EPCOT Explorer
New Member
And if they can't do the rest without gutting the entire park, they can at least do THAT.Today's Epcot is a good park. But there are reasons why EPCOT in the 80s was better, more impressive than what it is today, which simply can not be helped. Not all of the reasons why it was better can be attributed to malice, neglect, or cluelessness. Let me name three:
1) Futurism was a social phenomenon.
EPCOT did not come about in a cultural vacuum. Futurism, obsessing about the future, the modernist idea of progress, this is what drove Walt Disney and EPCOT.
But futurism simply does not exist anymore. We live in a post-modern age. We do not look to the future and expect to all be driving flying, nuclear powered vehicles within fifty years anymore. Stuff like that is what dreams were about back then.
2) EPCOT was new.
There is something people born after, say, 1975/1980 must try to understand. One must try to get back in one's mind to the world of 1982, imagine what the world was like back then, what those of us on the wrong side of forty were used to. And then imagine EPCOT suddenly being there.
Let me try to explain by giving some examples:
- EPCOT had the Sperry Computer Review.
This attraction showed the guests...a COMPUTER! Sooo exiting in 1982! A room full of computers! Back then, a huge computer meant a powerful computer. We didn't have computers at home. To see a huge computer was riveting, we were exited when the attraction explained how everything in EPCOT was controlled by it, from the AA's to the lights. To us, this was magic.
- Synthesizers.
Many of the EPCOT songs and the environment music relied heavily on synthesizers. This felt very futuristic. Wow. The EPCOT theme music, the UoE song...wow, just wow. This was music - computerised music, synthesizers! - that was new and futuristic.
- Architecture.
Buildings were square in the early 80s. Postmodern curving lines, computer-aided design were futuristic. Not seen in the world around you. Skyscrapers came in the variants square or square. Not with all those curving lines of today.
Here is what, say, the Universe pavilion looked like to our eyes in 1982:
All the pavilions had these ultra-modern, never-seen-before looks. They were even more exiting to us than the picture above is for todays generation, because we were not used to curving architecture in the first place.
- Lots of little things.
There were no internets. Yet EPCOT had touchscreens! Which were not just a great new technology in their own right, but which to top it off allowed you to make dinner reservations over a computer to a restaurant half a mile away!!
EPCOT was full of wonders like this.
All those aspects were new. Well newish. They existed, but were not taken for granted, we were not accustomed to them.
With this mindset, try to imagine going into Horizons. Oh man. So, so, so beautiful.
I hope none of the above is vague. What I mean is, when we today look at a Beatles concert, it looks lame. At least: tame. But...back in 1965, four men shaking their hips and wearing their hair over their ears was new, provocative, exciting! One can today still admire the Beatles for the inherent quality of their music, but it takes an effort to understand what a Beatles concert must have looked like to an innocent 1965 teenage girl.
3) Thirdly and lastly:
Equally, or perhaps most important was that EPCOT turned all this new stuff into a unified, cohesive whole. All the pavilions related to one another, related to the architecture, to the music, to society at large.
EPCOT had a story, a future, a promise. I would walk in EPCOT and be so full of awe that I wondered whether I was dreaming, whether it was all for real, or just a mirage.
Beautifully said, Lilly:wave: