Even more than that, and as I have said before - EPCOT needs an explanation. It's not the normal, standardized theme park. The pavilion diagrams and the explanations gave an inside-view of the vision that created EPCOT Center, and that still lives on in the new Epcot.
Hear Hear. :sohappy: Epcot as originally envisioned and executed worked much better if you were in the right frame of mind. A gallery could indeed helpful with that, although the "explanation" part of it would work far better in a more central location, perhaps the exit area of Spaceship Earth. That was sort of the original purpose of that area when Epcot Center opened in 1982, but quickly changed.
The changes in Epcot in the last decade have made that frame of mind less important, as the paviolions have moved more towards the stand-alone traditional theme park stuff and away from the stuff that made Epcot as a whole much greater than the sum of its parts.
Please don't mistake my comments for insults. I am merely trying to have a casual conversation. Asinine means many things. One of which is foolish or silly. Would you feel better if I changed my post to reflect this?
No, it wouldn't be hard to make it permanent. But why? Do you really want an exhibit that was thrown together at the last minute to appease a large fan base that is situated in an out of the way unoccupied multipurpose storage room to be permanent? Wouldn't it be better to have a well developed exhibit the size of One Man's Dream that represents not only the Epcot of yesterday and today that is in a prominent location where it could possibly draw in an actual crowd of people?
There's another problem you have to realize. EPCOT is long gone my friend. What we have experienced is the changing of time and evolution into what we now know today to be Epcot and isn't that what Epcot is about? Change. Imagine if Walt Disney kept the original Tomorrowland in Disneyland. We would be stuck with a land set in 1986. Change happens and sometimes change happens for a reason. Epcot reflects this. I guarantee you that kids today with relate more with Finding Nemo than Sea Base Alpha. Isn't that more important?
Many of us long for the Epcot from the 80's. The current Epcot is indeed my favorite park, but if they could have added the thrills withou detracting from the "learning while having fun" and "discovery" atmosphere that pervaded the original incarnation, I would like it even more.
Regarding the history displays, I have long thought that each Disney park could/should have a display of park history, park future, and ideas that didn't make it. In Disneyland, the Disney Gallery above POTC accomplished much of that before it was killed to make a hotel prize suite. :fork: Now the Blue Sky Celler at DCA will help with some of it. One Man's Dream is nicely done, and could be the basis of a larger exhibit on park history that might be good at DtD were it to expand. And MK used to have some of this in the area that used to house the Walt Disney Story. But it doesn't anymore.
I'm sure that the park history stuff isn't done up more because Disney perceives that there's no upside to it. They don't think it'll make any incremental money, and don't think it'll draw people into the parks that wouldn't have been there in the first place. While I might suggest that selling retro merchandise in conjunction with the history of the parks exhibit would change the money dyanmic a bit, Disney is probably right.
Doesn't mean that we stop wishing it were different.
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:king: :shrug: