On Its 35th Birthday, Disney World's Epcot Is Remarkable And Frustrating

We should remember that the best word to describe the theme park, now known only as Epcot, is "ambitious." Originally, Epcot was not just going to be a theme park, known as much for its massive, golf-ball-shaped entrance icon as for the attractions beyond. Epcot was EPCOT – the Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow. This concept was first introduced by Walt Disney himself, in the fabled "Florida Project" film that was filmed less than two months before his passing, intended to sell the Florida government on his new plan. The Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow would exist on the 43 square miles of land that Disney had quietly purchased throughout the 1960s to gift this area with something that Anaheim's Disneyland never had – the "blessing of size."

EPCOT would house a theme park, to be sure, but it would also house employees, an industrial park, and an envisioned utopian community free of crime, accident-ridden transportation, and general chaos. Just as Disneyland was initially designed as a rebuttal to amusement parks that only entertained children, not the whole family, EPCOT would be a response to the messy cities of the 1960s. Once Disney passed away, his idea for EPCOT fell by the wayside – it's hard to know whether it could have come to fruition even if he had lived longer – though elements of his vision remained.

Though his ambition for the original EPCOT never led to something tangible, the executives who took over the project did push for something relatively ambitious throughout the 1970s, leading to the opening of EPCOT Center on October 1, 1982. By then, it was downgraded to just being a theme park; then, as now, it was split in two. The front half of the park is called Future World, and is separated by pavilions focusing on energy, the land, the sea, transportation, and more; the back half of the park is called World Showcase, separated by pavilions focusing on countries from the United States to China to Italy. The tagline for EPCOT Center was both simple and a bold declaration of purpose: "The 21st Century Begins October 1, 1982."

If you had been there on opening day, here are two notable things you would not have seen at EPCOT Center: in-person meet-and-greets with characters like Mickey Mouse and attractions themed to well-known Disney movies. Today, you can meet Mickey, then walk over to The Seas with Nemo and Friends, then watch a movie featuring Simba from The Lion King, and in a few years, you can ride an attraction featuring Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy characters. And that's just in Future World. If you'd like to see Olaf the snowman, Princess Anna, and Queen Elsa, the Norway pavilion in World Showcase is your best bet. (Never mind that Frozen takes place in a fictional country, not Norway.) The Three Caballeros spend their days in the Mexico pavilion, and you can meet country-specific characters elsewhere in the World Showcase, from Mary Poppins to Marie from The AristoCats.

When EPCOT Center opened, there were nearly two decades separating us from the new century; now, Epcot is nearly two decades away from the start of that century. The park continues to handle thousands of guests per day. But the park that exists now, in spite of maintaining the same general shape, is radically different than it was in 1982. So what happened?

Take, for example, the Universe of Energy pavilion. The most recent iteration of this attraction, a 45-minute hybrid of movie and massive dark ride in which guests journey through the history of the world, was in need of refurbishment. The attraction existed, mostly as it was, for nearly 20 years; the movie starred Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Nye the Science Guy, and featured cameos from Alex Trebek and Jamie Lee Curtis. While DeGeneres and Nye have both had career resurgences in the 21st century, the film was clearly made in the mid-1990s, when DeGeneres had her ABC sitcom, Nye had a kids' TV show, and another of the film's cameo performers, Michael Richards, was known as a lovable sitcom sidekick as opposed to having a racist meltdown at a comedy club. Cast notwithstanding, the film glossed over many of the alternative energy sources that are familiar to many guests in 2017, such as solar or wind power.

The Universe of Energy needed to change, well before this year. Few people would argue this point, even the diehard fans who are heartbroken about the Guardians of the Galaxy taking the pavilion's place. The issue is less that Walt Disney Imagineering (or perhaps Disney executives) wanted the Universe of Energy to change; it's how the attraction is changing. This is a microcosm of the frustration. A theme park that dedicates itself, or part of itself, to an idealized vision of the future means that it must frequently change to accommodate the present and how it informs what will come to pass. But how those changes are made, and why they are made, has led to Epcot feeling like a shell of its past self. An attraction featuring Peter Quill and Company might be fun, but what does it have to do with energy, and why should it be housed next to pavilions dedicated to transportation, space travel, and the like?

We can ask similar questions about the Frozen Ever After attraction in the Norway pavilion. If you had experienced Maelstrom and the ensuing film in Norway over the last few years, you would not have been wrong to suggest that maybe the attraction needed a bit of a renovation. The movie, particularly, has a quaint charm but is inescapably a product of the 1980s. To suggest that any of the pavilions is above being altered is wrong, even their best attractions. (There aren't many genuine attractions in World Showcase; Maelstrom was a fairly placid boat ride in the dark, but was easily the standout.) From a business perspective, it mostly makes sense to place Frozen in Norway, a World Showcase pavilion that already houses a banquet hall featuring a sit-down restaurant with Disney princesses. The days of Epcot not featuring Disney characters or movies are long gone, and hey, Frozen is Scandinavian-inspired. So why not?

Again, it's less that Disney introduced characters to Epcot, but how they did. The Maelstrom ride building, vehicles, and track remain the same – the new attraction even includes the section of the ride where the boat you ride on goes backwards down a slight hill. Now, though, the Frozen characters line the sides of the attraction, singing the film's songs. The ambition of Epcot, the ambition that drove the park from its beginning, isn't present in Frozen Ever After. The attraction is, unsurprisingly, popular because the film itself is quite popular. That doesn't mean its quality meets the previous high bars established by Imagineering.