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Epcot (General Discussion)

I'll be accused of being a heretic, but here's my take....Even as a former teacher in my early years, I had absolutely zero interest in Epcot's educational oriented focus. I really had no desire to attend the old Epcot, and subsequently never went there. I do like World Showcase and I'm looking forward to the changes in the former Future World area of the park. One of the aspects of Disney I like the best is their IP's. So I'm in the small camp that is enthused about the future Epcot.
 
It would be if Epcot was a museum. I get that he was just doing a comparison, but my point is Epcot is updating to what guests want just as the National Air and Space Museum does. Both are updating for their target audience. Any of you guys can not like that and have your own opinion, but for me, I don't mind a subtle Moana *fountain*. It's not the end of the world. Talk to me once they've taken out Figment and replaced it with some IP as i'll have a pretty serious problem if that happens since it can and should be updated and Figment is a beloved character as is.

The 80's are gone, despite what HHN tells you. Epcot has been dead for nearly 30 years and y'all still don't want to see it change.

You hate to see it.

Oh come on dude. I don’t yearn for 80s epcot because I was born in 86. I know they still kept an educational bend through the early ‘00s. And it’s more than “a Moana fountain”. Stop with the straw man arguments.
 
World of Motion was about as educational as If You Had Wings. But it was comical, interesting and unique. Epcot may have presented itself as edutainment, but cmon. It was just common sense history as told like a Disney cartoon.

Universe of Energy might have been the most “educational” when Epcot was getting its start, but that also made it the most boring.

If anything, most of the early Epcot attractions were whimsical, under the guise of educational.
 
Epcot has been dead for nearly 30 years and y'all still don't want to see it change.

It's not about not liking change.

It's about not liking the specific kind of change spearheaded by people like Bob Chapek, who don't see much value in Epcot remaining unique and distinct from the other Disney parks. Almost everything he does is in service of homogenization.
 
World of Motion was about as educational as If You Had Wings. But it was comical, interesting and unique. Epcot may have presented itself as edutainment, but cmon. It was just common sense history as told like a Disney cartoon.

Universe of Energy might have been the most “educational” when Epcot was getting its start, but that also made it the most boring.

If anything, most of the early Epcot attractions were whimsical, under the guise of educational.
The real "edutainment" came in the post show at WoM - but I agree WoM was the least educational of any of the rides. I think The Land and The Seas struck pretty good balance. The real hard educational stuff (such as it was) was in Communicore. Here you found more stuff that was museum-like.
 
The real "edutainment" came in the post show at WoM - but I agree WoM was the least educational of any of the rides. I think The Land and The Seas struck pretty good balance. The real hard educational stuff (such as it was) was in Communicore. Here you found more stuff that was museum-like.
The fun "hands-on" museum stuff, but yea, definitely.
 
World of Motion was about as educational as If You Had Wings. But it was comical, interesting and unique. Epcot may have presented itself as edutainment, but cmon. It was just common sense history as told like a Disney cartoon.

Universe of Energy might have been the most “educational” when Epcot was getting its start, but that also made it the most boring.

If anything, most of the early Epcot attractions were whimsical, under the guise of educational.
They were slow and people misinterpret that for boring, that certainly wasn't the case.

I remember WoM having a very Monty Python feel to it
 
Oh come on dude. I don’t yearn for 80s epcot because I was born in 86. I know they still kept an educational bend through the early ‘00s. And it’s more than “a Moana fountain”. Stop with the straw man arguments.
This has been my argument about Epcot needing change since before it was announced in 2017. No strawman and the 80's thing wasn't pointed at you in particular. I just want (Future World in particular) to actually be a place where I can spend more than a few hours and then i'm done.

And I think @Alicia seems to have put it better than I did in stating how the aspect "Edutainment" was really just PR stuff. I feel like people are holding on to this IDEA of Epcot that honestly i'm not sure ever really existed.

It's not about not liking change.

It's about not liking the specific kind of change spearheaded by people like Bob Chapek, who don't see much value in Epcot remaining unique and distinct from the other Disney parks. Almost everything he does is in service of homogenization.
Chapek is playing the game. He see's Universal's big success with Potter and where they're going with Epic Universe and he see's IP as the future of theme parks... because you'd be tone deaf to ignore that as the reality as someone at his pay grade. I don't want Epcot to become MK #2 and I don't think even after all of this is done that it will be anywhere close to that.
 
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I guess I am in the minority as I found that over time, the original future world to be a dated mess. The ride systems were and are clunky and noisy. I have only seen the early 2000’s SSE, WoL, EEA, and Imagination. All four were and two still are dumpster antiquated attractions.

World Showcase is entertaining if you buy food and booze, but don’t get me started on the circle vision junk. Dated and unimpressive to todays tastes.

I have never understood the passion that some have for the original Epcot even though I thought the prospect was wonderful in 1975.
 
I guess I am in the minority as I found that over time, the original future world to be a dated mess. The ride systems were and are clunky and noisy. I have only seen the early 2000’s SSE, WoL, EEA, and Imagination. All four were and two still are dumpster antiquated attractions.
You're not wrong. SSE and Imagination are both dumpster fires currently and no matter what they do with the SSE redo, if they don't retrack the damn ride, why are they wasting anyone's time? The only thing good Imagination has going for it is Figment (which as I said, would be a shame to lose him to an IP as I consider him a bigger IP/asset than many of Disney's movie IPs), but the ride is trash at the moment.
 
I'm really looking forward to Disney's ToonEPCOT. All that old depth and thoughtfulness hurts my brain. Bring on the comic book racoon with a machine gun. Whoot!!!!

And thank god they are getting rid of the awful fireworks show. All that blah, blah, blah about humanity and kinship is just dumb. Who cares? All I need is LOTS of 'splosions and toons.

 
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MiceChat is reporting that increased costs associated with tariffs on Chinese Steel has put a kink in the plans for Disney's new Epcot projects.
Do u have a link to the article?

I'm really looking forward to Disney's ToonEPCOT. All that old depth and thoughtfulness hurts my brain. Bring on the comic book racoon with a machine gun. Whoot!!!!

And thank god they are getting rid of the awful fireworks show. All that blah, blah, blah about humanity and kinship is just dumb. Who cares? All I need is LOTS of 'splosions and toons.


Meanwhile in the real world, forces of darkness control society...
 
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I'm really looking forward to Disney's ToonEPCOT. All that old depth and thoughtfulness hurts my brain. Bring on the comic book racoon with a machine gun. Whoot!!!!

And thank god they are getting rid of the awful fireworks show. All that blah, blah, blah about humanity and kinship is just dumb. Who cares? All I need is LOTS of 'splosions and toons.


Illuminations -> HarmoniUS is the greatest loss/downgrade of the entire project. So I’ll definitely miss my favorite show.

Everything to do with Future World now just seems to be people getting mad about losing something that hasn’t been around since the early 90’s, which is the soul of Epcot. Very, VERY little after ‘94 had edutainment aspects to it outside of innoventions.
 
Illuminations -> HarmoniUS is the greatest loss/downgrade of the entire project. So I’ll definitely miss my favorite show.

Everything to do with Future World now just seems to be people getting mad about losing something that hasn’t been around since the early 90’s, which is the soul of Epcot. Very, VERY little after ‘94 had edutainment aspects to it outside of innoventions.
True, but us old school folks would have liked to see them fix it. Not take something so inspirational and just throw it in the trash bin of history.

But I'm not sure that WDI even has the intellectual depth to fix it anymore. It's obvious Disney leadership doesn't.
 
True, but us old school folks would have liked to see them fix it. Not take something so inspirational and just throw it in the trash bin of history.

But I'm not sure that WDI even has the intellectual depth to fix it anymore. It's obvious Disney leadership doesn't.
I mean I get it. And they basically gerrymandered GotG into even semi-fitting by adding the neighborhoods, which I think could turn into a slippery slope down the line.
 
I think "edutainment" is not really the most effective term to be discussing, as people seem to have different ideas of what that actually meant.

To me, what made Epcot's offerings unique was that -- regardless of how much actual "educating" was being done in any given attraction -- they were all meant to be experiences with a little bit more depth than the attractions found in the other parks. The attractions were about concepts/ideas/moods related to the human experience. They weren't just romps. There weren't just Fantasyland "book report" rides. Even at their silliest, their goal was to illuminate something (perhaps big, perhaps small) about how we engage with (or give us something to appreciate about) science, history, the world, and/or each other.

Frozen Ever After does not do that. Cosmic Rewind will (very likely) not do that. HarmonioUS, at best, will be a self-congratulatory "Disney makes the world better!" show. The SSE revamp could be great, but it could just as easily be tone-deaf and cartoony. I think it's fair to be uneasy about some of this.

And I'm on the record being fine with Journey of Water, happy about the prospect of a more lush plaza area, fine with the new festival center, and actively excited for Ratatouille, so this is not coming from somebody who wants Epcot to just be preserved in amber.
 
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I'm really looking forward to Disney's ToonEPCOT. All that old depth and thoughtfulness hurts my brain. Bring on the comic book racoon with a machine gun. Whoot!!!!

And thank god they are getting rid of the awful fireworks show. All that blah, blah, blah about humanity and kinship is just dumb. Who cares? All I need is LOTS of 'splosions and toons.



See, this is the kind of reaction that makes me roll my eyes a bit. It's a bit condescending and doesn't really make me sympathetic to the discussion. Be a little less snark, a little more open.

I just can not wrap my head around how to keep the EPCOT Center of 1982 still in spirit in 2019. It's a different time. It's a theme park, not a science museum, which btw are also increasingly outdated. I can't imagine what Innoventions would even be except another CES. (heh CES even had a bizarre Epcot ride) Not to mention people nowadays are more wary to product placement and advertising. Disney IP is more natural since they're at a Disney park.

Be a grump and complain about the dumbing down of culture, sure, but I'm sometimes amazed by the heat that Epcot discussion attracts. I love Epcot from the angle of it being this big, bold, weird-as-hell experiment Disney once tried. I don't think that it was built to last in its original form, though. The only true absolute foolish mistake they really made with the park in my eyes was getting rid of the first JII, which was a timeless attraction and a crime to remove. But there's the fervent rage people get with protecting it, I think mostly because it's extremely unique and there's nothing else like it.

Which I'm not gonna dash on anybody being sad, but furious is a little ridiculous at times. The courtyard was all but abandoned, why are we fuming at its departure exactly? Because it's not the same Main Street you get all across the world? Like I honestly wonder if Westcot was built if that would sully the Epcot 'brand'. Attractions like World of Motion, Kitchen Kabaret, Cranium Command, Universe of Energy, Journey into Imagination, Horizons possibly going elsewhere may have damaged just how weird and surreal they seemed from that perspective, and the anguish that went into preservation.

Now, I'll give you HarminoUS which is IMO disgusting in its "how Disney music inspires cultures around the world" which is 100% Chapek trash and why he should never be given the keys the company bc he might be one of the most corporate and tone deaf ppl in charge at the moment. But at the very least, part of it is trying to pay homage to the weird experiment, and I honestly think some are way, way too paranoid about that SSE art. (I rolled my eyes all the way into the back of my head when Jim Hill said, "Oh and Moana's there!")

Right now the issue is that Epcot was born in the 80s, the age of the corporation, felt the sting of contracted updates that now reluctant corporations shied away from, and now in a time where corporations are bigger than ever ironically finds itself in a time where they don't like to fraternize much unless absorption and Disney being also one of the monolithic giants themselves. I admire what they were trying to do with it but I just don't feel like it's the end of the world either. I agree with some decisions (what they're doing with the core) and don't agree with others (GotG, despite being a good coaster)... I would like if edutainment would be the emphasis again but sadly that doesn't seem to be the point. I'm overall glad they're keeping some of EPCOT's unique and weird qualities in the end, and I'll wait and see on the rest.
 
Future World has always been a disaster. Glad it’s going away. Sorry Figment fans but his ride sucks too. Replace it in the future. Give Figment a gift shop and call it a day.
 
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