Just watched some of this and...yikes. The last few years have been painful to watch, especially as an EPCOT Center nerd, but this might have been the thing to really break me.
I don't know, man; I'm in my mid-30s, born a few years after EPCOT Center opened. I grew up right on the cusp of the whole "Disney Renaissance" era, so I have plenty of memories of Beauty and the Beast/Aladdin/Lion King/etc. flooding the airwaves with toy ads and tie-in promotions and appearing in the parks in different ways. But it means I also still got to grow up with a Disney that felt like it didn't just want to be that, you know? The parks always felt like they contained a whole universe of things Disney wanted to have a hand in: the animated films were highlighted, certainly, but so was everything from the art of moviemaking, to "hey, check out this awesome dinosaur diorama", to properties that came from outside the Disney canon (though obviously the Muppets and Lucasfilm stuff are all under the umbrella, now), and all kinds of experiences that felt Disney without feeling like it was trying to sell you a brand called Disney. That extended to everything from new, original attractions, to theming and entertainment/shows in restaurants, to the level of guest services you'd receive in the parks and around the resort, and that vibe stuck around for a good, long while.
The original EPCOT wanted to be something else, too; it played on Walt's city idea and his futurism hobbies, and even when it shifted around the mid-90s and lost a lot of what had made it great it at least tried to remain distinct and different, so that a day at EPCOT didn't feel like a day at Magic Kingdom. And I appreciated that! Since I was a very small child, fortunate enough to grow up under circumstances that allowed my family to visit WDW around once a year, EPCOT was always where my heart was when we'd visit. Losing Dreamfinder, Horizons, and the rest was always a gut punch, but the skeleton of a monumental accomplishment in themed entertainment remained, so you could always sit there and armchair imagineer what felt like realistic solutions that, hey, maybe they'd just be a few years away!
But I think that's gone, now. Change is inevitable, no one would deny that, and the parks can't remain preserved in amber, but this just isn't EPCOT anymore. Again, even as a small child Disney meant a lot more to me than "just" Mickey and friends, or "just" the animated movies; but the more I see from the parks in recent years, the more I feel like there's less to be had from the experience if you're not going in a fully committed fan of the enormous amount of content Disney churns out every month...and I'm just not. I have plenty of Disney movies/properties I've loved throughout my life, but enjoying them never felt like a requisite for enjoying what WDW had to offer.
Again, EPCOT was the escape from that: it was the "different" park. It was, again, "Disney" without feeling like they were selling you "Disney". I'll say once more, even as a child I loved that there was a place I could go in the resort where I wasn't being bombarded with Mickey and the others (even though I still liked meeting them when I was little!), yet everything still felt authentically "Disney". But now it's not just enough to have a casual understanding of Disney's classic films and then go and enjoy the rest of what they have to offer: they expect you to be a Disney+ subscriber who isn't missing any new films from any of their major studios, who brings the kids to see every one of them even as they come out month after month after month, not every few years like the ancient days. And I don't enjoy that. I don't want to have to know who Anna and Elsa are in order to enjoy the Norway pavilion. I shouldn't need to stay on top of Pixar's or Marvel's release schedule to fully enjoy the parks. Having them around isn't so bad, MGM always had an annual parade based around the newest animated films, but they're everything now about the park experience.
And sadly, in the era of these online streaming megaservices, as seen in cynical material like the latest Space Jam movie we're just living in a world of these megacorporations sucking up every property they can get their hands on and throwing it in our faces so that we'll subscribe, buy, and build our lives around them, because "Hey, you remember THIS movie you loved as a kid?! Here, have an endless supply of it!" It's references instead of actual experiences, and it's shallow and it's dull and it's dispiriting.
I was in EPCOT in 2019, my last trip as of this writing, and literally teared up at the finale of Reflections of Earth, partly due to the knowledge it'd be the last time I'd see it but also due to the amazing musical score and the way the pyrotechnics synced up so well with it all. And then we got the word that the replacement would be...another show where they basically have you sing-a-long to your "favorite" Disney songs. Because we can't get that anywhere else? Thousands and thousands of acres of property, yet the parks all have to be homogenized: same songs, same movies, same merchandise, same "GO HOME AND SUBCRIBE TO DISNEY+ TODAY" messaging.
tl;dr - I'm not a "the past was always better!" guy. I have a MA in history, I know full well the past was usually pretty awful in most regards. But this just feels dystopian to me, and seeing it replace something as beautiful and moving as RoE feels like the straw that's breaking the camel's back for me. I wanted to get back to WDW by 2022 for the EPCOT 40th, but I'm starting to question why I'd bother...and I'm questioning why I'd bring a potential future child of mine, since there's nothing there to build a connection with outside of "look, honey, there's that character from one of the movies Disney gets me to put on a rotation to stream for you!" Scary stuff.
