Consolidating Innoventions

When it first moved into the space formerly occupied by CommuniCore, EPCOT’s Innoventions was touted as a high-tech playground of the future, a sort of permanent consumer electronics show. Just check out this commercial from its early days (I apologize for the poor video quality)

Today, of course, the high-tech experiences at Innoventions once offered have been replaced by the Wall O’ Video Game Consoles You Can Get At Wal-Mart.

^{It’s like the run-down arcade at your local movie theater, but with older games}

Okay, that’s not entirely fair. Sum of All Thrills is pretty cool. But outside of that Raytheon-sponsored exhibit, Innoventions looks pretty bare these days. The last few times I’ve been to EPCOT, you know what I’ve noticed about Innoventions? Nothing. Large expanses of it, in fact. And that’s the real problem with the place. Disney just can’t seem to secure enough corporate sponsors to fill all the exhibition space, leading to large tracts of vacant real estate. Last week, WDWMagic reported that the House of Innoventions is returning, and it will occupy the now-empty space across from the Waste Management exhibit (also known as the “what the heck is a big green garbage truck doing in Future World?” exhibit). However, the Waste Management exhibit is going away, so really we’re just trading one piece of empty space for another.

So I have an idea. Since Disney is never going to get corporate sponsors for every piece of Innoventions exhibition space, why not consolidate all the exhibits into just one side of the pavilion, say Innoventions East? Innoventions West could be converted into an A or B ticket attraction like a scaled-down version of Adventures in Inner Space or a Horizons simulator, something inexpensive but true to the spirit of EPCOT. That way, Innoventions could be the busy, bustling place it was supposed to be, and we’d get a little piece of that EPCOT Center magic back.

I doubt this will ever actually happen, but it should.