Greg Maletic
Page 3 of 3

Corporate sponsorships are handled poorly in Future World. What should be the strength of the park--real companies offering their technology and foresight to provide a glimpse into our future lifestyles--is squandered as a simple advertising opportunity. Sponsors are brought in to endorse what Disney wants to teach, not present their own lessons. Think back to the old World of Motion pavilion and its "whimsical" retelling of the story of transportation: does anyone believe that General Motors, and not Disney, came up with that idea?

What GM would have come up with was something a lot more like Test Track, which is precisely why I like it so much. By giving its riders a glimpse into the real world of building and testing cars, both in its queuing area and in the ride itself, Test Track does a significantly better job of teaching Epcot guests than World of Motion ever did. Test Track is still a little too sanitized for my tastes--I'd like it to feel and look even more like the process that a vehicle platform goes through, and it should teach more than it does--but compared to other Epcot attractions, it feels authentic. I don't really trust GM or Disney to present the history of transportation as they did in World of Motion, not because they can't, but just because it's not what either company is really an expert at. GM is, however, an authority on building cars, and when they talk about that experience, I believe them.

The authenticity that Test Track brings to Epcot points to the way that all of Epcot could be leveraging the corporate world: as its source material rather than its patron. There's so much to learn from corporate America in the areas of science, technology, culture, and commerce, and Epcot could be that conduit. Thus far, Epcot has wasted the opportunity.

Of course, if all the attractions were like Test Track, the "Future World" designation would have to go. But that's okay, because the name didn't make much sense the day that Epcot opened, either. Can anyone give a good explanation of why half of Epcot is named "Future World?" (And the reason should be better than "the buildings look futuristic!") The Living Seas, Life & Health, Universe of Energy, and Journey Into Imagination don't even try to teach us about the future, they teach us about our past and present. Plainly, Future World's about learning, and naming it correctly would clarify Disney's thinking about what to do with the area. Better naming would help the park in other ways: the fact that the park is named Epcot--a name that means nothing--speaks volumes about the problems Disney's had in figuring out what it's supposed to be building.

For a park that's supposed to be educational, Epcot is remarkably afraid of being educational. The pavilions, save for a few of the Innoventions exhibits (another relatively new addition with some nice potential), are too dumbed-down to really teach anything. Disney is so wary of being didactic that it won't let itself take the time to teach anything useful to its audience. It's not a difficult problem to solve: ironically, forgetting the entertainment and being merely educational could be sufficient. Many people find learning itself entertaining, and that's who Epcot should be tailoring itself to. For the many who don't, well, there are three other parks on the Walt Disney World property designed to keep them happy.

Related Links

• Last Week: By failing to tackle the complexities of the ecological issues it presents, Disney's Animal Kingdom gives its critics the ammunition they need to denigrate the company's environmental message. Worse still, it's not very fun.
• Next Week: Disney Returns to its Roots: Yes, Disney's California Adventure could be better. But Disneyland's newest park and Tokyo DisneySea illustrate that Walt Disney Imagineering has finally remembered what an amusement park is supposed to be like.

Discuss It!

• Discuss this article on the LaughingPlace.com Discussion Boards

-- Greg Maletic

-- Posted January 17, 2002