Twenty-five years ago today EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida opened.So today's going to be a little Epcoty. If you don't care about Disney, Epcot, or my rambling on about Disney or Epcot, I suggest you hop over to Google right now and come back tomorrow for a whole host of Dubai observations and quips.
Okay, so that's taken care of. Are the rest of you still with me? Good.
EPCOT Center was always my favorite park at Walt Disney World. Sadly Epcot hasn't been "EPCOT Center" since 1993. And somewhere around that name change the park took a header from the lofty goals of education and discovery into the vapid and banal faux-rollercoaster slums of the mid-1990s.
The glorious World of Motion replaced by the downright unimaginative Test Track? The great big beautiful future of Horizons torn down for the puke-inspiring Mission: Space?
Not for me. It'll be a cold day in Orlando before I waste one more minute in line at either of those stinkers.
And don't even get me started on the ransacking of Journey into Imagination.
So wait, why am I celebrating this birthday?
Because the Florida parks, unlike the California ones, are constantly being "refreshed" and "renewed". It'll only be a matter of time before Mission: Space nauseates one eight year old too many and is pulled down ... hopefully for something at least marginally educational. Or at least interesting.
Because I have faith that smart people are in charge at Disney. And soon they'll realize that each park can't be all-coasters-all-the-time. The homogenization will end, and we'll get an Epcot rebirth.
Until then, here's a photo graveyard. Gone, but not forgotten:
January 2, 1996
World of Motion closes
October 10 1998
Journey Into Imagination closes
January 9, 1999
Horizons closes
And lastly, The Land. Well, it's still there, kind of. Kitchen Kaberet was replaced with Food Rocks, and Food Rocks was replaced by Soarin' Over California, the movies have been switched out, the food court redone... so it's really quite different now.
