Let’s face it: what with all the Disney parks closed, we’re all facing a bit of Disney withdrawal, myself included in that. Today I’ll try to cure a bit of your (and my) theme park withdrawal by diving into the history of one of the world’s most famous theme parks, a park that started with a focus on education and is slowly shifting towards our favourite Disney characters, so lets explore the history of Epcot, Disney’s park of the future.
The City of Tomorrow
Epcot’s roots can be traced all the way back to the 1960s, when Walt Disney displayed his ideas for a city of the future complete with houses, schools and an innovative monorail transport system similar to Tomorrowland’s Transit Authority Peoplemover in Magic Kingdom. Motorised vehicles such as cars and trucks would be kept on underground roads to prevent injury above ground, and the city would always be updated with the latest technology in order to always be a look ahead to the future. Disney called this concept the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, abbreviated to EPCOT, and it would be located in central Florida as part of what was then called the “Florida Project”.
Throughout the 1960s Walt Disney and the Imagineers purchased 113km2 of swampland close to Florida’s largest city, Orlando, and just a year after Walt’s death in 1966, construction began on the Magic Kingdom, set to open in early October 1971. Until the early 1980s, Magic Kingdom would remain the only theme park in Florida’s Walt Disney World, with River Country being the only water park. In the next twenty years however, this would change drastically.
The design and creation of EPCOT Center
During the 1970s WED Enterprises, now known as Walt Disney Imagineering, decided they wanted to incorporate more of Walt’s original ideas into Disneyland in California and the new Walt Disney World in Florida. One of Disney’s biggest dreams, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow would be brought to life in Florida, but there was a problem. WED couldn’t decide what the main focus of the park should be: should Epcot be a journey through future technology with cutting edge educational experiences, or a world showcase where guests travel the world in one day, exploring a different culture at each pavilion?
The final decision was: both.
This new, unique theme park would be divided into two main sections: Future World would showcase the innovative technologies of the future in a fun, family friendly way, and the area’s icon would be a giant geosphere made from 11,324 silver shapes, housing a darkride known as Spaceship Earth. In the adjacent World Showcase, ten countries showed off their national culture, food and celebrations in their own pavilions, surrounding a circular lake known simply as World Showcase Lake.
Inspiration from 1964
The park would be a permanent World’s Fair inspired by that of New York in 1964, when Walt Disney showcased his ideas for rides and attractions for Disneyland and the eventual Walt Disney World, with attractions that challenged the mind to think about the choices we make and how we interact with the world. This was brought to guests by a sponsorship system similar to the 1964 World’s Fair, and sponsors included local and national companies including General Motors and General Electric. Little money was actually put into the maintenance of EPCOT Center by the Disney company itself- the upkeep of the park was totally reliant on sponsors, which would eventually prove to be a negative move for the company, as will be discovered later.
Welcoming Guests To the Future
EPCOT Center opened as scheduled on 1st October 1982, and opening day was a huge success. Guests instantly fell in love with the park’s innovative concept, and children and adults alike were inspired by EPCOT’s thought-provoking but fun rides and attractions. Exclusively for the opening ceremony a new show was performed: We’ve Just Began To Dream, and the Sherman Brothers, who have written many iconic Disney parks songs we still enjoy to this day, wrote a song called The World Showcase March. Doves and balloons were released into the sky at the end of the show, and water taken from rivers around the world was emptied into the Fountain of Nations. It was truly a celebration for the future, one Walt Disney himself would have been proud of!
The Attractions of EPCOT Center
Future World
EPCOT Center’s two lands offered very different experiences. Located at the front of the park Future World was originally divided into six pavilions, which eventually was increased to nine at the end of the 1980s, and each pavilion featured some kind of ride or attraction showcasing whatever aspect of the universe it was dedicated to. World of Motion and Universe of Energy both utilised darkrides to tell the stories of progress in transportation and energy, while the Land used a gentle boat ride to take guests on a journey through sustainability and farming, known as Listen To The Land (now Living With The Land).
CommuniCore
CommuniCore was essentially the Main Street of EPCOT Center, a hub that showed off the latest cutting edge computing technology, featuring SMRT-1, a robot that would respond to certain questions and voice commands- almost like an early version of Alexa or Siri! Instead of seeing Cinderella’s Castle at the end of this technological Main Street guests were greeted with an amazing geosphere, Spaceship Earth, which housed a darkride of the same name, taking guests on an adventure through the history of human communication.
Imagination!
Imagination! focused on, well, just that, starring the imaginative inventor Dreamfinder and his dragon sidekick Figment. With a darkride that was a whimsical Journey into Imagination (with that name!) and the Imageworks, a creative “lab” where kids and kids at heart could create anything they put their minds to with the use of screens and interactive activities. The sky was the limit at the Imagination pavilion, where anything was possible with just One Little Spark! Admit it, the song just got stuck in your head- it got stuck in mine too.
Horizons
Horizons was the only attraction at EPCOT Center to showcase every aspect of Future World, utilising two massive OMNIMAX screens which were cutting edge at the time it was built, and taking guests through scenes showcasing innovative visions for future civilisations. At the end of the attraction, riders would decide on one of three scenes to complete their experience, a feature called Choose your Own Tomorrow. This thought-provoking omnimover attraction was a favourite in Future World, and Disney were met with outcry and dismay from almost everyone who had ever ridden it when Horizons was forced to close due to a sinkhole in 1999.
The Living Seas
Opened in 1986, The Living Seas utilised showed guests the beauty of our oceans, and in 2006 received an overhaul to be themed to the 2003 Pixar movie Finding Nemo, and was renamed to The Seas with Nemo and Friends. A new attraction was added, Turtle Talk With Crush, and the omnimover ride already at the pavilion was rethemed.
Wonders of Life
Three years later, 1989 brought the opening of the final Future World pavilion to open without replacing another: Wonders of Life. Planned as Life and Health until Metlife’s sponsorship in the mid-80s, Wonders of Life featured two main attractions- Cranium Command and Body Wars, along with smaller scale shows including The Making of Me, Goofy about Health and Frontiers of Medicine. The pavilion was housed inside an impressive golden dome, and hanging from the roof was a colourful mobile that could be seen from almost anywhere in the building. If you want to learn more about the rise and fall of Wonders of Life and it’s unusual but quirky attractions, check out our post at the end of this article!
World Showcase
World Showcase is exactly that, a place for countries from any continent to showcase their culture and cuisine. Guests can travel the world in an hour or less, where distance and landforms don’t limit how far you can go! During EPCOT Center’s opening year the area featured nine nation pavilions: Canada, the UK, France, Japan, the American Adventure, Italy, Germany, China and Mexico. In later years, Morocco and Norway were added in the expansion spaces left by Imagineering during the EPCOT’s construction. Some national pavilions feature their own rides, such as Maelstrom, now Frozen Ever After at Norway, and Gran Fiesta Tour starring the Three Caballeros at Mexico, while others show screen or stage shows, such as O Canada at, well, Canada, and Reflections of China at the China pavilion. Each pavilion showcases traditional architecture and references to their country’s history, to give you the feeling that you are really there, and some of the pavilions are really immersive!
The Fall of EPCOT’s Sponsorship System
Nothing lasts forever, and it seems EPCOT Center’s pavilion sponsor system falls under that statement too. By the mid-90s many of the companies supporting the rides and attractions had ended their sponsorships, leading certain areas to fall into disrepair, and the park simply could not afford to keep up maintenance for these areas. As sponsors fell away some new companies took up this new opportunity, for example when Kraft ended their sponsorship for The Land in 1993, Nestle jumped at the chance. Nestle’s sponsorship brought drastic changes, particularly to one of the pavilion’s main attractions, Kitchen Kaberet. This fun animatronic show was possibly one of the most unusual attractions to ever be built at a Disney park, featuring food items singing a medley of songs. When Nestle sponsored the pavilion, one of the changes they insisted came was that Kitchen Kaberet would be rethemed to Food Rocks, with parodies of popular songs and bands based around food and nutrition, including The Peach Boys, Refrigerator Police, Fud Wrapper- you get the idea.
The attraction had potential, but sadly this potential wasn’t executed, with a low budget put towards a show that looked like it had been thrown together in the space of an hour. Ten years later Food Rocks closed after a gradual decline in popularity among guests, as what would be the first example of the failure of EPCOT Center’s sponsorship system.
The Land was not the only pavilion to feel the effects of the failing system, with Wonders of Life also suffering. After 12 years sponsoring the pavilion, MetLife pulled out of the deal in 2001, and it was as if maintenance had just stopped altogether. Wonders of Life’s main attractions, Cranium Command and Body Wars, started to fall into disrepair and experienced more downtime than they ever had during the sponsorship, while the pavilion’s smaller attractions, such as Frontiers of Medicine, were abandoned completely. When Wonders of Life officially closed in 2007, Body Wars and Cranium Command were just left to deteriorate for years, almost completely intact. In December 2018 the animatronic star of Cranium Command, Buzzy, was stolen, sparking a massive social media movement, #findbuzzy, to get this beloved Cranium Commando restored to his rightful home at Epcot.
Thrills and IPs
What started out as an educational park with rides that sparked the imagination and made you think about your impact on the world, gradually started to become like any other Disney park, with IPs and family thrills.
World of Motion and Horizons, both much-loved attractions at the original EPCOT Center, were replaced with thrill rides in the respective years of 1999 and 2004, with each ride having a different reason for it’s closure. Walt Disney World is located in the middle of Florida swamplands, where sinkholes are a major problem, particularly in the area Epcot is located in. Magic Kingdom was built raised up on the 1st floor to avoid flooding, but while Epcot was built raised up it wasn’t as high as Magic Kingdom, so sinkholes were an issue for the park. After a sinkhole collapsed in 1999 the building that housed Horizons was seriously damaged and the Disney company did not want to repair it, as the ride had already been falling into disrepair from, you guessed it, a sponsorship fall. Instead Horizons was demolished, and a new, better structured building was built in it’s place, housing Mission: SPACE, an intense motion simulator ride that sent riders on a training mission to outer space, without the without the General Electric sponsorship Horizons had.
World of Motion was the main attraction of Future World’s Transportation Pavilion, allowing guests to explore the history of human advancements in transportation from their OmniMover ride vehicle. With a logo depicting a small blue ball flying through waves of speed of the same colour, this thought-provoking darkride was an icon of EPCOT Center until January 1996, when the pavilion’s sponsor, General Motors, decided to replace the ride with a more innovative, thrilling idea. Riders would begin the attraction by designing their own car, then learn about the rigorous tests a new car must go through before being released onto the ride, and the experience would end with a high speed drive on a raised up outside road around the edges of the ride. Test Track opened to the public in March of 1999 after many problems during the ride’s construction, and it was an instant success with guests! Today Test Track operates as one of the only attractions at Epcot that still holds a sponsorship, now by Chevrolet, a separate division of General Motors.
Both rides were and still are some of the most popular attractions at Epcot, often getting wait times of 2 hours or more during peak seasons, and their opening days marked the beginning of something massive for the park of the future.
Further towards the back of Epcot, World Showcase has recently been going through some major changes, as IPs slowly move into this area. Norway was the first pavilion to undergo these changes, with the closure of Maelstrom, one of the area’s water based darkrides, in October 2014. Less than 2 years later the attraction’s rethemed version opened as Frozen Ever After, a snowy adventure passing through scenes inspired by Frozen, however in it’s first year of operation the ride was plagued with technical issues, from animatronic malfunctions to full ride breakdowns at various points in the experience, leading to A LOT of ride evacuations, known as “In Show Exits”. I guess Frozen Ever After just let itself go into the unknown… Okay, I’ll see myself out. It will all make sense when I am older.
A Whole New World: D23 Expo 2019
A LOT was revealed at D23 Expo 2019, particularly for Epcot. Many fans were ecstatic to learn that Epcot would finally be getting the overhaul it’s needed for so long, the park has been having a bit of an identity crisis the last few years, after all. Others weren’t so pleased, saying the updates go against what Epcot was always meant to be about, and that the park should stay true to it’s original theme of education and progress. Some announcements were met with more excitement than others, so here are some of the main updates announced for both Future World and World Showcase in the next few years.
Future World…
Is no more. Well, technically Future World will be surviving the Epcot overhaul, but will be divided into 3 sections, known as Neighbourhoods: World Celebration, World Nature and World Discovery. Each will focus on a different aspect of our planet, similar to how the nine pavilions of EPCOT Center’s Future World represented a different element of the universe. With the new neighbourhoods will come new pavilions, including the Play! pavilion, replacing Wonders of Life. Guests will have the chance to, well, play, with their imagination and creations through experiences featuring favourite Disney characters. It could almost be described as Imageworks with IPs.
Wonders of Life isn’t the only pavilion that will be replaced as part of Epcot’s transformation. Universe of Energy, home to Ellen’s Energy Adventure, will become the site of the park’s first rollercoaster, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, a Vekoma Spinning Coaster themed to the 2014 film. As a theme park enthusiast I’ll be heartbroken to see such an iconic pavilion go, but it will be incredible for Epcot to finally get a thrill ride that isn’t a simulator or a slot car attraction that can’t decide whether it wants to be a coaster or a dark ride. (I’m looking at you, Test Track!)
The former site of Innoventions will also be getting an upgrade, with the water effects used on the walk up to the attraction being used in a new walkthrough experience, Journey Of Water, themed to the 2016 film Moana, as part of the Seas pavilion.
Future World will definitely be getting some amazing changes in the next few years, and this new trend doesn’t stop when you leave the area, as World Showcase will be getting a major IP-based facelift too!
World Showcase
As what will become the 4th neighbourhood of Epcot, the eleven national pavilions of World Showcase will each be getting their own renovations, incorporating Disney characters into the countries their films are based in. France has already seen updates to it’s show and attraction line-up, with the debut of the Beauty and the Beast sing-along in January 2020, and the quickly progressing construction of Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, an impressive trackless darkride inspired by it’s sister attraction in Disneyland Paris. Over at the UK pavilion, you will have the chance to visit Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, the home of the Banks Family and the setting of Mary Poppins.
Other pavilions will get non-IP additions and upgrades, for example China will see the addition of a new screen-based show, Wondrous China, a 360° film, while Canada will receive an upgrade to it’s existing screen show, O Canada, translating the latest technology into incredible special effects that will really enhance the experience!
World Showcase Lake
As the location for many of the water-based night time Epcot is famous for today, World Showcase Lake has always been a centre for changes and upgrades. October 2019 brought the debut of a new night show over the lake, Epcot Forever, showcasing the worldwide and futuristic aspects of the park through beautiful water effects, and sounds. This was just filler for another show however- HarmoniUS will debut at an uncomfirmed date this year, and it looks awesome!
So, has Epcot lost sight of what it was meant to be?
The answer is…complicated, but if I had to give a definitive answer, I would say yes, but perhaps it’s a good thing. EPCOT Center’s original sponsorship system was never really destined to work, there was always a risk of sponsoring companies revoking their support for the pavilions, and this was the reason for the fall of some of Future World’s pavilions, particularly Wonders of Life. With so many updates being made to the other Disney parks around the world, it would be near impossible for Disney to afford to and have time to keep Epcot equipped with the latest technology on top off all this too, which is the same reason Tomorrowland in Magic Kingdom has been left feeling too old fashioned several times in it’s history. Epcot has been seemingly having an identity crisis recently, with classic attractions being thrown together with technological IP-based attractions, so perhaps the overhaul is what the park needs to redefine it’s image.
Large numbers of people have said that all the new updates and neighbourhoods are not what Walt Disney would have wanted, but actually, Epcot was never meant to be a theme park in the first place, so it has never been truly loyal to Walt’s original vision of Epcot as a utopian city.
For many, the name EPCOT Center brings up a wave of nostalgia filled with memories of the original park’s most amazing attractions, such as Horizons and Journey Into Imagination. I didn’t visit Epcot until October 2017, when some classic attractions were left operating but many were abandoned or defunct. Even then I felt like the park really needed some sort of update- for example I loved Frozen Ever After but I didn’t really feel like it belonged in the version of Epcot that existed then.
When the details for the Epcot overhaul were first revealed last year at the D23 Expo, I was pretty sceptical on whether or not Imagineering were making the right move for the park. However now that some of the updates have actually been brought to life, such as Epcot Forever and Beauty and the Beast singalong, I’m incredibly excited for what the next few years will bring to the park of the future!
What are your thoughts? Are the upcoming Epcot updates to make it “more Disney” going to benefit the park, or make it stray further from it’s true meaning? Comment below and join the conversation!
Your articles are amazing. Thank you for your hard work.
It’s definitely worth a visit! 🙂
Interesting! Never heard of that park before
Love this Lily
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Thank you so much! I’m so glad you enjoy them. Sorry about the late reply -Lily 🙂