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Pushing My Buttons

I want to go to there.

For those who wonder why so many of us who were there at the time are completely obsessed with the EPCOT Center of the 1980s, how about this – a simple souvenir button, which probably cost 50 cents or less at the time, with absolutely spectacular art. The [...]

Whirl Of Motion

We recently showed a picture of the Epcot model from 1978, which included the “Transportation” pavilion that would later become World of Motion. I’ve come across this rendering of that same pavilion, which I believe to be by Imagineering artist Collin Campbell, and I thought it would help to shed a little light on [...]

EPCOT: Origins – A Model Future, 1978

For those of us in the lowly demographic called “fandom”, true insight is only gained through extreme displays of excess and obsessiveness. This especially holds true when researching older Imagineering projects, and most particularly projects that were somehow altered or never came to be. So little artwork or information escapes from Fortress Disney, that each [...]

To GYRO And GERO In The Wabe

When Epcot Center opened in 1982, Disney characters were famously kept out of the new park. There were the big-headed World Showcase dolls and, of course, Dreamfinder, but no Mickey and Minnie. But with its vast, open areas, Epcot Center needed something happening to enliven the sprawling plazas between the pavilions.

Someone, apparently, also through [...]

Rainbows In The Attic

One of the greatest and most inexplicable mistakes in the annals of Disney management and Imagineering was the truly terrible, late-90s refurbishment of EPCOT’s Journey into Imagination pavilion. This wonderful attraction, full of artistry and atmosphere, was stripped down and repurposed into what became one of Disney’s all-time least popular attractions.

One result of the [...]