Extinct Attractions – Agent P’s World Showcase Adventure

Welcome to Extinct Attractions. This week, we’ll be spreading some joy from Disney Parks’ past as we go through one of the most bonkers times in modern history.

For the first time in history, all of the Disney Parks around the world are closed in an effort to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. In my mind, it is the right move because drastic measures like these are the only way to help curb the virus and ensure that as many people as possible stay safe. In fact, I was even in France last week, so I’m currently self-quarantining to help ensure that I do my part for everyone around me.

While in France, I got the chance to spend a couple of days in Disneyland Paris, fulfilling a lifelong dream to visit the park. Even with the overhang of the virus, I loved my time there and cannot wait to get back one day. One thing that I couldn’t help noticing there was how accurate the France pavilion at Epcot was in its representation of Paris. They do a wonderful job capturing the spirit of the country in such a small space, which got me wondering if the rest of World Showcase was that accurate.

One of the best ways to take in the details of World Showcase was through Agent P’s World Showcase Adventure, an interactive way to take in a lot of different parts of seven of the eleven World Showcase pavilions. Agent P’s took the place of the Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure on June 23, 2012. In a trend that will become apparent, Kim Possible had become an outdated property, so Disney decided to replace it with a more relevant property in Phineas and Ferb, even if it didn’t include the titular characters from the show.

When the attraction first opened, if you wanted to play you needed to get a special flip F.O.N.E. from near the entrance to World Showcase. This device served as your guide throughout the entire experience, with your mission from the spy headquarters being provided as well as some funny short clips that really captured the humor of the show.

As you can see in the video, eventually the technology was updated, so that you would use the Play Disney Parks app on your own smartphone instead of the Disney-provided phone. Though the old phones were fun, using your own phone was much more hygenic and provided an overall better experience, especially since the screen was larger and better.

I’m not 100% positive that I ever experienced the Agent P version of the attraction, but I did go to Walt Disney World in 2012, so I’m pretty sure that my friends and I tried it out while we were there (but I could just be getting it confused with Kim Possible). Either way, the World Showcase Adventure was a great way to keep children entertained and interested in World Showcase, which admittedly skews more adult. Parents could grab a drink and walk around with their children, giving everyone a chance to explore the pavilion to a greater extent than if there was not a guide. Plus, there were seven different countries included, so you could keep doing it over and over.

But what set Agent P’s World Showcase Adventure apart to me was the interactivity that you could have with the environment. By pressing the right buttons on your phone, objects around World Showcase would move. It was super impressive to have something you did on your own smartphone actually cause something to happen in Walt Disney World. (Honestly, I thought this technology would be used in Galaxy’s Edge, but maybe we’ll get it eventually.)

As time went on, Phineas and Ferb became a bit more outdated, so Disney looked for another Disney Channel show to take over the attraction and settled on DuckTales (woo-oo). Agent P’s World Showcase Adventure closed on February 16, 2020 and the DuckTales version is scheduled to open sometime later this year.

Well, that’s all for today. A short one I know, but Agent P’s didn’t have the most robust history. However, here’s your peek at what is coming next week.

Via Me.me

Thanks for reading and have a magical day!