Epcot
I don't know why, but I've always had a strange fascination with Epcot. As a child, I loved Epcot because it was a Gifted kid's dream park. Nerdy historical/educational rides, hands-on activities that required the use of imagination, and the coolest technologically strange things I'd ever seen.
Now as an adult, as Epcot is becoming dated and changing to a point where Future World is barely recognizable to me, I have a fascination with the original concept behind Epcot.
Walt Disney's original dream was for it to be an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT). He wanted it to be a community where people worked, paid rent and drove their cars underground to make the above-ground safe for pedestrians. He wanted there to be monorails and for it to be an idealistic community where everyone worked together for a common good. There's something about Walt Disney's optimistim and innocense that I admire and love. Before the corporate greed that has become Disney. Before the dream was lost. Before Mission Space, or Test Track, or redoing Imagination twice because they messed up a perfectly great ride by taking Figment and the Dreamfinder out it completely.
Maybe that's why Epcot has always been my favorite of the Disney parks, even though it's the least exciting by definition. Its roots were so earnest. Even though it has become seriously outdated - Innoventions is hardly the spectacular display of technology as it used to be, and Spaceship Earth's prediction for the "future" of communication has already been realized - I don't want them to change things. The park is undoubtably 80s, and I love it that way.
Everytime I visit Epcot, I get this feeling. I've never been able to properly explain it. This has been my best attempt, but I'm still not sure I've conveyed what I wanted to. But thinking about it makes me sad and always puts me into a mood. I wonder what Walt would think of what his dream has become.
Now as an adult, as Epcot is becoming dated and changing to a point where Future World is barely recognizable to me, I have a fascination with the original concept behind Epcot.
Walt Disney's original dream was for it to be an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT). He wanted it to be a community where people worked, paid rent and drove their cars underground to make the above-ground safe for pedestrians. He wanted there to be monorails and for it to be an idealistic community where everyone worked together for a common good. There's something about Walt Disney's optimistim and innocense that I admire and love. Before the corporate greed that has become Disney. Before the dream was lost. Before Mission Space, or Test Track, or redoing Imagination twice because they messed up a perfectly great ride by taking Figment and the Dreamfinder out it completely.
Maybe that's why Epcot has always been my favorite of the Disney parks, even though it's the least exciting by definition. Its roots were so earnest. Even though it has become seriously outdated - Innoventions is hardly the spectacular display of technology as it used to be, and Spaceship Earth's prediction for the "future" of communication has already been realized - I don't want them to change things. The park is undoubtably 80s, and I love it that way.
Everytime I visit Epcot, I get this feeling. I've never been able to properly explain it. This has been my best attempt, but I'm still not sure I've conveyed what I wanted to. But thinking about it makes me sad and always puts me into a mood. I wonder what Walt would think of what his dream has become.