There's no excuse to have such a big empty space. After all the years it took to finish this area?! They could have filled this building with some exhibits or interactive displays until the next festival comes along. At the very least I was expecting the large Figment figure from the concept art.
Doesn't the Disney Archive have a ton of stuff they could show here? Heck, they could use this space to display some old CommuniCore items and talk about the history of Epcot, or have a temporary exhibit of past Epcot attractions. I think that lots of people would love that.
I actually generally like the finished product, but yeah, opening it without an exhibition of some kind really pulls out the rug from under it.
I enjoyed EPCOT more in my past visit in December than in my whole life.
I look forward in a few weeks to EPCOT unwalled.
I totally agree—it’s not even close for me.
My very early memories of EPCOT are a park without even Mission: Space and Soarin’.
That was a
rough period for the park. It wasn’t that long ago that Ellen’s Energy Adventure closed too, and despite it being my absolute favorite ride growing up—alongside Maelstrom—replacing it with Cosmic Rewind has made such a colossal difference for the park.
I don’t know if it was the dinosaurs, or the outstanding soundtrack, or how charismatic Bill Nye and Ellen DeGeneres were in it, but It single-handedly sparked my interest in science, so I really hope at least a few rides keep an edutainment aspect despite me feeling that EPCOT suffered from a lack of diversity in its line-up. It was, for a lack of a better term, very monotonous, which was even worse when pretty much every ride was a slow moving omnimover.
It feels totally different now. If I’m in Orlando for a weekend, my two parks that I hit are generally EPCOT and IOA, sidestepping the others. I definitely would want to at least hop over to HWS before Guardians, but now it stands on its own a lot better.
Though despite my nostalgia for Ellen (and to a lesser extent Spaceship Earth ‘94), I’ll even admit that the park literally lacked a ride line-up worth anything.
And of course, Ratatouille actually fits France unlike FEA in Norway and added a lot of additional capacity while also being a good ride.
And that’s beyond us going from the cheap, outdated and abandoned mess off a 90s concrete jungle that were both of the CommuniCore buildings and the central plaza.
