Oh great, I pushed it to 8 pages. And this is an unnecessarily long one.
I last visited WDW in May of this year during the Flower and Garden Festival. Epcot, being our favorite park, was where we planned to spend the bulk of our trip. While others in this thread have described the West side of Epcot as tranquil, this area of the park made us alternately sad, confused and disappointed.
The Living Seas pavilion is an embarrassment. This area of the park was near empty (which I suppose can be considered tranquil). Construction walls squeezed passageways inside, escalators were turned off, and the entire place had a feeling of an old civic aquarium that never met its funding goals.
The Land felt like a mall food court. The greenhouses are still stunning and the Behind the Seeds tour is exceptional (if you have any interest in gardening) but the place feels like it was built in 1981, which it was.
The Imagination Institute had lots of activity thanks to Honey I Shrunk the Audience. But I guess I’m off base here as I preferred the second incarnation of JII over either 1 or 3.
(OK, I remember being amazed by the original ride the first time a rode it. I also remember vividly on our family’s second trip to WDW that the funniest part of the ride was at the very end when you could see the pictures of those people riding in front of you on the big screen. Picture after picture flipped up with 4-5 bored people wondering if the ride was going to end soon. We laughed hardest at ourselves. The only interested person in our photo was looking at something on the back of their hand. The current ride feels like the Imaginers said, “You want Figment? Fine!” (insert sound of Imaginers splurting Figment into every corner of the attraction). Personally, the only thing the current ride really needs is to drop the pseudo-science “imagination can be quantified – oh I was wrong, it can’t” thing. It’s hard to get excited about a ride when the narrator clings to an obviously false idea.)
But I digress (finally). The reason I splurted my feelings into this … 8-page thread (sheesh!) is that any improvement to Future World would be welcome to my wife and I. I disagree with those who feel the concept and vision of Epcot will be forever soiled by drastic change (I know no one actually used words like that, but I’m on a narrative roll now). I think there is a fundamental confusion about what Epcot is. Walt Disney envisioned EPCOT as an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. We all know that. But many people confuse that vision of a working, gated, republican utopia with the Theme Park that Roy Disney help build long after his brother’s death.
Epcot is a world’s fair. Always has been. Big corporate pavilions rarely seen at actual Worlds Fairs since, well, Disney built them, along with an international showcase of countries presented by the various countries themselves. The original theme of this fair? Past, Present and Future. All of the corporate pavilions (save Imagination) explored this theme. But World’s Fairs only last about 1.5 years and after 10 years, the theme at Epcot started to get tired. With 20 years passed and most of the original Pavilions remodeled or removed, a re-theme of this fair is long over due.
Step one, and this is certainly part of the Discoveryland concept, is to drop the Future theme. The real world caught up with Epcot before the 80s ended. Standing in the fountain courtyard, you could be standing in the 3M or Microsoft corporate campus, or a pedestrian plaza in a city or a mall (often referred to as the Disneyfication of America). When I first saw The Land it didn't feel like a food court because food courts didn't look like that. And aquariums didn't have massive artifical reefs. But as America Disneyfies, my perspectives change. And some of what I see here, I can see anywhere.
Of the architecture, only Spaceship Earth has any lasting architectural legacy. But that’s OK. It is near impossible to create a lasting architectural legacy. Few buildings in the world are really considered icons and that Disney created one as recognizable as Sidney’s Opera House or the Empire State building is very impressive. But Disney can actually step ahead of America’s embrace of theme and story by pushing for designs that are impractical to build outside of a theme park. Like, perhaps, a rainforest. Or an aquarium where you feel like a fish under water as well.
I hope they create a theme where Epcot is simply the place where mankind has ALWAYS gathered to celebrate what it is to be alive. A place to celebrate cultures and traditions. A place to celebrate intellect and ideas. A place to celebrate the earth we live on, the things we build and dreams we dream.
I hope they remodel the buildings around the plaza not just to separate them, but to make them look as if they were built decades apart and not in same afternoon. And more shade is always welcome. Those large sun-drenched plazas can really slow you down.
CODA:
Rereading this, I feel I should return to the top to say that we didn’t spend the majority of our trip at Epcot as planned. What used to take two full days, and that we were going to stretch into nearly three because of the Garden Festival, only took us three half-days, with most of that time spent in the World Showcase (and most of THAT time seemed to be spent in the Japan Pavilion talking ourselves out of buying Spirited Away merchandise). We spent more time at Animal Kingdom and the Disney Studios enjoying the themeing and attractions, and we wish we spent at least another half day at the Magic Kingdom. Epcot, or at least Future World, is no longer our favorite park.
