Horizons vs Mission: Space

Better ride?

  • Total voters
    123
The Empress Lilly

The Empress Lilly

Well-Known Member
Sue_Vongello said:
This post right here is case in point why “Walt said the park will never be finished” is a stupid refrain to justify pointless tinkering.

Horizons, World of Motion, Imagination were all near perfect or perfect attractions that could not just be left alone.
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I miss these so much. 😢

There is a near universal love of classic EPCOT by Disney fans and imagineers.

But there are also more theme park visitors who dislike EPCOT than like it. And through a sad chronology of events EPCOT since forever gets rebuild to the desires not of those who love it, but those who don't, not to those who visit it, but those that don’t.

TWDC eyes not the 11 million who flocked EPCOT annually since opening day, but those who would come if it were a Princess & Superhero and Coaster & Beer park.

Does Disney not understand how many dorks 🤓 there are out there? We can be targeted too, us dorks love both classic Disney movies and nerdy stuff. EPCOT is fairly pedestrian, just presented really well. It can be targeted to a broad audience.
 
Goofyernmost

Goofyernmost

Well-Known Member
Sue_Vongello said:
This post right here is case in point why “Walt said the park will never be finished” is a stupid refrain to justify pointless tinkering.

Horizons, World of Motion, Imagination were all near perfect or perfect attractions that could not just be left alone.
Click to expand...
Walt was a pretty clever guy but to my knowledge he wasn't able to predict the future of Disney World. That expression was strictly associated with Disneyland in California. He had no input in what eventually became EPCOT Ctr. Either way you cannot have both a park that is always changing and one that isn't allowed to change. Now I'm not in anyway saying that the changes made were to my liking, but you can bet your bottom dollar that if it had been working as anticipated it would still be there. It was just bad luck that Horizons was chosen by that particular sponsor to be changed to M:S. The massacred Imagination pavilion could have been repurposed for M:S an in my mind considering what we are left with, would have been a much wiser choice. They could have put in the same ride in the space that Imagination took up. Have modernized and made the upstairs a wonderful hands on thing relating to space. And the theater could have been modified to be a 3D space related show like "The Big Blue Marble". But, they didn't, however, based on what I was able to witness, no matter how much some of us liked Horizons, it just wasn't drawing anymore, it was a walk on pretty much all of the time.

I ride M:S on every visit as well. Is it Horizons? Hell no, but it is a well done, clever use of simulators/centrifuge attractions. I like green and orange sides. I've never been sick on either one, but as I got older the milder one was more my speed.
 
Robbiem

Robbiem

Well-Known Member
Sue_Vongello said:
This post right here is case in point why “Walt said the park will never be finished” is a stupid refrain to justify pointless tinkering.

Horizons, World of Motion, Imagination were all near perfect or perfect attractions that could not just be left alone.
Click to expand...
The shame is those attractions could have been easily updated. Horizons and World of Motion both were constructed as a looking back section which could have stayed as is with minimal changes and a looking forward section which could have been updated relatively easily. Disney did this with Spaceship Earth‘s finale so with more effort could have done to some of the other rides.
Imagination was near perfect as is but could have had some tech upgrades for effects like the fantasyland dark rides over the years and switching out the 3d movie and image works for new tech would have been relatively easy.
 
Goofyernmost

Goofyernmost

Well-Known Member
That brings up the thought of do people dislike M:S because of itself or because it replaced something that they liked. I liked Horizon too. And I like M:S because of itself not because it compared to anything else in the park past or present. It is a very different experience. As good as Horizon was it was one of four almost identical omni-ride attractions that opened in early EPCOT. I am upset that people in the following generations didn't see the quality and the inventiveness in those rides, but it only took 10 years for them to start to fall from favor.

Omni's are not even being built in any recognizable degree anymore because the trackless/3D screened attractions have become what is popular even if we don't see it that way ourselves. I like them all. I miss some of those early attractions, but I also like the newer technologically advanced ones as well. Disney is pushing me out because I don't deal well with coasters. I never have liked them since I was a kid and nothing has changed. That doesn't mean that there shouldn't be any, but that they just will squeeze me out until I have nothing left to motivate me to go to the place. But, life goes on.

My answer to the pole does not have a category answer. I like them both equally. I miss one because it is gone now, but I think I understand why. So as the saying goes... "when you can't be with the one you love.... Love the one you're with!
 
Heppenheimer

Heppenheimer

Well-Known Member
Clamman73 said:
Who‘s being funny and voting for Mission Space? :D
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I might be the one person on this website who isn't nostalgic for Horizons. I found it the least interesting of the pavilions at Future World 1.0, and its vision of the future was already dated by the end of the 1980s. Maybe if they tied it in more closely to Carousel of Progress (the animatronic fathers in both appear to be the same model), lightened the mood a little, and included better music (should have used the Sherman Brothers!), my opinion would have changed.

If anything, something like Horizons should have occupied the globe of Spaceship Earth, because Horizons had no specific theme beyond "the future". Hence, it would have served as a better introduction to the park than a ride about the history of communication. Instead, plopping it in a far corner of the land made its general theme of "the future" appear redundant.

...although, in retrospect, the light-speed progression of communications technologies has been the defining feature of the time period between Epcot's opening and the present day. So maybe Spaceship Earth as we have it was a prescient choice after all to introduce the park.
 
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