Why is there not more love for the Original EPCOT Center in today’s media?

[DL-fan]

EPCOT Center is the most creative effort that Disney has ever accomplished. Sure, the original Disneyworld and Disneyland Paris were major efforts but there was a formula they were following. There was no formula for EPCOT besides Walt Disney’s vague views of what it could be.

Imagineers from Disney’s past and future worked on this major undertaking. Names such as Tony Baxter, Claude Coats, John Hench, Marty Sklar, Marc Davis, animator Ward Kimball, Buddy Baker, The Sherman Brothers, Herbie Ryman, X Antencio, Blaine Gibson, Rolly Crump, Joe Rhode, Wathel Rogers, Tom Fitzgerald, Jeff Burke, George McGinnis, Harper Goff, Steve Kirk, Tim Delaney, Tom Morris, Bob Gurr, Randy Bright, Bill Evans, Sam McKim, Marvin Davis and famed novelist Ray Bradbury contributed as well. How crazy is that? A who’s who of Disney Legends all teamed up for one last hurrah to honor Walt Disney. Many of these Imagineers were already retired and came out of it briefly to help contribute to Walt’s Dream.

This massive undertaking cost the company 800 million to 1.4 billion in 1982. This accumulates to 3.5-4.7 Billion today!!!!!! Those are insane numbers and Card Walker must have had multiple heart attacks seeing those numbers rise and rise. Nothing like Epcot Center will ever happen again and that really is too bad. Disney took big chances back in the day and in the end it could have killed the company as a whole and almost did not even two years after Epcot Center opened.

Why is there not more love for the Original EPCOT Center? Disneyland gets so much love and it is well deserved but Epcot should get that same love too. Why isn’t there modern books or documentaries today about its history, construction, designs and all the people who were involved in the project?

 

[The Empress Lilly]

Well for one, Disneyland is still there to visit, it always creates new fans. Wave after wave, generation after generation. Meanwhile EPCOT Center really was just 1982 - 1994. Even though parts of it remain and can be enjoyed today.

There is a generation of Disney fans who witnessed EPCOT during their formative years, and for whom it will always be the greatest park Disney ever made. (royal purple pigment, iykyk)

There has never been anything like it, and there never will be. In retrospect, just a lucky quirk, owing to a company without clear direction since Walt's death and the initial focus on finishing the MK, to Imagineers running riot all over the place without clear direction, to the 70's demand for art to be socially relevant, to the singular persona of Marty Sklar, and to an unfinished WDW that was supposed to have an EPCOT but that the company didn’t really know what to do with. Chaos can be a magnificent driver of creative effort.

 

[HMF]

Historical revisionism that it was considered boring by the majority of guests which Disney caved in to instead of trying to refute.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

A good an interesting topic -

Epcot is not Epcot anymore. You can’t have a serious world showcase and plop frozen, Donald Duck, and ratatouille into the pavilions plus have all the character meet and greets.

That’s not me saying I agree or disagree - it’s just not the same park and experience at all.

For all purposes - it’s like Epcot was built by a different company and then corporate Disney bought it and splashed IP everywhere they could quickly and easily.

So what are we supposed to love? A vision for a park that is long gone? The current version of the park doesn’t have a true identity.

Before anyone paints me as negative I spent a crazy amount of time at Epcot on my last trip. I love the art festival and feel like it makes Epcot feel the most like Epcot it ever does. I actually like Luminous quite a lot and consider it worthy of replacing illuminations (maybe harmonious was just so bad it clouds my thinking? Haha).

 

[Centauri Space Station]

If meet and greets and disney influence makes WS unserious then it hasn’t been serious since the mid 80s.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

If meet and greets and disney influence makes WS unserious then it hasn’t been serious since the mid 80s.

I would say the moment they added Donald to the ride in Mexico is when any hope of a serious world showcase ended. When would you say it happened?

 

[ChrisFL]

If EPCOT Center had closed in the mid-1990's entirely it would have been more revered...instead the original concept died a slow death over decades instead, and people did enjoy some of the attractions that replaced old ones, so it wasn't entirely bad news for a number of guests, but the soul was lost.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

If EPCOT Center had closed in the mid-1990's entirely it would have been more revered...

Millennium Celebration brought some of the best though - Reflections of Earth and Tapestry of Nations. They were the definition of Epcot.

 

[Ayla]

Nice chatgpt/AI post.

 

[DisneyHead123]

I think the US castle parks get a ton of pop culture coverage because they’re a symbol of Americana. Epcot not getting as much coverage is probably like any number of really amazing projects not getting a ton of coverage. There’s only so much media limelight to go around. MK is actually a rare exception in that regard.

Also, while I doubt this plays a huge role, there’s the fact that Epcot was not what Walt himself wanted it to be. There was a lot of utopian community planning / dreaming going on at the time, from Hare Krishna communities to the behaviorist “Walden Two”. Epcot was meant to be a community bringing new possibilities regarding human progress into reality.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

Nice chatgpt/AI post.

Which post?

And wouldn’t a modern day Epcot be promoting AI technology in Communicore?

 

[Ayla]

Which post?

And wouldn’t a modern day Epcot be promoting AI technology in Communicore?

The OP.

 

[parksandtravel]

I would say the moment they added Donald to the ride in Mexico is when any hope of a serious world showcase ended. When would you say it happened?

I honestly don't mind Donald because of how historic The Three Caballeros film was. Walt Disney was a bit of a renaissance man for the form of cultural immersion it brought for its time.
If someone did something similar now using a classic character they would be called "woke."

 

[HMF]

Here is my take on the parks decline and history.

Decline of a Dream

The Long, Slow Decline of Walt Disney World's Epcot

vocal.media

 

[HMF]

Millennium Celebration brought some of the best though - Reflections of Earth and Tapestry of Nations. They were the definition of Epcot.

Yes, though the 90s incarnation was slightly kitschier and louder than the 80s incarnation it was at least trying to stay within the boundaries of the original concept. The wheels started coming off largely after the Millenium Celebration when the IP mandate came in, ultimately culminating with the retirement of Reflections of Earth in 2019. With the re-imagining the park is now a completely different beast than what it used to be and all the homages to the eighties EPCOT are just hollow fan service in the vein of the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy rather than a real understanding of the how and why of the Parks original intention by WDI.

 

[HMF]

Which post?

And wouldn’t a modern day Epcot be promoting AI technology in Communicore?

They don't want to actually showcase technology especially considering how the perception of where we are heading as a society has soured over the past 25 years and EPCOT of course has ended up being a reflection of that pessimism so they do "safe" things such as IP integration and doing away with most of the "Future" centric philosophy of the original park especially with the splitting of Future World into Neighborhoods garbage.

 

[UNCgolf]

Nice chatgpt/AI post.

It's definitely not AI -- AI doesn't write like that (and also doesn't make some of the minor grammatical errors).

 

[DL-fan]

Nice chatgpt/AI post.

I’m not quite there yet but when I stop caring about the parks and would rather just be lazy and post some ChatGPT/AI nonsense on the forums so that I can still be relevant, I’ll make sure you’ll be the first one to get a chance to read that nonsense

 

[FigmentsBrightIdeas]

Totally agree in that there should be further documentation & behind the scenes footage, concept art, stories, etc. shown looking into EPCOT and its various attractions it’s had through the years, aswell as the way they’ve changed overtime, the way the core vision in the park & its areas has changed, and behind the scenes stories behind said changes.
100%.