TROR
Well-Known Member
It's ok because Peter Quill went there as a kid
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News Paradise Pier Becoming Pixar Pier
- Thread starter iHeartDisneylandCats
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D
Deleted member 107043
Agreed. Tomorrowland, even with its faults, certainly did a better job of pretending to be about the future when big corporate names partnered with Disney to drive content. Even with sponsors Disney's vision of the future, EPCOT included, mostly consisted of theme park theatrics, and now they've basically stopped trying.
D
Deleted member 107043
Because the people who inherited the Disney Company built another Disney theme park, not an experimental community of the future. And that all happened pre Iger or Eisner.
Californian Elitist
Well-Known Member
Nice observation. Haha.
nevol
Well-Known Member
Everything I just mentioned is more along the lines of a theme park or convention center than a community. This is them not even delivering on the epcot that actually came into fruition.
D
Deleted member 107043
Hosting TEDx events, celebrating Nobel Prize winners, the CES conference, offering summer college courses and collaborative projects between universities is not what Disney theme parks do. I agree that EPCOT Center had ambitious goals, and that it has regressed considerably since opening, but I disagree that it was intended to be a park that focused on the type of programming you outlined.
smile
Well-Known Member
tedx, ces, and nobel could have easily fallen right in line with the dedication had the park not fundamentally changed direction little more than a decade in...
hosting courses and collaborative projects may be a little pie in the sky, but who knows what could have evolved and how it could have been a catalyst for true innovation, ultimately realizing walt's vision in perhaps not the exact way he intended.
To all who come to this place of joy, hope and friendship, welcome.
Epcot Center is inspired by Walt Disney's goals. Here, human achievements are celebrated through imagination, the wonders of enterprise, and concepts of a future that promises new and exciting benefits for all.
May Epcot Center entertain, inform and inspire. And, above all, may it instill a new sense of belief and pride in man's ability to shape a world that offers hope to people everywhere.
rather moot now, however
nevol
Well-Known Member
TWDC cares about money. TED over the past decade has popped up in every city. Is it a fad, or here to stay? It has been a successful idea nonetheless that has reached just about everybody. There is one main event every year and a bunch of conferences hosted on a smaller scale. Those are the x events. Disney could easily throw together a TEDx Epcot and fill theaters and event space throughout the park with that content once a year. It would be a massive success with very little planning, as the event format and audience already exists.
D
Deleted member 107043
I followed EPCOT Center closely growing up. I was so fascinated by it I made a special trip to WDW to be there on opening day in 1982, and at the time it was probably the most monumental thing Disney had done in the advancement of theme parks since Disneyland. While it was an appropriate nod to the spirit of Walt Disney's last dream, it was still WDW business as usual in terms of who its target audience was on opening day: tourist families from the midwest, southeast, and northeast. Certainly not the type of people who would be interested in Tedx.
Feel-good showmanship has always been where Disney theme parks excel. IMO no Disney park has never been as good at driving serious intellectual discussion around real life issues.
No Name
Well-Known Member
That if you build a quality ride people will respond well.
Mission Breakout is a solid ride on its own and gets deservedly high ratings on its own. Shoehorning a linear narrrative into an unrelated boardwalk coaster doesn't make a solid ride even on its own, nevermind in regard to the park. There's a huge difference between this and Mission Breakout. I'll have to find out what California Screamin's ratings were before to compare.
TROR
Well-Known Member
If your name is Disney you can put out whatever garbage you want and the AP's will eat it up
Californian Elitist
Well-Known Member
Bingo.
George Lucas on a Bench
Well-Known Member
They probably could have opened that Legend of Jack Sparrow show at DL and APs would have loved it.
smile
Well-Known Member
i posit ec was not business as usual, for a myriad of reasons; one of which being the great lengths to distance itself from it's sibling up the road...
exposing the general populace to things that aim to do more than simply entertain, as castle parks do; but to educate as well, in service of celebrating and enriching the human experience.
i mean, you're also talking about many seasoned artists/designers/engineers (many geniuses in their own right) who wanted put the mouse down and take their expertise towards something fundamentally grander
fw looked at communication, energy, transportation, technology, our earth, our seas, and the importance of our imaginations as a tool to help make sense of it all - every one of those real life considerations today and will remain so -
the wc was tacked on, but even it's goal was exposing those very tourists to new cultures - walt was very inspired when traveling aboard.
and yes, e.p.c.o.t. didn't come to pass, but how could it? walt had consistently been doing things others thought were downright foolish, but he made them succeed -
he goes and everybody looked at each other, shrugged shoulders/got cold feet, and proceeded to follow the idea the way they knew how; they attempted to, after having already largely invented the 'theme park', re-invent it yet again
and in more than a few minds, they had
D
Deleted member 107043
Very little of that was unique to EPCOT Center though. Broadly speaking the park elaborated on themes that had already been touched on in DL and the MK.
I'm not trying to dimish the role the park played in advancing the scope of what theme parks could do, but EPCOT has always been a Disney-fied worlds fair, a place of entertainment, not a venue for meaningful discussion about solving issues.
smile
Well-Known Member
don't see how a place designed for cutting-edge science and tech couldn't/wouldn't have been valid space for actual cutting-edge science and tech -
there were more than a few things at ec that leaned towards education rather than entertainment, and to think that if it had stayed course and remained relevant new things like ted could be integrated is not unreasonable.
perhaps a theater or pavilion dedicated to contemporary advances which could showcase such things... cutting-edge whatever is always interesting
abandoning sci, ed, and even tech, really, is what started the slow disintegration to the eventual pile of ash that it is nearing without help
Curious Constance
Well-Known Member
And how do we know what people really think of it? Because Disney says it's highly rated? What are they going to say, that everyone hates it or prefers TOT to it?
TROR
Well-Known Member
Disney is a company that acknowledges its own failures. Once the CEO becomes someone who had nothing to do with said failures, that is.
D
Deleted member 107043
They abandoned those things because tourists visiting theme parks in Central Florida don't care about them. I wish they did, bit the 90+ minute waits for Frozen After Ever prove otherwise.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
It wasn't Coke, it was Pepsi-Cola in the Country Bear Jamboree. That's why Henry the MC used to say "You've got a lot to live and the Country Bears have a lot to give!" at the start of the show, which was an intentional play to the Pepsi jingle of the early 1970's.
Pepsi was served on the west side of the park with the Country Bears and the Golden Horseshoe, and Coke was served on the east side of the park with Refreshment Corner and Tomorrowland Terrace. I have a relative who still calls the Golden Horseshoe building "the Pepsi show", it was that ingrained into her memory banks decades ago. The sponsorship at Disneyland and WDW could be really, really heavy handed back in the 20th century. I think modern 21st century audiences would be shocked by it if it ever returned like Walt did it.
Why they heck would they use that lower level view? There's a horrible sideways and nearly unwatchable view of World of Color from down there. This artwork was done by someone who has never actually been to DCA and has no idea where to watch World of Color from.
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