Tripped across this…

Jerry: You’re right that a middle ground must be found, and for sure my approach to EPCOT would probably be considered high-brow. But it would focus on entertainment at its core, and would be informative, not dry. As to what people want and paying the bills, I always go back to the fact that EPCOT has always – always! – been the #2 park in the Florida market behind the MK. Higher than Studios, AK, Universal, IOA, Sea World, Busch Gardens, etc etc. It’s the #3 park in the US, and globally ranks only behind four of the Magic Kingdoms and Tokyo Disneysea. This has always been the case. If it’s rep is so bad, why the constant, perennial high attendance?

Jetpack: You too are correct in that I was retroactively crushed that EPCOT city has never been built, but at least my love of EPCOT was allowed to grow without my view of the park initially being tainted by prior knowledge. Of course, I later found out about these things, but it never really harmed my nostalgia for EPCOT. My real disappointment came with Celebration, with the massive use of valuable real estate for something that turned out to be a very ordinary real estate development. All that land de-annexed from RCID can never be brought back, and wasted a good plot of land that should have been for a real EPCOT city.

You’re also right about M:S; there’s no pavilion. Nothing makes me sadder than watching the planters outside lined with parents, grandparents and children that either cannot or do not want to ride. There’s *nothing* for them to do but wait in the sun. It’s the exact, specific problem that caused Walt to think of the Disneyland concept as he sat and waited for his girls to get off the merry-go-round that day. With the entire fields of astronomy, cosmology, and planetary science at their disposal, they couldn’t offer us something of greater scope and value?

Dan: I agree that EPCOT sets itself apart and that should be its identity. If all the other parks are fighting for the exact same audience, what’s wrong with EPCOT seeking a different audience? That was the big deal when it opened – shooting for an older, more affluent crowd. Of course, I think the park did and can appeal to everyone, just maybe not in the same way as other parks.

I like your idea of Jiminy Cricket – I’ve always thought the same, but about Ludwig von Drake! He always highlighted scientific topics in those old WWOC episodes, and would be a fun addition to the park. They don’t have to drown us in characters, but specific EPCOT-identifying characters like Figment only help to give the park that unique identity it needs.

You’re also right about the waiting – it’s criminal to think that EPCOT has been waiting almost 30 years for some of these things.

Chaddy: Thanks – glad you liked it. Obviously I also think that the public will respond to an EPCOT done right, as they did in 1982. People are more familiar with these topics now, not less, and they’re more relevant to us all. The problem does indeed lie with management and not WDI; the Eisner years devolved into a “chasing” mindset, where they were always chasing trends and trying to figure out what the public wanted before they’d commit to anything. Disney was once so great because they didn’t chase ideas, they created ideas. Walt was great at detecting what the public needed, and gave it to them without them knowing themselves that they needed it. What guest in 1964, if polled by a guest survey, could have thought to ask for Pirates of the Caribbean or the Haunted Mansion? Who would have asked, in 1937, for an animated feature film?

Walt knew what would be good, did it, and was rewarded. He did it without focus groups or marketing experts.

EPCOT has been destroyed by committee, and is, as you say, discombobulated and unfocused. It needs that strong consistent vision that can be provided by an individual or group that understands the park and what sets it apart, and what it should be trying to achieve. It would also help if they respected the guests instead of talking down to them.

Thanks again everyone for the kind words!

And I’m in agreement with those that say that the general public WILL indeed respond to the kind of changes to the park that you enumerated should they (god hoping) take place. Nowadays, the general public may not be interested in being educated (not to mention cerebralism in general) while on their family vacation. But people still do like being taken outside of their usual sensibilities and having their eyes opened by the wonders of the real world. To my knowledge, only Epcot makes this it’s primary purpose in the world of family themeparks. And only Epcot has the great wizards of Imaginearing at it’s disposal to make it happen.

I think what we’ve seen over the last few years is a not only a lack of funding for the park, but also a lack of understanding of the audience that the park is designed for. And contrary to what Jetpack Fan said earlier, I don’t think the Imaginears are responsible for that. It is the park’s managers who decide what goes into the park and what doesn’t. Kinda like a film studio dictating what a film’s directors can and cannot include in his films. Sounds terrible doesn’t it? Deciding for the artist what he will do with HIS work. But of course it happens all the time in the movie industry. Hence, all the lackluster, unimaginative, and unstimulating movies we see slapped together by Hollywood execs with millions of dollars in marketing spent to promote it. The millions of dollars made by these kinds of movies are surely cited as evidence that the public likes this kind of thing. But as we all know, an audience pays for a movie before it has seen it, not after. The success of these films proves the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns only, not of the studio’s control over the directors.

But once in a while, a studio takes a chance and gives an artist, the director, the funding and latitude that he needs to get his vision off the ground. And a wonderous film becomes, if not inevitable, atleast possible.

Something like that needs to happen with Epcot. It appears that John Lasseter is being given such a postion for the parks overall, but as mentioned, Epcot is discombobulated, and it needs someone specifically assigned to refocus it’s theme and purpose, not to mention it’s effectiveness. This person will need wide latitude, lot’s of funding, and the support of a great marketing initiative to raise the public’s curiosity about the changes in order to get them in through the gates. And of course, he must have a love and affection for the park’s uniqueness, an admiration for the intent of it’s original creators, and a general lack of enthusiasm for the direction the park has taken over the last few years.

I’m really curious as to why not a single Imagineer has spoken out against the horrible changes to Epcot. Even after quitting their jobs none of them speak out. Do they not care, are they afraid, or are they so enthralled with their bureaucracy that they dare not speak against it? This is your ART, defend it!

I didn’t find out it was supposed to be a city until well after I had fallen in love with it, and I was retroactively crushed. Really, Epcot the park has no relation to the city, they simply stole the name from it. I would love for them to rename Epcot to Future World or something, and build EPCOT. But of course all public corporations care about is money, improving the world has no value to them.

I expect a blogger to take the high-brow approach, we’re a nerdy group. But is that the right approach?

Then again, if you look at the crash-and-burn that was the Stich show at MK, then you can clearly see that Disney World families have a very clear lower limit for how much Character-Parading-As-Elvis-In-The-Unrelenting-Florida-Heat they can stand.

A middle of the road can surely be found …