I know many of us love Epcot, but I think if some of you are ever going to enjoy the park again you’ll need to take off your nostalgia goggles and see that Epcot was always more than the sum of its parts.
It was groundbreaking in many ways, but a similar aesthetic was incorporated into malls, museums, office parks, college campuses, elementary schools, etc. diminishing some of Epcot’s uniqueness.
Edutainment (my favorite aspect of original Epcot) is all but dead. They snuck a bit into Journey of Water and pretended to with GotG, but guests largely want to stare at their phones all day and don’t want to be bothered with learning, discovery, or thinking.
Epcot was a moment in time, and Disney abandoned it.
It's never going to be the park it once was -- it had both the best attraction lineup and the most interesting set of non-attraction things to do of any Disney park -- but I know that and don't expect it to ever be that again.
The problem is that despite all the construction they've done very little to make the current version of the park worth visiting for me beyond the remnants of what was once there (i.e., the reason I was already visiting pre-construction). I still love EPCOT for things like Living with the Land, Spaceship Earth, the aquarium (in its significantly diminished form), and the World Showcase, but many, if not most, of the other changes they've made in the past 20 years just aren't interesting to me.
I do think the new hub will be a big improvement over what was there before they started this project (other than the loss of the Fountain of Nations), and Journey of Water looks nice enough. Space 220, Cosmic Rewind, and the Ratatouille expansion all feel like varying degrees of missed opportunities to me, though, where they should have built something better/more impressive than they did -- I wasn't expecting anything else from the Ratatouille ride itself since it was a clone and thus we knew what we were getting, but the creperie was a major misfire. Space 220 is fine and I'm glad they added it, but the space window isn't overly impressive and the prix fixe menu is a huge negative. Cosmic Rewind is a fun coaster, but it doesn't really offer anything beyond that and it doesn't even use the Guardians IP well.
They definitely have a chance to make it into a great park again if they spend money on excellent updates to SSE, Imagination, and the Seas, and even moreso if they turn the former Wonders of Life into something worthwhile -- they could also add attractions to more World Showcase pavilions, or add a new pavilion entirely -- but after 5+ years of construction on various things, they haven't made nearly enough impact on the park.
They needed several home runs and instead came away with a few singles and doubles. Even if you consider Cosmic Rewind a masterpiece and give it home run status (I know a lot of people absolutely love it), it's still not enough.
