park reached peak capacity. And even then, it was mostly a walk-on.
1. Cranium Command
If there was one attraction at Wonders of Life that was ahead of its time, it was Cranium Command. Part-goofball comedy, part-after-school special, Cranium Command told the story of a teenage boy from the perspective of his brain – anthropomorphizing the various organs in the body, including the brain, the stomach, the heart, and so on. The show was directed by several former CalArts animation students, including Jerry Rees (director of The Brave Little Toaster), and was one of the rare shows at Disney that was as hilarious the first time you saw it as the twentieth. The pre-show was an animated segment introducing guests to a motley crew of Cranium Commandos, whose job it is to pilot human brains. The main experience was a combination of live-action film and audio-animatronic effects, put together to form a single stage show.
The attraction featured numerous celebrity appearances, including Charles Grodin, Jon Lovitz, George Wendt, Bobcat Goldthwait, and Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon. It was simultaneously touching, funny, educational, and charming. Even more importantly, it was a show that kids and parents enjoyed equally, each finding something about it to connect with.
No attraction at Wonders of Life has been subject to more rumors, however. The most widely spread rumor suggests that the attraction remains mostly intact, and that if it were slightly refurbished, it could run once again. Hopefully, that rumor is true, because even if we can’t see it, it’s nice to know one of Disney’s most charming attractions is still, kind of, with us.
Interestingly, Pixar is currently hard at work on Inside Out, an upcoming film built around an incredibly similar concept to Cranium Command. The film features a young girl interacting with anthropomorphized versions of her emotions, played by famous comedians such as Amy Poehler and Bill Hader. It’s currently scheduled for release in 2015, and if it’s successful, will likely find its way into the Disney parks in some way. Could you imagine if we got something of a sequel to Cranium Command in Epcot?
Ultimately, the most unfortunate thing about Wonders of Life is that it is still standing. It’s been retrofitted into an event space – something endlessly useful during Food & Wine or Flower & Garden – but in doing so, Epcot lost a sizable pavilion with nothing permanent to take its place. The great irony is that now, more than ever, people are concerned with their health and their fitness. Never has there been a better time for there to be a pavilion celebrating eating right and working out, so hopefully, Disney will one day bring back something in its place.
And, hopefully, it won’t be that garish shade of teal.
