Disney Parks - EPCOT: Failed Promise or Unique Theme Park?

As you peruse the Disney blogs, one of the topics that elicits the most passion, in both blog entries and in the reply sections to those blogs, is the theme park known as Epcot. Or you can call it EPCOT Center, if you're so inclined.

As we all know, the letters E*P*C*O*T actually stand for something: They are an acronym for "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow". And as we Disney fanatics also know, the original intent of the "Florida Project", at least in Walt Disney's mind, was to create the city of tomorrow, where corporations would save the day along with astute city planning and concepts of development. It didn't happen that way, and without Walt, there was probably never a chance of it happening. Walt was the one who could "sell" the various corporations on his ideas. Whether Roy and the others who succeeded Walt ever fully believed in the concept is open for debate, I suppose. I know that Roy paid lip service to the goal of building such a city, but I wonder if, had he lived longer, he would have continued to push for it as a goal.

So EPCOT became a thing of legend, and in its place came EPCOT Center, a park dedicated to ... to what? The front half, Future World, was obviously themed around the near future, while the back half was themed around presentations of different cultures in the World Showcase. I was never there, but I know from my reading that the pavilions that are there today were mostly there back then, with two notable exceptions: the Horizons pavilion and the Wonders of Life pavilion.

Nothing seems to elicit more passion than the Horizons ride-through attractions, heavy on animatronics and futuristic imagery. It was closed eventually, for whatever reason (a sinkhole?), and later, in its place, the Mission: Space pavilion opened. The World of Motion pavilion gave way to Test Track, but at least it is still more or less dedicated to the topic of transportation. Wonders Of Life simply closed and has not reopened.

Let me state right here that the current theme park known as Epcot is my favorite park at the WDW resort. There are some really fun attractions, there are many, many good dining choices, and the architecture is still incredible. And I never had the chance to visit the old EPCOT Center, so I can't really speak to its brilliance or supremacy. I have to take various bloggers' words for it.

Still, I see what they are saying. This park was supposed to be about an optimistic future, but it's just become about the present. And the present is as non-controversially presented as it possibly can be. What is futuristic about it now? Ellen and the Universe of Energy? Fossil fuels? How retro is that? The Seas With Nemo? Cartoon fish swimming in the ocean? Testing autos for GM? Hang gliding over California? And Journey Into Imagination? The one Epcot attraction that almost never has a wait?

At least Mission: Space takes us somewhere that no one has ever gone - except that we're told as we enter that it is a training exercise - presumably for something that hasn't happened yet. And Spaceship Earth's voyage through our (animatronically portrayed) past in order to presumably learn something about our future ends up forward looking and interesting.

So I think it is a park full of failed promise, at least in Future World. I think World Showcase succeeds beautifully at what it presents. But Future World is not about the Future anymore. I am led to believe by everything I've read that the goal of this park was to showcase the cutting edge of technology.

Maybe this is impossible to do in today's world. After all, we aren't amazed anymore by things like videophones or robots. We've been living with them for a really long time. We also aren't all that amazed by the new technology of energy production, at least not wind farms and nuclear power plants. We aren't amazed when NASA sends a rover to Mars or anywhere else to collect data. Advances in technology and science seem to be smaller and less accessible today. And the ones we are aware of seem to be mostly in the entertainment industry - iPads and iPods, Kindle readers and Droid X phones. Not to mention video gaming.

I'm sure there are things out there to amaze us but Epcot doesn't really show us much about it. I am amazed by my mother's cochlear implant. Imagine that a device can take sound, convert it to electrical impulses and transmit it along 22 or so tiny wires to directly stimulate the cochlear nerve, and the brain can make sense out of this and turn it into what we all take for granted: hearing sounds.

Epcot does have a display on cochlear implants, but there's no depth. It's just an advanced hearing aid to most, I think. There are nods to other technologies there, too, but they seem to me to be of the same depth, which is to say, not much. And they don't generate excitement, they are just displays. High school science projects might be more exciting.

Instead of trying to showcase the future and inspire us today, the management has chosen to simply entertain us. And they do an okay job of that with rides like Soarin', Mission: Space, Test Track and even the Living with the Land and The Seas With Nemo rides. They're fun, exciting, and repeatable. They just don't teach or inspire. Edutainment? Not so much.

That said, Epcot is still an incredibly unique park, and it is still "working" for millions of visitors. What other theme park tries to do what Epcot does? I can't think of one.

Were I going to spend more than 4 days at Disney World (as I am in November, though two days will be spent at the competition, Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure), Epcot would be the park I'd spend more time at than any other. Just walking around there is a worthy experience. The dining choices make it THE place to go for food in WDW, and the attractions are just icing on the cake.

But they could be more. They could BE the cake.

******

Book Post - THE PIXAR TOUCH by David A. Price

*****

Really, I don't have much to say about this today, except that I purchased this title yesterday at my local Borders (33% off coupon and some money left of a gift card offset the $16.00 cover price) and just barely started it last night.

It promises, I think, to be a very interesting portrait of the personalities at Pixar as well as at the company itself.

I'll be posting more about the book when I finish it...

******

Theme Parks - Kinetic Energy

When you are wandering around a Disney theme park, perhaps you notice that things are moving. Or perhaps you don't notice. But it makes an impression, if only subconsciously.

I don't have a great deal of theme park experience. I've been to both Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort, and I've gone to Six Flags Great America, plus the St. Louis version of Six Flags and a couple of smaller parks. But when I think about it, the major difference I see is the quality of motion around the guests at the parks. Yes, at Six Flags, there is plenty of motion with coasters flying around, but they just look intimidating and scary.

At Disney parks, the motion is of a different quality. In Tomorrowland, you have the PeopleMover going past above you, and the Astro Orbiter, also happening above your head. At Splash Mountain you see the logs coming out of the mountain and down the flume before spashing into the water. Even Dumbo and the Magic Carpets of Aladdin provide kinetic energy in their corners of the park. Near the main entrance the Disney Railroad provides the motion.

The motion at the Magic Kingdom is exciting, inviting (perhaps), interesting, but not intimidating or frightening in the least.

Epcot's Dancing Waters Fountain provides kinetic energy in the Communicore, as does the monorail itself as it loops through the park. Test Track, of course, has the motion of its vehicles as they race past its entrance, and the pools of the Imagination! pavilion have their own brand of kinetic attraction with the illusion of water flowing uphill. Even The Seas With Nemo and Friends have motion with those silly animatronic pelicans in front of its entrance.

The other two parks don't have as much kinetic energy available for guests' diversion and for subliminal atmosphere, at least not that I can think of. It's been almost two years since I've been to Disney, so some stuff is a bit hazy in my mind. (I'll be rectifying that next month with my family.)

If any readers come up with any other examples of how Disney uses kinetic energy to set atmosphere and keep things interesting for the guests without hitting them over the head with the motion, please feel free to mention them in the comments section.

Thanks for reading.

******

A Red Letter Day in Disney History

HAPPY 28th BIRTHDAY, EPCOT!

You're still my favorite!

DVC Trades

I was trying to keep this blog updated, at least with minor entries, but the last few weeks have been dry for me. It seems my brain has been too occupied with the political debate (if you want to call it that) going on in this country, as I've been doing some light research on the health care bill (aka ObamaCare) and on federal spending. (I made a couple of blog posts over at my Rambler blog on Journalscape. If anyone's interested, there's a link over there on the left side of your screen.)

So Disney has been fairly far from my mind over the last couple weeks. Until this weekend. We are Disney Vacation Club owners, and one of the main reasons we bought it was because of the potential to trade for weeks at nice properties around the country and world. They have an exchange program with RCI Timeshare properties, but it is something that till now we haven't attempted to utilize.

But this weekend, we started thinking about possible trips for spring break of 2011. So we pulled out our DVC book, and started looking at the locations in Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona. There are a few very nice properties listed in that area. So we picked out two or three, and called to see if they could check availability.

No availability at any of the properties we wanted.

So we did the same thing for San Francisco, but this time rather than spending an hour searching the internet for the various resorts and figuring out which ones we'd like to maybe try out, we called first. No availability in the entire state of California for that particular week.

The second agent was much more informative than the first - she let me know that the way most people do this is that they put their names on a "wait list" and wait for someone to give up their week to the exchange program. She said that it usually happens within a couple months. The trouble is, the airfares we were looking at were this price, today! Two weeks ago, they were more. Two weeks from now, who knows what they'll be?

Perhaps this is simply the way this exchange program works, but it was one of their major selling points when we were buying, and though I asked all the questions I could think of before we bought, no one explained that it was likely to be difficult or to take time to actually get trades through. In fact, just the opposite - the guy making the pitch suggested that since Orlando was the number 1 tourist destination in the world, trades were easy to make and happened very quickly. He went through the process, calling DVC and requesting the trade. But he seemed to suggest that it was about the same as using our points to book a vacation at a non-DVC Disney property, except cheaper, points-wise.

I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with the way this worked out. I and my kids really love Disney, but there is more to life and to the world than Disney property vacations. If I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn't purchase DVC points again...

*****

Imagine(er) That!

This is a poster which can be found in the Innoventions pavilion at Epcot.

Don't you sort of wish there really WAS a reality tv show called this?

*****

Music: My favorite band ever

I'm a huge Beatles fan. I believe I have everything they've recorded on CD, and I was smart enough to keep some of my old vinyl records of their recordings, including stuff like Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour. These young men were musical geniuses, in my opinion. They shaped the course of rock music, and they continue to influence people today. The recording technology has gotten better, but the music has not advanced as much, in my opinion.

I'm a musician myself; my main instrument is keyboards, but I also play a passable guitar and am a fair drummer. I've played in a lot of bands over the years, and it seems we almost always covered at least one or two Beatles songs, even if it was just Twist and Shout and I Saw Her Standing There. But we've tried a ton of 'em...Harrison numbers like Something, Lennon songs like Glass Onion and The Ballad Of John and Yoko, and McCartney tunes like Back In The USSR and Lady Madonna.

Not surprisingly, there are tons of cover bands, groups playing the Beatles' catalogue, and some doing it very well. I've not seen a ton of Beatles' tribute bands. But the few I've seen are good. American English is a group that plays around the Midwest, and they try to look and sound like the Fab Four. The Fab Faux is a bunch of guys from New York who don't care so much about looking the parts; they prefer to do the music perfectly. Saw them at the Vic Theater in Chicago where they did the White Album in its entirety just before Christmas last year. (Did I say they do the music perfectly?)



The only other Beatles tribute band I've seen is this one: British Invasion. If you have visited Epcot and lingered in the United Kingdom pavilion, it's likely you've seen them too.

I'm led to believe (by my wife and others) that, as a musician, I look for different things than casual fans do. I listen for guitar riffs, for drum fills, for vocal harmonies, for bass runs, for all the little things that make the songs sound close to the originals. And I hear those things when I listen to British Invasion. They appear to be top-notch musicians, on the order of American English (the band I referenced earlier). And they appear to love the music they are performing.



These are just a couple of pictures I had in my camera of the band performing in their gazebo in the courtyard of the UK pavilion. I hope to catch a set by them when I'm there later this fall.

Rock on, British Invasion!

*****