HauntedMansionFLA
Well-Known Member
Attractions for me would be rides. For Disney, meet and greets fall under the umbrella of attractions. Just like the Wreck It Ralph Playground - park operations run that attraction.
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Bob Chapek Confirms Disney Will Overhaul Epcot
- Thread starter Bacon
- Start date
mikejs78
Premium Member
I'd say rides and shows are attractions. Cranium Command was not a ride, it was a show. But still an attraction.
A.playground can be, but it has to be large and elaborate. The WiR playground is not. The boneyard is.
A M&G is not an attraction.
I have seen people say this before and I dont exactly agree. An experiment is not over the moment it begins and a prototype does not cease being a prototype once it begins testing.
Peoples lives are experimented with all the time with prototypes. When front load washing machines first came out, they were a bit different than they are today. They have made improvements from the original design. And I would guess that in the same fashion any company tests a new product before releasing it, any prototype appliance or garbage chute that the city would have used would be at the very least tested before they actually installed it. Its not as if they were going to slap in kitchen appliances and garbage chutes and hope for the best.
I think this is just a company line they spew out to dead end any conversation of why it wasnt built. The decided to make EPCOT a theme park and thy cant exactly say, "we wanted to profit from it instead of building a city". Even if that is not the case and they honestly felt it was not workable, it was perhaps Not workable to them. It does not mean that there is not a person(s) who could make it work or at least try. And when people cite Celebration as a failed version of EPCOTs original intent, that is not a proper comparison, IMO.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
When an apartment building decides to remodel they don’t let each tenant chose their appliances. The owner picks something, maybe renovates a few units first, and that is what everyone gets.
DisneyGentlemanV2.0
Well-Known Member
The 1964 Worlds Fair which led to the creation of much of what we enjoying in Disneyland/Magic Kingdom was built on optimism about the future. EPCOT as it was originally conceived doubled down on that optimistic vision. The park no longer works because we have no room for optimism. Superheroes, IP, and dystopian futures are the things we look towards today. Welcome to WDW 2.0.
Rich Brownn
Well-Known Member
There's a difference between something new and something thats a prototype. if all those front-loading washing machines spewed the laundry out instead of washing it, you'd bet they'd have been returned in a heartbeat. Prototypes are generally designed for testing and not for actual use. As we saw with the AVAC system, even testing doesn't necessarily mean the real world results will be good.
The fact that you simply cannot experiment with people's lives doomed the concept of EPCOT. At the time the film was made, very little beyond blue sky had been done. Once the digging went in, that realization doomed the concept. Thats all there was too it. In fact, that film itself wasn't even made to highlight EPCOT. It was made to convince the Florida legislators of the need for RCID.
Rich Brownn
Well-Known Member
If EPCOT was do be a E and P, the owner wouldn't get to pick. Otherwise it wouldn't be a prototype or experimental. And thats where the concept failed.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Huh? Who picks the appliances in an apartment if not the apartment owner? The person renting the apartment doesn't get to chose.
Rich Brownn
Well-Known Member
The idea behind EPCOT was you would choose to living in a living laboratory where they would provide prototype, experimental equipment (Wouldn't be much of an EPCOT if they chose standard GE products). And thats the problem. John Hench once did a scenario "Hi, we're here to replace your kitchen of tomorrow with a newer one." "But I haven't even figured out most of the current one" "Well, it's experimental". You can build a high-tech city of Today, but not one with experimental, prototypical equipment that may or may not work. Hence the switch. The Future World Theme Center was supposed to showcase upcoming ideas before it merged into EPCOT Center. Let's think of even the foward-thinking things that were done and tried though and the success rate: Monorails (too expensive, failed overall), WEDway (underpowered, unable to change elevation, failed), modular room construction (failed, too expensive. Cheaper to modular the whole building), AVAC (failed, too many issue), methane-powered engines (failed), laser-disc based info systems (already outdated).. and so on. Because they were done on a limited level, they didn't really impact guests just the systems.
And that never happened because the machines were tested every which way from Sunday before they were released to be sold to the public. Do you think companies like Samsung and LG would release a laundry machine that spews out clothes instead of washing them? You make it seem as if for EPCOT, some scientist would have invented a home appliance and the first model ever built would be rushed out and placed in a home without any testing. It would be in any companies best interest, especially if they were chosen to create appliances for EPCOT, to make the best product possible and absolutely test it before allowing a family to use it. And we are talking about home appliances here, not time travel or zero point energy. Companies had been building these products for decades. There was little chance of a dishwasher ruining the experiment of EPCOT.
But again, you make the reality of it seem completely different than what it would have actually been. The experiment would have allowed people and families to live, work and play all in the same environment. They were not going to be involved in eugenic experiments or living outside of a bombing range and exposed to radiation. The experiment was mostly condensing the factors everyday life into a smaller area. It was city planning with the twist of keeping things more connected. Families would not have been in danger because the farm land with animals was within a few miles of the city center. The concept of EPCOT was far greater than the "kitchen of tomorrow".
You can actually see some of the concepts of EPCOT being used today. We have a "community" (yes it has that word in the title) near where I live that has several subdivisions within one large "community" that has an entire shopping center that arcs around the entrance in a crescent shape, with everything from grocery stores, restaurants, offices for work (dental, medical, office), banks, and even a post office and a fire station. The community has everything they need and many people work and live within the boundaries of the neighborhood. My wife and I shop, dine and spend money there as well. The builder who created it was essentially "experimenting " with peoples lives when they decided to build it. And its successful. They did not abandoned the concept once "the digging went in".
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
You’re obsessing over two words and applying them very literally and comically. A prototype that is going to be deployed to a few hundred or thousand people isn’t going to be something rigged up with bubblegum and exposed wiring. There is a process to product development and it’s not like one company having a new slapdash product meant it would have been given to everyone. Even then, just like in an apartment when your dish washer stops working, maintenance comes to fix it and if they cannot then you get a new one.
The Empress Lilly
Well-Known Member
It has been my understanding that the Prototype is not a collection of kitchen utensils, but the Community itself.
When Walt grew up, there were two types of community: urban and rural. During his lifetime he saw that most American of inventions develop: the suburban community. With new kind a man: isolated, alienated, insular. A separation between work, play and home mirrored by the separation between husband and wife and kids and kin and community.
Disneyland and EPCOT are both reactions to this. The two are two sides of the same coin. Disneyland countered with its nostalgia, small scale, intimate urbanism. But whereas DL merely provided an escape in a flight of fantasy and nostalgia, with EPCOT Disney could actively counter it. By experimenting a modern city that would reintegrate the urban and suburban by solving the main cause of separation: transport. That would therefore bring together again the family and ultimately the community. But a new community, a 20th century one. EPCOT could provide the prototype of this community, that could inspire and inform urban development throughout America.
When Walt grew up, there were two types of community: urban and rural. During his lifetime he saw that most American of inventions develop: the suburban community. With new kind a man: isolated, alienated, insular. A separation between work, play and home mirrored by the separation between husband and wife and kids and kin and community.
Disneyland and EPCOT are both reactions to this. The two are two sides of the same coin. Disneyland countered with its nostalgia, small scale, intimate urbanism. But whereas DL merely provided an escape in a flight of fantasy and nostalgia, with EPCOT Disney could actively counter it. By experimenting a modern city that would reintegrate the urban and suburban by solving the main cause of separation: transport. That would therefore bring together again the family and ultimately the community. But a new community, a 20th century one. EPCOT could provide the prototype of this community, that could inspire and inform urban development throughout America.
Too bad the potential catastrophes from dishwasher malfunctions forced the project to be shut down.
For me, it would be a topless doughnut shop with good coffee.
Rich Brownn
Well-Known Member
Since you do not understand the concepts of prototype and experimental, the conversion is pointless. What you want to end ups with the the New Stuff City of Today Bye
Rich Brownn
Well-Known Member
pro·to·type
/ˈprōdəˌtīp/
noun
- 1.
a first, typical or preliminary model of something, especially a machine, from which other forms are developed or copied.
"the firm is testing a prototype of the weapon"
Actually, it was originally EPCOS, (Experimental Prototypical Community of Sporks). Marketing types eventually replaced sporks with tomorrow, since it has a highfalutin fancy sound that appeals to egg heads such as yourself. However, the true purpose of EPCOT - the testing of high-end kitchen utensils, has been lost in the mists of time due to this one I’ll-advised marketing decision.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
I understand it just fine. It is not your comical, overly literal definition. It would never be the literal first version of something. You cannot deploy 1,000 versions of something and they all be the literal first. I’m writing this on the iOS 12 public beta, and while it may be buggy it still goes through a process of testing before being released for public testing. Product testing has phases of refinement and scale.