Greg Maletic
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For each success at Epcot, however, there has been at least as many misfires. A lot of people find the American Adventure stirring, but I don't count myself among them. The stilted dialog between the historical figures never rings true: much of it sounds like one of those elementary-school dramatizations of the birth of our nation where Abraham Lincoln and George Washington get together to discuss what a great country they created. (I will say, however, that many of the audio-animatronic humans in this attraction are as convincing as have ever been produced.) I also shudder to think of how many people became instantly turned off to Epcot through their interaction with its signature attraction, Spaceship Earth. As a Disney fan, it's fun for me to go on attractions like Spaceship Earth: I enjoy feeling the atmosphere it creates, and I love the technology behind it. But when you look at this attraction, ask yourself: is this the best thing that Disney could be doing with its technology? Apart from the beautiful presentation, its content really isn't very strong. For those who aren't quite as enamored with the attractions as I am--a sizeable portion of the population--it's downright boring. As the first thing that park guests encounter, this attraction raises the specter of the worst Nova episode they've ever seen, and one that they've paid forty dollars a person to experience no less. An upgrade a few years back improved Spaceship Earth, but still, it can be a little hard to take for those looking to be entertained.

I never really got into Horizons, and that shocks me because I was such a fan of all of Disney's futuristic visions, most notably Space Mountain's Home of Future Living back when Space Mountain was sponsored by RCA. It may have been because Horizons presented what I thought to be a less appealing vision: living in space or underwater seemed like a pain; watching football on an 8-foot television screen sounded amazing. It also could have been that I was older when I first saw Horizons (I was about fourteen) and I didn't view Disney as the official arbiter of America's future directions like I did when I was eight. (Looking at both objectively today, I have to say that the Home of Future Living got a lot more right than did Horizons: consumer electronics play a much more important part in our lives than do cities in outer space.)

Of the two major areas of Epcot--Future World and World Showcase--Future World has the more serious problems. Like the 1939 World's Fair it emulates, Future World has a vertical orientation. By that, I mean that the topics presented--energy, communications, ocean, land, health, and transportation--live in a vacuum, with little relation to each other. But few people in the world deal with these topics in a vertical way. For instance, how many people interact with the topic of "energy" exclusively, all day long, versus those who deal with it as only a part of their job? Energy is a piece of the puzzle, but it's not a deeply interesting topic in its own right. It only becomes interesting when applied to broader problems.

It seems like these topics could be handled more effectively by designing pavilions with a different perspective: a horizontal perspective. Take some piece of technology--a nuclear submarine, for instance--and create an attraction around it and all of its component technologies. By necessity, it would have to deal with the ocean, communications, energy, aerodynamics, health, transportation; virtually all of the topics that Epcot currently touches on, but viewed in an applied way, integrating all of them together. This, I think, would be tremendously more engaging--and educational--than looking at each of these topics one-by-one. There would be plenty of opportunity for learning, and also some opportunity for fun, especially in this instance since Disney has a track record of building attractions around submarines. The attraction could open with a simulated submarine ride, and when that was done, take a turn toward the scientific. ("That was a submarine ride of fantasy; here's how science makes a real nuclear submarine possible...," a narrator might say.) Other attractions, focused on a space vehicle, a computer, a car (hence Test Track...), a particle accelerator, or many other possibilities, could provide the same sort of experience.