Flippin'Flounder
Well-Known Member
Sadly
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Norway Pavilion Frozen construction - Frozen Ever After ride
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Professor_Jason
Active Member
That's a real bummer to hear cuz as somebody who hasn't been there yet Epcot always looked special, it seemed like a piece of Walt and the '64 World's Fair lived on.
I haven't see Frozen and kinda don't want to but the ride looks like fun, I definitely will ride it, it just looks and feels like it should be in the Magic Kingdom.
Prince Thomas
Well-Known Member
Go watch Frozen, it's one of my fave Disney movies now!
Professor_Jason
Active Member
My Sister is an ice skating coach and she loves Frozen she says it brought a lot of new girls to the sport. I'm just old fashioned and miss the hand drawn animation, my favorite Disney films are still Beauty and the Beast and Fantasia
Brer Panther
Well-Known Member
To be honest, I preferred Tangled.
Cosmic Commando
Well-Known Member
The only way we can even get a 14 day ticket in the U.S. is by taping together a 10 day ticket and a 4 day ticket.
EPCOTCenterLover
Well-Known Member
I'm a huge Tangled fan, and I love B&TB, but Frozen does have it charms.
TomHendricks
Well-Known Member
Well both my sons love Frozen, I guess they cancel out your nieces.
jt04
Well-Known Member
It is a good thing as the original concept no longer works. While it once was difficult for Future World to keep ahead of the future, now it is impossible.
And when world showcase opened you could not get the same diversity of cuisine that is now available in most towns. And you could not easily travel to China or even hop around Europe as you can today.
The concept became obsolete. A reimagining is called for. IMO.
MerlinTheGoat
Well-Known Member
Keeping up with the future was not and still isn't impossible or even that difficult, at least not for any competent theme park business who see the need to continually invest in their product. Disney quite simply gave up trying because the current regime would rather let attractions and exhibits quite literally rot away instead of properly investing in upgrading them as needed. It was absolutely their own fault, it's still not even too late to successfully return to the old philosophy (which would benefit them financially if done right). They did a pretty good job keeping up until the mid 90's, which was when they stopped giving a poop about Future World. They weren't losing money maintaining the original mission, they just got greedy and lazy.
It's not that difficult to swap out exhibits at Innoventions occasionally to convey breakthroughs in technology still many years out. One easy example just off the top of my head are transparent displays that have been shown at recent CES shows, I can think of many more unrepresented examples of future tech (CES has a lot of good ideas, it's what Innoventions should strive to be). Even Oculus Rift headsets are a perfect idea that they've just ignored entirely for the entirety of their existence, the prototype devkits aren't even that expensive to buy yourself (though few people have them yet as the consumer model still hasn't released).
And continuing to upgrade rides every 5 years or so when needed would also maintain the model of success with EPCOT (as they did with Spaceship Earth several times between 1982 and 1994). It would only be difficult if all they decided to do was to showcase smartphones and tablets. There's far more to technology than that...
As for Future World... Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican and other such foreign restaurants were super common in many cities even before EPCOT was built. Not much has changed, just that there are a lot more of the same type of restaurant (especially Asian and Mexican). But they were already common before EPCOT had opened. Also from 1982 until the late 1990's, most of EPCOT's cuisine was FAR superior to many of these international restaurants you'd find in random cities. World Showcase had some of the best and most authentic food you could get apart from visiting the actual countries. This has changed in some places with food quality declining thanks to poor management, but this wasn't always the case.
There are also a number of cultures that don't have much (if any) culinary representation in America. Restaurants for Moroccan, Canadian, German, Norwegian and even French (and others) are few to none. You see common ones like I mentioned above, but there are still a lot of rarely represented countries when it comes to food in the US.
As for travel, it was in my experience no more difficult to conduct regular international air travel in the 80's and 90's than it is now. In fact i'd argue many people have been turned off of air travel in the modern era due to all the post-9/11 bull people have to put up with from security. A vast quantity of people are far more willing to travel to WDW to eat than to Europe or Asia.
I didn't know what a "Worlds Fair" even was as a child when I first visited EPCOT (only learned about that afterwards). I didn't care about what it was based off either, all I saw was a fantastic, unique and creative theme park with wonderful attractions and great food. It was the original spark for my love in technology and interest in other cultures. The concept isn't obsolete, what's obsolete is the way the modern Disney company has come to treat and maintain their parks and attractions.
It's not that difficult to swap out exhibits at Innoventions occasionally to convey breakthroughs in technology still many years out. One easy example just off the top of my head are transparent displays that have been shown at recent CES shows, I can think of many more unrepresented examples of future tech (CES has a lot of good ideas, it's what Innoventions should strive to be). Even Oculus Rift headsets are a perfect idea that they've just ignored entirely for the entirety of their existence, the prototype devkits aren't even that expensive to buy yourself (though few people have them yet as the consumer model still hasn't released).
And continuing to upgrade rides every 5 years or so when needed would also maintain the model of success with EPCOT (as they did with Spaceship Earth several times between 1982 and 1994). It would only be difficult if all they decided to do was to showcase smartphones and tablets. There's far more to technology than that...
As for Future World... Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican and other such foreign restaurants were super common in many cities even before EPCOT was built. Not much has changed, just that there are a lot more of the same type of restaurant (especially Asian and Mexican). But they were already common before EPCOT had opened. Also from 1982 until the late 1990's, most of EPCOT's cuisine was FAR superior to many of these international restaurants you'd find in random cities. World Showcase had some of the best and most authentic food you could get apart from visiting the actual countries. This has changed in some places with food quality declining thanks to poor management, but this wasn't always the case.
There are also a number of cultures that don't have much (if any) culinary representation in America. Restaurants for Moroccan, Canadian, German, Norwegian and even French (and others) are few to none. You see common ones like I mentioned above, but there are still a lot of rarely represented countries when it comes to food in the US.
As for travel, it was in my experience no more difficult to conduct regular international air travel in the 80's and 90's than it is now. In fact i'd argue many people have been turned off of air travel in the modern era due to all the post-9/11 bull people have to put up with from security. A vast quantity of people are far more willing to travel to WDW to eat than to Europe or Asia.
I didn't know what a "Worlds Fair" even was as a child when I first visited EPCOT (only learned about that afterwards). I didn't care about what it was based off either, all I saw was a fantastic, unique and creative theme park with wonderful attractions and great food. It was the original spark for my love in technology and interest in other cultures. The concept isn't obsolete, what's obsolete is the way the modern Disney company has come to treat and maintain their parks and attractions.
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aladdin2007
Well-Known Member
Agree. Mangum was right though when she said Epcot needs a shot in the arm,,, but stuffing in frozen and ousting Norway so to speak was not the right shot.
MerlinTheGoat
Well-Known Member
Absolutely. I'm most definitely not saying that EPCOT as is currently works, it certainly doesn't. But no one can reasonably complain about the original Worlds Fair theme not working anymore when that theme hasn't been utilized for the past two decades. As usual, the Frozen overlay is yet another example of a poor and inappropriate solution to an artificially fabricated problem. A fully and easily avoidable problem that they unnecessarily and deliberately caused themselves in the first place.
No one can really claim the "Worlds Fair" theme is outdated or doesn't work anymore when Disney dropped the commitment to the theme LONG ago. EPCOT cannot be a "lets let things rot and not upgrade attractions/exhibits for decades" park. But neither is it appropriate to make it a "spillover for Fantasyland's i'm a pretty little princess snowflake rides" park. Neither approach works, but the latter approach has been currently chosen because it allows Disney to basically "give up" on keeping the park properly updated.
rioriz
Well-Known Member
Tangled to me was the beginning of a new era in Disney Animation. Love the music and the lantern scene is just perfect!
Bocabear
Well-Known Member
Wow! Absolutely!!! Spot On!
The concept would still work if the money is invested to keep things fresh and current. IMO Magic Kingdom is all about traditions... EPCOT should be ever-changing (Future World). Had they kept up with the technology and the world, Future World would now still be relevant... With World Showcase, they never completed the original design... several attractions were never built, Country expansion has never happened... All of this can only be the result of mismanagement. They need to bring back the Future in Future World, and add in the attractions that should have been built in World Showcase...Bring the food back up to it's 1980s standards... Within the concept of the Walt Disney World Resort, it is perfectly acceptable and even preferable to have The Magic Kingdom as the traditional Disney Characters Park, DHS as the Disney Movies Park, Animal Kingdom as the Animal and adventure Park, and EPCOT as the unique Edutainment Park... Not sure why they feel a need to homogenize each park's aesthetic cramming characters into places they do not belong.
Bocabear
Well-Known Member
They c should have used the castle from Tangled as the centerpiece for Shanghai Disneyland...It would have been so much more beautiful.
aladdin2007
Well-Known Member
aladdin2007
Well-Known Member
Totally agree. I will say if Norway had come through when the offer was there, all this may have been a little bit different. But we will never know now.
Matt_Black
Well-Known Member
That's pretty much right on the money. While after the Pixar merger, the films had gotten progressively better after the low point that was Chicken Little, Tangled was the first really big hit WDAS had in sometime. That was followed by Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen and Big Hero 6, which likewise made a metric butt-ton of money. Admittedly, 2011's Winnie the Pooh was in the middle there, and it didn't make a whole lot, but remember, The Rescuers Down Under was sandwiched between The Little Mermaid and Beauty & The Beast, so there's precedent.
Bocabear
Well-Known Member
I think Disney's success was in not playing down to the lowest common denominator...doing things better and more cutting edge...that was the Disney difference...but I guess those times are gone. Now it is Chicken Nuggets and spinner rides and meet and Greets because that is what people say they want....and it is the cheapest experience for Disney to provide... for the most amount of money to the consumer...Because its cheaper, less effort, and they claim its what people want.
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