Again, I just fail to see how this is radically different from Innoventions. You introduce a concept and allow people to play with it. Playing with musical instruments in an exhibit about music doesn’t beam diatonic scales into your brain even if the accompanying placard mentions them. You may learn nothing at all; the point is to create a sense of fascination and wonder that contextualizes and adds interest to the accompanying science. As to the personality of water, personification is frequently used to demonstrate concepts, as perhaps a teacher did for you long ago when explaining subatomic bonding and repulsion, for instance.
I don't personally recall playing with musical instruments in Innoventions* but maybe I missed that exhibit since many came and went along with their individual sponsorships. I also wouldn't call the Sega game arcade it turned into near the end much in the way of edutainment, either.
But to some greater or lesser degree, in keeping with the original worlds fair exhibit-like nature, many things were there to offer some education while also hopefully
(for them) explaining how the sponsor was an integral part of bringing us our future without it feeling like a
complete commercial and done in a way that would keep people's attention.
My first exposure to modern electric cars was there with protypes GM were planning to go to market with as leases before Musk had even founded PayPal and Tesla was not even a gleam in his eye.
I learned about e-ink tech being developed by Xerox
(how it worked seemed crazy and impractical and like more like science fiction than something I'd one day own two of) more than a decade before the first Kindle came out, at Innoventions.
I rode a Segway there back when they were still unobtainable devices for the common man well before they came and went as standard-issue for mall cops and way, way before the tech ended up in hoverboards that tweens would end up enjoying for around $100.
Heck, I remember an exhibit sponsored by MSN that was basically letting people into rooms and on computers offering a chance to try out the WWW on high-speed internet at a time when most homes still didn't have computers, most adults hadn't ever even used computers and far fewer had access to shotgun dial-up
(google it) much less anything approaching what we think of as standard access speeds, today.
... But I also sat through a presentation about funding sponsored by a bank and played in an interactive color environment sponsored by a paint company, neither of which really taught anything or suggested something about the future.
Some exhibits did a better job of hitting the right balance than others. They were all relatively small and there were many to choose from at once as well as over the years, and none were permanent installations so there was always hope the failures would be pruned.
Usually, they were.
Regarding the play of water, I don't remember a teacher showing me how I could play music by strumming subatomic particles or how they would high-five me but I may have been absent that day.
I think it's fairly safe to say at this point that this was built with an eye to no or close to no educational value at all and then supplemented with some printed boards stuck in the ground to live up to the promises that this wasn't just a poorly placed play zone.
Just in the last couple of days, there are people still talking about the strong connection of this to Living Seas and The Land and how this was the right place for it instead of Adventureland or AK because of the whole water cycle thing and yet here we are.
I mean, maybe the actual part about the real water cycle is just not being reported or maybe they aren't done with that part yet?
Or it's just the modern Epcot. Things like this and CRW are really just the introduction of IP at all costs and the removal of the original mission of the park is just reality which, okay, whatever but it's the pretending like it isn't that's the part I find hard to swallow, here.
*I do recall stuff like that in the old Imageworks, though, where the subject of creativity fit perfectly with the overarching theme and stated goals of the pavilion.
