The EPCOT Center Boredom Realization

I finally got it the other day.

Conventional wisdom says that EPCOT Center was too dry, scholarly, and boring for your average vacationer, especially those of the non-adult variety. And I never completely understood how anyone who’s not an idiot could think this. Oh, I understand how a kid could be bored by World Showcase. I remember being bored out of my skull in 1984 when my parents dragged 6-year-old me past all the amazingly awesome stuff in Future World so my mom could engage in the thrilling World Showcase activity of looking at things in shops. But from that first trip in 1984 until I became a surly teenager in the early 90s, I considered Future World to be maybe the one place on the planet where it was impossible to be bored. I wanted to live there.

My response to people who claim that EPCOT Center’s Future World was boring for kids has always been to point out that I loved it when I was a kid and a lot of other people loved it when they were kids, and the only kids who did not love it were probably the children of anti-intellectual pig-brained morons who think Africa is a country and “science” is a four-letter word. (I don’t mean they think “science” is a curse word. I mean they spell it with four letters.)

And then the other day I was listening to the excellent Living Seas audio collection from epcotlegacy.com. When I was a kid I loved The Living Seas. It was still under construction on my first EPCOT trip, but shortly after that my grandfather bought me the definitive EPCOT Center book Walt Disney’s EPCOT: Creating The New World of Tomorrow and I spent the next two years poring over its description of the future Living Seas pavilion. I gazed at the pictures of concept art and the cutaway model of the pavilion and tried to imagine what it would be like.

Of course, much of what the book promised—most notably a Poseidon-narrated dark ride in bubble-shaped Omnimovers—did not materialize. But I didn’t care (or necessarily even realize this) on my first visit the year The Living Seas opened. SeaBase Alpha looked like an underwater Starbase straight out of the Star Trek movies, and I totally believed that I was actually submerged in a giant saltwater aquarium. (The EPCOT Center book said that the Seabase would be located in the center of the tank, and the finished pavilion did a good job of maintaining this illusion)

But there was not a lot to do at The Living Seas. Unlike later Eisner-era attractions like Body Wars or Alien Encounter where visitors are cast in the role of people taking a routine tour of a futuristic facility when something goes horribly wrong, The Living Seas cast visitors as people taking a routine tour of a futuristic underwater research station when something suddenly does not go horribly wrong, and really no unexpected events happen at all. I realized this as I listened to the audio cue that played in the preshow holding area. While ethereal underwatery music played, a competent professional voice explained that guests could file into a theater for a briefing before their journey to SeaBase Alpha or bypass the briefing and head directly for the Hydrolators if they so desired. I always thought of this as a neat piece of atmosphere that reinforced the idea of actually visiting an underwater base in a Star Trek-like future.

But as I approach middle age I have lots of friends with kids. All of these kids are really awesome, intelligent, and inquisitive human beings. And as I imagined myself standing in The Living Seas’ preshow holding area listening to that competent professional voice go on about how you could either go to the briefing or not go to the briefing I suddenly got a vision of one of those intelligent and inquisitive kids going “Mo-ooom! This is so BORING!”

And I got it.

Briefings are not a fun activity for the under-20 crowd. Actually, not really for the over-20 crowd either. “Hey kids! Let’s go to a briefing!” is never something you will hear a parent say on vacation, or probably any other time, unless that parent is under the influence of powerful medication.

Now, I know that The Living Seas was a product of the pre-smartphone, pre-Game Boy era where the cutting edge in interactive queue design was having stuff in the queue to look at while you waited. And SeaBase Alpha was really supposed to be the post-show after a really cool dark ride in bubble-shaped Omnimovers until United Technologies got all stingy with their sponsorship money. But the fact is that a lot of stuff in Future World during the EPCOT Center era really was a little too dry and stentorian for kids whose imaginary friend was not Mr. Spock (i.e. kids who were not me).

Sure, those things were balanced out by Journey Into Imagination, World of Motion, Horizons, and the interactive CommuniCore exhibits that most kids found wonderfully entertaining and inspiring. But in a place like Disney World that’s marketed as a wall-to-wall entertainment paradise, being suddenly confronted by the non-dinosaur portions of the original Universe of Energy (which operated under the woefully mistaken assumption that anything projected on a giant movie screen is automatically entertaining) can be a little jarring for a kid. And now I understand that.

So, to all the people who complained that the cherished EPCOT Center of my childhood was too boring for kids to enjoy, I apologize saying that you’re all pig-brained morons.

The actual figure is around 52%.

From The Seas to The Living Seas and Beyond

In 1981 visitors to Florida’s Magic Kingdom could stop by the EPCOT Center Preview Center on Main Street and get a preview of the new park by watching the 15-minute film “The Dream Called EPCOT”. For many people, that film was the first they ever heard of The Living Seas. Interestingly, although it described a Living Seas experience that was pretty much exactly what we got, other EPCOT promotional literature promised a much more elaborate adventure that was rooted in earlier concepts for the pavilion.

One of the earliest renderings of the Seas’ aquarium is this one:

It’s certainly a pretty picture, but it’s also a rather fanciful concept that would have been impossible to build with late-1970s technology and would likely prove daunting to 21st century engineers, as well.

A much more reasonable version of the Seas pavilion could be seen in WED’s EPCOT Center concept model from 1978:

Positioned in the Future World West plot now occupied by The Land, this version of the pavilion featured a rocky-looking exterior with a cavelike main entrance and a glass-roofed aquarium. This would seem to be an exterior view of this cutaway model seen in Richard Beard’s EPCOT Center book:

It was this version of the Seas pavilion that formed the basis for most official descriptions of the attraction contained therein. And since The Living Seas didn’t open until 1986, these descriptions hung out there for four years after EPCOT Center’s 1982 opening. In the process, they served to set a lot of incorrect expectations for what a visit to The Living Seas would be like.

Originally, The Seas was supposed to consist of three main experiences:

1. A preshow hosted by Poseidon or perhaps Neptune, which led to:
2. A dark ride in bubble-shaped Omnimovers through a number of set pieces and Animatronics depicting scenes of undersea wonder and peril, culminating in:
3. The ride vehicles cruising into the pavilion’s massive aquarium through a clear tube leading to an observation area, where visitors would disembark to observe the aquarium and perhaps view educational exhibits.

And although the location and exterior configuration of the Seas changed several times, that basic attraction layout persisted. Another draft of EPCOT Center, likely dating from 1979, shows the Seas pavilion in the Future World East plot that Horizons would eventually occupy:

In this rendering the building looks a little sleeker, and there’s now a blue dome over the aquarium.

By 1980 the Seas had been moved to its final location in Future World’s northwest corner. And it had received another facelift:

This version of the Seas pavilion had a less organic appearance, and this time the aquarium was covered with a multifaceted golden dome, much like the one that later became Wonders of Life’s defining visual feature.

Giving the aquarium a transparent or semi-transparent roof was certainly visually attractive, but I wonder how practical it would have been. For one thing, it likely would have made it more difficult to control the water temperature. That’s critical because live coral can’t handle much temperature variation. And imagine the noise when the torrential downpour from a tropical storm or Florida afternoon thunderstorm struck that roof!

Finally, the EPCOT Center concept painting from 1981 shows what many people believe to be the final version of The Living Seas pavilion:

But is it? Let’s compare this painting of the pavilion to an aerial photo:

Notice how the northeast corner of the pavilion in the painting contains an angular extension that’s missing from the pavilion as constructed? Why is that? Well, according to Martin Smith’s Living Seas Ultimate Tribute video the final Seas concept to include the immersive dark ride was, on the outside, very similar to the pavilion we ended up getting. It was just a little bigger in the back to accommodate the ride. Therefore, it’s a good bet that the Living Seas pavilion we see in the 1981 painting is that version.

Of course, by the time that construction began on The Living Seas in 1984 (the year it was originally supposed to have opened) corporate sponsor United Technologies had refused to pay for the dark ride, and a scaled-down version of the pavilion was what began to take shape behind the construction wall. Nevertheless, the Coming Soon sign on the wall featured this concept painting:

I love this picture. The bubble cars, the impossibly futuristic divers’ suits, and the Honda Civic-sized mini-sub tooling about, it’s great. But it has the same problem as the first piece of concept art we looked at: it depicts a saltwater tank that’s impossibly huge. I realize that this is more a piece of artwork than a technical diagram, but wow! The aquarium in the actual pavilion was the largest ever constructed at that time, but it’s a kiddie pool compared to this! Still, the mini-sub is extremely cool (even if it is too big for the actual aquarium at the Seas) and it’s a shame it didn’t make it to the final version of the pavilion because it definitely had merchandising opportunities, as this Seabase Alpha interior rendering shows:

 ^{“In 2012 I’m gonna sell this thing for a million bucks on eBay!”}

This next couple of concept paintings may very well date from the version of the pavilion that featured Seabase Alpha and the bubble-car dark ride. We get a glimpse of the Omnimover unload area here:

. . and a scene from the ride itself here:

^{Is it just me, or does the guy on the left look a lot like Lando Calrissian?}

These renderings belong to the family of paintings I call “Smiling People Pointing At Things”. But as I mentioned previously, despite the Concept Art People’s happy pointing corporate sponsor United Technologies decided it didn’t want to pay for this awesome ride. So the bubble cars were turned into more garden-variety Omnimovers, and the dark ride was completely scrapped. Now, the SeaCabs would just convey visitors on a short trip past some aquarium windows and into Seabase Alpha.

The attraction flow of the Seas pavilion was therefore changed. Instead of the preshow/dark ride/Seabase combination that we’d been hearing about for four years, we got a preshow/Hydrolator/SeaCab/Seabase combination.

While they didn’t make up for the loss of the dark ride, the Hydrolators were a nice touch. Aside from the interior effects that simulated movement, the Imagineers even added “overflow pools” outside the Hydrolators that bubbled up as the Hydrolators reached the “surface”, as if their upward movement was displacing the water in the submerged elevator shaft.

SeaBase Alpha was impeccably detailed:

It really felt like an undersea research station you’d see in one of the Star Trek movies from the mid-80s. In fact, if you remove just a very few of the 20th century trappings, it would have served as an ideal filming locale for an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’m told that seaQuest DSV actually did film there, but I never watched seaQuest. In fact, the only thing I remember about it was that there was a talking dolphin and that kid from the ridiculous movie that gave birth to the Chuck Norris Facts meme.

The thing that doomed the Seas, in the end, was the modularity of its experiences. I’ll explain: the pavilion only worked if you experienced everything: the preshow film, the Hydrolators, the SeaCabs, and the Seabase. Each individual experience wasn’t terribly immersive, but they all added up to an experience that was nearly as immersive as the proposed dark ride would have been. But when United Technologies failed to renew their sponsorship, the Eisner-Pressler cost-cutting machine swung into operation and walled off the Seacabs. Because of the way the ride was designed, the unload area was just a scant few yards away from the load area, so it was nothing to simply block the whole thing off and funnel everyone from the Hydrolators directly into the Seabase. You could never do something like that to Spaceship Earth; the design of the building just won’t permit it. Just like that, a key piece of The Living Seas experience was gone, and the pavilion now felt incomplete. People began to stay away, maintenance cut back, and the pavilion gained the derisive nickname “The Dead Seas”. Eventually, The Living Seas was shuttered and slated for Pixarification.

I’ve always tried to maintain a balanced view of The Seas With Nemo And His Computer-Generated Friends. After all, since its facelift the Seabase area is absolutely teeming with little kids who are genuinely excited and curious about the marine life swimming around in the tank. However, the pavilion still suffers from United Technologies’ decision not to fund the elaborate dark ride. How? Well, thanks to the pavilion’s modularity (there’s that word again!) the Seacab ride was never demolished, just walled off. So when the Seas got its Nemo refurbishment, the Imagineers took the logical route and simply built a ride around the existing (very short) ride track. The preshow theaters and Hydrolators were ripped out and replaced with . . . an elaborately themed queue. And while it’s really nice-looking, you have to work a lot harder to suspend your disbelief and convince yourself that you’re “really” going beneath the sea.

If, back in the early ‘80s, United Technologies hadn’t been so stingy, we might still have The Seas With Nemo and Friends. But it would be a much more immersive and transportative experience than what we have today because the longer dark ride would still be there.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this exhaustive, long, and rambling look at The Living Seas. If you did, then you absolutely must check out Martin Smith’s Ultimate Tribute To The Living Seas, which was where I got the majority of my information for this post. Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Progress City, USA’s (and D23’s) Michael Crawford for helping me get some of my facts straight.

My Year at WDW-The Seas with Nemo (and His Computer-Generated Friends)

Like most Disney attractions, the Seas pavilion went through a number of changes between the initial concept and the final design that actually got built. One feature remained constant, though, from the early concepts:

. . . to the final ones:

The aquarium. From the beginning, it was the Seas’ central attraction. But EPCOT is a Disney park, so visitors would have been pretty disappointed if the Seas was just an aquarium. Something else was needed to draw them in.

In the early concepts, visitors were transported to the aquarium viewing area via an immersive dark ride hosted by Poseidon, God of the Sea. By the time the pavilion actually opened in 1986, it had been scaled down to a short Hydrolator trip and a three-minute Seacab ride. Jim Hill says this was because corporate sponsor United Technologies was too cheap to fund the original concept, while Martin Smith’s Living Seas Ultimate Tribute video implies that WED decided on their own that the Poseidon-hosted dark ride was too fanciful and opted for the more academic tone.

The Living Seas, with its preshow film/Hydrolator/Seacab ride combination, did a good job of drawing in visitors, at least until the departure of its corporate sponsor. Forced to fund the pavilion’s operation on their own, Disney went into aggressive cost-cutting mode.  The Seacab ride was deactivated and walled off, the Seabase began to take on a dingy look as routine maintenance was scaled back, and visitors began to stay away from the pavilion. People began to grimly refer to it as “The Dead Seas”. Fans began to wonder if the Seas would suffer the same fate as the Wonders of Life.

You know what happened, of course. Disney pumped some money into the pavilion, and in 2007 it reopened as The Seas with Nemo and Friends. Was any attempt made to make the pavilion’s new theme fit in with the rest of Future World? No. Does the ride-thru attraction have any point other than to say “Hey kids, here’s Nemo!” and rehash the plot of the movie? Again, no. However, after making multiple trips to EPCOT last year, I have to admit that the Nemo rehab, ill-conceived though it was, has succeeded in one important area: drawing people back to the Seabase.

Even when the pavilion was The Living Seas, the main attraction wasn’t the Hydrolators, or the Seacab ride, or the preshow film featuring that female narrator with the amazing voice. It was the marine life inside the aquarium. But there really isn’t any point to it being there if no one is compelled to come look at it. During the handful of trips I’ve made since the Great Nemo Rehab of 2007, the Seabase has always been packed with excited families, even on days when the ride-thru attraction was a walk-on. And the families weren’t all crowded into the waiting area for Turtle Talk, either; every window into the aquarium was lined with kids staring into the water with amazement. I heard far more cries of delight at the antics of the dolphins than I did on the ride when Nemo and his friends appeared. Without exception, every kid I saw was much more excited to see a real shark prowling the reef than they were to see Animatronic Bruce and his artificial cohorts. And that’s why I have to admit that The Seas with Nemo and Friends is ultimately a success.

From its initial concept to the finished product, the purpose of EPCOT’s Seas pavilion was always to inform and educate people of all ages about the incredible array of life beneath the ocean’s surface. And when I see the Seabase area full of kids eager to look at and learn about the marine life in that massive aquarium, I’m forced to admit it’s accomplishing that purpose. Maybe it’s not going about it in quite the way I would prefer, and maybe if Disney had stuck with the original concept and built the pavilion with a big and elaborate dark ride I wouldn’t even need to write this. But love him or hate him, at least Nemo and his Computer-Generated friends are getting kids excited about a piece of the real world (specifically, the piece that comprises 70% of the globe). Maybe it’s only an unintended benefit of a rehab that Disney did primarily to sell more Nemo merchandise. But it’s proof that the spirit of EPCOT Center is still finding ways to shine through.

The Undiscovered Future World Tour Reviewed

Okay, first of all I know the Disney literature calls it the UnDISCOVERed Future World tour, but I refuse to spell it like that. It looks like the Caps Lock key got stuck. I’ve wanted to take this tour ever since I first learned of its existence a few years ago, and when we got Annual Passes last year I vowed that I would do it before they expired.

If you’re an EPCOT geek (and if you’re reading this, I assume you are) then you have to realize that you’ll find very little that’s new or informative in the script that your guide is required to recite, and really that’s to be expected. You do, however, get to go into some really cool areas where your average park visitor is not allowed. For example, the Living Seas VIP lounge:

Sorry for the poor picture quality; my camera isn’t very good in low-light conditions. I was surprised by how large the lounge is. It’s easily as big as the Coral Reef restaurant, probably bigger. In a perfect world, it would be converted into an exclusive lounge for EPCOT Center aficionados, and the password to gain entry would be “George McGinnis”.

You also get to go into Mission:Space’s Mission Control and take a close-up look at the control console prop that you can see from the queue:

The level of detail is very high; the buttons all work, and some of the little video screens are playing the footage of the bird that always set off the alarm in Tomorrowland’s old Mission to Mars attraction.

You also get to go into the (surprisingly small) backstage area at Universe of Energy. There are a couple of unused pterodactyl Animatronics stored there, and they’re the only thing you’re allowed to photograph backstage, as long as you don’t photograph them from an angle that reveals more of the room.

The best things on the tour, though, is the stuff the guide doesn’t point out to you, the little pieces of EPCOT Center that litter the backstage areas. Things like a Magic Journeys-era sign with Figment on it that tells guests where to deposit their 3D glasses after the show, a prop from Kitchen Kaberet, or what looks to be a vintage Universe of Energy operations manual sitting on a shelf in a back room. That’s the stuff that really makes the Undiscovered Future World tour worth the money.

I must admit, though, I felt kind of like an invader in some of the backstage areas, particularly in the Cast Services building. When they’re onstage, Cast Members are expected to stay “in character” at all times, and be friendly, cheerful, polite, and happy regardless of what’s going on in their lives. Backstage, away from the prying eyes of demanding Disney vacationers, they can decompress a bit and drop the Public Relations smile for a moment. All the Cast Members we met were exceptionally friendly, of course, but I still felt like an intruder.

A few of my online friends encouraged me to ask the guide to take us to the old upstairs ImageWorks. We had a large group, though, so it really wouldn’t have been feasible. However, I had a good fortune to have a couple of the guys from Minicot in the group with me.  These guys have, among other things, built a scaled-down Soarin’ replica at their home in Minnesota. I’ll have more about their impressive work in my next post.

So, is the Undiscovered Future World tour worth the time and the money? Absolutely. Your casual Disney visitor would probably find it rather boring (except the part where you get to ride Soarin’ via the VIP entrance, that is) but in the absence of a true EPCOT Center Geek’s tour, Undiscovered Future World is the next best thing.

The Coral Reef Reviewed

The Coral Reef Restaurant at EPCOT’s Seas pavilion has always held a certain appeal for me. The whole idea of dining under the sea, like the underwater restaurant patrons in Horizons’ floating city scene, is just so darned cool. From the time I first heard of its existence when the Seas pavilion opened in 1986 I’d always wanted to eat there. However, a few things held me back.

For one thing, the tiny selection of menu choices didn’t really excite me. I’m from the coastal town of St. Augustine. When a seafood restaurant there serves you its “catch of the day”, you’re actually eating fish that was caught that day. There are lots of restaurants there whose menus overflow with shrimp, crab, lobster, whatever you want. You know how many seafood entrees the Coral Reef offers? Four. And one of them, the Lobster Ravioli, probably has way more pasta, tomatoes, and sauce than lobster.

Also, the negative reviews the place had received tended to put me off the Coral Reef. Words like “disappointment”, “mediocre” and “overpriced” kept popping up (although complaining about things being overpriced at Disney World is a little silly. It’s like going to a Michael Bay movie and complaining about the explosions). After repeating some of those negative comments here, I felt that I at least ought to try the place and see if the criticism was warranted. So, I had lunch there last weekend, and this is my report:

It should be noted that I’m not a food snob. Menus with strange, unidentifiable items like “Compote of whipped Marscapone in a Spaetzle reduction” don’t make me feel like I’m in a nice restaurant, they make me feel like I’m in a Klingon restaurant. As Forrest Gump might say “Never eat anything you do not know what it is”. So, don’t expect me to talk about food like it’s a job applicant: “This escargot is certainly efficacious, but it has an almost ideological conflict with the arugula.” Not gonna happen.

Our lunch reservation was at 1:45. We checked in about five minutes early and were given a beeper that would go off when our table was ready. (Okay, it’s technically not a beeper since it doesn’t beep, only flashes little red lights, but calling it a “flasher” makes it sound like a creepy dude in a trench coat.) Unlike some of the reviews I’ve read, the staff at the front desk was quite friendly and attentive. Within five minutes our “beeper” went off, and we were escorted to our table by a nice guy named Antonio or something. As we walked, he rattled off a memorized spiel about how we were now going “under the sea”, pausing to remind us to watch our step each time we stepped down one of the restaurant’s three tiers. I don’t blame him for the tacky memorized spiel, I blame Disney for making their employees say crap like that. I mean, it’s obvious that we’re supposed to be under the sea, there’s a giant aquarium right in front of us! We were pleasantly surprised to be seated at a table right next to the aquarium. Just on the other side of the window from where were were sitting, a large sea turtle was resting. He stayed there throughout our meal, occasionally swimming up to the surface for a lungful of air. The tank was teeming with ocean life; we saw sharks, rays, and several varieties of fish. Best of all, the old Living Seas area music was playing over the restaurant’s PA system! Unfortunately, the noisy conversation from the restaurants other patrons worked against the quiet peacefulness that the aquarium, the restaurant’s subdued lighting, and the area music were trying to create, but it’s not like Disney can put a Cone of Silence over every table.

I was already familiar with the menu and knew what I wanted to order. Before we left home, my wife had printed out the menu and highlighted a couple of items that she might like to order as well. This was a good thing, because whenever we eat at an unfamiliar restaurant she tends to be paralyzed with indecision. Unfortunately, she left the printout at home. So it took quite a while for her to figure out what she wanted. Our server came back to check on us at regular intervals, but I never got the feeling that he was getting impatient. He was very helpful when my wife had questions about the menu, and finally she decided on a Caesar salad with chicken, with Ranch dressing instead of Caesar. I ordered the New York Strip, cooked medium-rare.

One of the knocks on the Coral Reef is that the portions are too small. I’d have to disagree with that; I found them to be quite sufficient. I didn’t have any food left over (except for the watercress, which I chose not to eat) but I wasn’t hungry after I finished eating, either. My wife’s Caesar Salad came not with just cut-up pieces of chicken, but with an entire chicken breast. We both enjoyed our entrees very much. My steak was grilled to perfection, and the potatoes were very tasty as well. My wife enjoyed her salad very much, and she absolutely loved the Chocolate Wave she ordered for dessert. She said it was even better than Le Cellier’s Chocolate-on-Chocolate Whiskey cake. High praise, indeed! Our only quibble was that the Bloody Mary my wife ordered had too much vodka in it for her tastes.

So, would I recommend the Coral Reef? I can honestly say it’s the best table-service restaurant in Future World. And if you really want a steak and can’t get a reservation at Le Cellier, then the Coral Reef isn’t a bad second option. The atmosphere is wonderful, even if it does get a little noisy in there. I really wish they’d transplant the menu from Fulton’s Crab House (or even Red Lobster), but as long as they serve a good steak I’ll probably be eating there again at some point.

Is it time to let EPCOT’s dolphins go?

The tragic killing of a Sea World employee by an orca recently has inspired a lot of soul-searching over whether or not keeping large cetaceans like orcas and dolphins in captivity can really be justified.

Florida has a long history of this kind of thing: the state’s first theme park, Marineland, practically invented the trained dolphin show. Back then, of course, the American public’s view of the proper treatment of animals was very different. The average person didn’t see anything wrong with capturing wild animals and forcing them to do tricks, much as previous generations had seen nothing wrong with owning other human beings as slaves.

Today, things are different. Now we know that wild cetaceans are highly social creatures with a range of thousands of miles. Ripping them away from their social group and trapping them inside a tank, even one as large as the tank inside EPCOT’s Seas pavilion, would be like sentencing a human to solitary confinement in a cell the size of a phone booth. I grew up in St. Augustine, Florida, near Marineland. An family friend who once worked there told us about a female dolphin at the park who repeatedly became pregnant, then drowned her calf when it was born. She was eventually tagged and released back into the wild. They kept track of her, and when she became pregnant again she did not drown the newborn. Had she killed the previous calves because she didn’t want them to spend their lives in captivity? Or had her captive condition induced some kind of mental disorder that went away once she was restored to her natural habitat? No one knows for sure, but it seems obvious that captivity did not agree with her.

Sometimes, there are good reasons to keep animals in captivity of some sort. Ocala’s Silver Springs park, for example, has an area devoted to wild birds who were injured and are no longer able to survive in their natural habitat. Other animals are endangered by poaching or the destruction of their habitats, and the zoos that keep them do their best to give them as close to a natural environment as possible, while also educating visitors about the challenges the animals face. Disney’s Animal Kingdom does a good job in this regard.

Sometimes, though, we make the mistake of anthropomorphizing animals. Dolphins mouths are fixed in what to us looks like a permanent smile, so we assume they’re happy. But the next time you’re at EPCOT, watch the dolphins as they rapidly circle the tank and ask yourself, are they really smiling? Or is their confinement driving them mad?

The Seas With . . .Ariel?

I’m not too secretive about the fact that the ride-thru portion of The Seas with Nemo makes me want to bang my head against the wall of my “clam-mobile”. However, if Project Gemini had gone forward, The Seas pavilion might be home to another animated Disney character: Ariel.

What was Project Gemini, you ask? For a full overview, I encourage you to read Jim Hill’s 2003 article on the subject. Briefly, though, it was a plan to totally remake Future World to appeal to young people. There would be more thrill rides (at least two, including one called Time Racers that would be installed inside a gutted Spaceship Earth) a “Junior Autopia” for the little kids in front of Test Track, and a hedge maze between The Land and the Imagination pavilion. And trees. Lots and lots of trees. Also, The Living Seas, which at this point was being actively neglected by Disney management, would be rethemed around Ariel and the cast of The Little Mermaid.

How would this have been handled? According to the article I linked to above:

“Ariel, King Triton and Sebastian are slated to serve as the new hosts of the aptly named "Under the Sea" pavilion. The new pre-show (as well as the bulk of The Living Seas revamped exhibits) will now stress how we must all learn to live in harmony with the world's oceans. Not over-fish or pollute ... or we risk destroying this precious resource forever.

I'm told that Seabase Alpha will now be repositioned as the finale of the "Under the Sea" show. To show us all how idyllic the future could be if we really do learn to live in harmony with the ocean.”

Look, I’m no fan of The Little Mermaid, but I still have to admit that sounds a heck of a lot better than the Nemo pavilion we ended up getting. It would used popular animated characters to teach kids about the impact of human behavior on the oceans.

Come to think of it, why couldn’t they have done this with Nemo? As bad as some of the Project Gemini ideas were (turning Spaceship Earth into a Space Mountain-like ride, for example) the Seas idea was really on the right track. Of course, the pavilion might have ended up being painted pink, but that would have been a small price to pay.

On the Evils of Blue Window Tint

I realize that EPCOT Central just published a very thoughtful and well-written post on what’s wrong with the current iteration of EPCOT’s Seas pavilion, and this isn’t intended to be a rip-off of that, or even a response to it, really. I’ve been planning to write this for at least a month, and in fact my trip to EPCOT a week ago today was primarily a fact-gathering mission for this post.

I don’t trust first impressions. Lots of movies, books, and, yes, Disney attractions are multilayered experiences that it’s impossible to fully appreciate on the first run-through. So, although I’ve been fairly critical of The Seas With Nemo and His Animated Friends, the truth is that until a week ago I’d only been through there once. So, on my most recent trip to EPCOT I resolved to spend some time there to see if it had any redeeming qualities I hadn’t noticed before.

There are a few things to like about it (I’ll get into those in a minute) but there is one absolutely glaring piece of Bad Show that I’ve just got to talk about. No, it’s not the brain-dead ride-thru that squanders a perfect opportunity to impart some facts about marine life in favor of having Albert Brooks as fish dad Marlon bleat “Nemo! Nemo! Where are you?” over and over and over. And it’s not the stupid animated fish that are projected, via the Pepper’s Ghost effect, into the tank to distract people from the actual marine life that’s swimming around in plain view. No, this is much worse.

One similarity that The Seas With Nemo has to its predecessor is that it purports to take visitors on an imaginary trip under the ocean. The Living Seas used the hydrolators to create the illusion. You took a hydrolator “down” to the Seabase (before 2001, the hydrolators exited into the load area for the brief Seacab ride) and when you were ready to leave the pavilion you had to take another hydrolator back “up” to ground level. It would have undoubtedly been more practical to just have a row of glass doors leading outside instead of a row of hydrolators, but in those days Disney spared very little expense to maintain whatever illusion a particular ride was supposed to create. Not anymore.

The old preshow theater and hydrolators were replaced by an elaborately themed queue are designed to create the illusion that you’re starting on the beach and walking beneath the ocean, and the ride is designed to further enforce the notion that you are beneath the ocean, and when you’re deposited into the Seabase you’re still supposed to be under the ocean (anyone sense a pattern here?) but when it’s time to leave you . . .

. . . just walk out the door. Oh, but the doors are tinted blue, like the ocean! Yeah, that’s a great effect, if this was a city aquarium somewhere. But this is DISNEY WORLD, for crying out loud! It costs eighty bucks to get in; they’re supposed to be better than this! What the frak happened? Would it really have been that expensive to leave the hydrolators there and just re-theme them a little? Oh, but that might have cut into the real estate allotted for the all-important gift shop, which sells valuable t-shirts and other merchandise that you can’t buy anywhere else except at every other gift shop in Disney World.

I’m certain that the Imagineers who worked on this project hated this solution for the exit area. Yes, I’m positive that it was forced upon them by whatever pointy-haired empty suit that management put in charge to ensure that everything was done as cheaply as humanly possible according to Disney’s high standards of quality. Since I’m not an insider, I have no idea who this person is, but I’ve added them to my On Notice board. (If you don’t know what an On Notice board is, then you really need to watch The Colbert Report)

Of course, I can’t lay all the blame on empty-headed executives. Not empty-headed Disney executives, anyway. No, this whole thing is really the fault of empty-headed United Technologies executives. As I’ve mentioned in the past, they vetoed WED’s bold original Seas pavilion concept in favor of the cheaper-to-build-but-somewhat-lacking-in-zazz Living Seas that opened in 1986. If the original concept had been built, a Nemo-themed overhaul would have been a far more expensive proposition and probably would never have happened.

You might notice that I’ve reserved my negativity for the ride-thru and exit areas of the pavilion only. That’s because the Seabase still has a lot of educational material in it. Most of this material is geared specifically towards children, but it contains lots of facts that most adults don’t know. Sure, many parents will hurry their kids directly from the clammobiles to Turtle Talk, and then off to their next destination, but you can hardly blame Disney for that. And on my recent visit, I saw many families lingering in the seabase, and lots of kids excitedly oohing and aahing over all the marine life in the tank. And although there was no line at all for the ride, the Seabase was fairly crowded, meaning that those families had been there a while. It was nice to see.

So, the next time you’re in EPCOT, visit The Seas. Scowl through the ride, enjoy the seabase, and as you exit the undersea environment by (sigh) walking through some blue-tinted doors, don’t just curse Disney executives, curse United Technologies executives. They’re on notice, too.

Feasible EPCOT Improvement #5

Put Something In The Seas Pavilion About How Human Behavior Threatens The Oceans



Before the Seas got its big Nemo makeover, more than one classic Future World attraction had been torn down or ripped out in favor of a less-imaginative, dumbed-down replacement. So when the pavilion reopened in 2007 as The Seas With Nemo and Friends, those of us who miss Horizons and Journey Into Imagination were quick to jump on the anti-Nemo bandwagon. Most of the criticism that's been leveled at the new attraction is probably deserved, but you have to admit that the present incarnation of the place is more appealing to children than the previous one. This gives Disney a great opportunity to let kids know, via a popular animated character, about the damage that human behavior is doing to the oceans.

I'm not saying they should dramatically re-theme the place, or even alter the ride-thru portion. It would be nice, however, to have some exhibits in the seabase about what global warming, overfishing, and poor garbage-disposal habits are doing to the oceans. Kids need to know that Nemo's coral reef habitat will cease to exist if the human race continues its current pattern of behavior. Other exhibits could touch upon the Pacific Garbage Patch, and current efforts to clean it up. Practical ways that individuals and families can change their behavior to be more friendly to the oceans could also be highlighted.

I've only been to the Nemo-ized Seas once, and unfortunately I didn't get a chance for a detailed exploration of the seabase area. Maybe some of this stuff is already there. If it isn't, though, Disney is missing a golden opportunity to educate America's youngest consumers on the impact their actions have on Nemo's "big blue world".

That's all for today. Next, I'll discuss how Bill Nye the Science Guy is doing nothing to help with our energy problems.

Feasible EPCOT Improvement #10

Turn the Coral Reef Into a Good Seafood Restaurant

Imagine this: a seafood restaurant in Disney World with huge floor-to-ceiling windows that look into the second-largest man-made underwater environment in the world. Sounds like a great place to eat, right? I mean, all they have to do is serve Red Lobster-quality food with some of that trademarked friendly Disney service and most people will think it's one of the best meals they've ever had.


So what's it like to eat at the Coral Reef? Here's what some commenters at Dis Unplugged and WDWInfo.com had to say:

"The food here is very average and nothing is noteworthy except for the chocolate wave dessert which is fantastic. Service is nothing spectacular either."

"I was not at all impressed with this restaurant. It has tons of potential, but the service was atrocious and the food was truck stop quality."

"I really wanted to love this restaurant, but its just okay. The aquarium is gorgeous and a real draw for me, but the food is just okay."

"The service was fantastic as was the view of the tanks. It is a very relaxing place to go and have a nice meal. The food wasn't the best in the world, but we enjoyed everything we ordered."

"Once again, Disney thinks serving food is a bonus...hey, how about good food?"

"The wait staff were very nice, but the food was terrible . . . this restaurant should be a destination, but instead is a complete ripoff."

Dis Unplugged writer Kevin Klose has reviewed the Coral Reef twice. His first visit, in August 2006, resulted in a resoundingly negative review that's still semi-famous amongst a small gaggle of Disney geeks like myself who write blogs like this. He went back in April 2009, hoping that his first visit had simply been an aberration. His conclusion? That the Coral Reef "remains a mediocre, over-priced Disney disappointment."

More than any other park, EPCOT is known for its restaurants. Le Cellier, Biergarten, and Chefs de France are almost universally loved. I've always enjoyed the meals I've had in the Garden Grill (I could do without Chip and Dale coming around and acting whimsical while I'm eating, but kids love them). Disney is clearly not incapable of running a good restaurant, but judging by the experiences of folks that have eaten at the Coral Reef and the Mexico pavilion's San Angel, food quality becomes in afterthought in places with great atmosphere.

Fixing the Coral Reef isn't impossible. It isn't even hard. Just serve better food. Transplant the menu and kitchen from a Red Lobster if you have to, but serve better food.

That's all for today's rant. Next up: Innoventions.

How educational was EPCOT?

It's widely believed that the EPCOT Center of the 1980s and early 90s was a more educational place than the Epcot of today. But was it really? Let's compare the pavilions of EPCOT Center with today's lowercase Epcot and see. Of course, it should be noted that what follows is purely my own opinion.

Spaceship Earth: To be fair, I haven't had the chance to ride Spaceship Earth since the Siemens rehab. However, I've watched a little ride video, and I've listened to the entire audio track on Subsonic Radio a few times. In my opinion, the new ride has a lighter tone and is less scholarly than the communications-themed experience that preceded it. Is it actually less educational? It's a tough call. It seems to me, though, that the old ride contained more historical facts than the new one.

Universe of Energy: Among those of us who remember the first version of this pavilion, there's the widespread perception that Disney dumped the respectable, serious original show in favor of a lighthearted and airheaded Ellen Degeneres vehicle that's too busy dropping 1990s pop culture references to convey any information. So I went back and watched some videos of the original show so I could compare them. And honestly, they both convey pretty much the same information, although the original show goes into a lot more detail about oil exploration. Whether you prefer the scholarly and serious presentation of the original show, or the 1990s flavor of the current incarnation is a matter of personal preference.

Wonders of Life: This pavilion used to be an interesting EPCOT destination featuring shows and exhibits about health and the human body. Now it's an empty shell.

Horizons/Mission:Space: Anyone who reads this blog knows how I feel about Horizons. It was absolutely my favorite theme park attraction of all time. If I had the power of Q, I would rebuild Horizons, convert the second-floor VIP lounge into an apartment, and live there. Nevertheless, Mission:Space is more educational. Why? Well, even though it's nowhere near the triumph of Disney Imagineering that Horizons was, and in fact it makes people sick, it realistically demonstrates why not everyone is cut out to be an astronaut. Horizons was more fun. Mission:Space is more educational. I don't like it, but it's the truth.

World of Motion/Test Track: Although it is fondly remembered, no one would accuse World of Motion of historical accuracy. How many kids got off that ride believing that the wheel was introduced to mankind after an Egyptian Pharaoh picked the round model over square and triangular versions? To be fair, though, the post-show area had some educational value. Test Track has a narrower focus, simulating an automobile testing ground instead of telling the story of human transportation, but it does try to educate riders about the testing process that new car models are put through before they go to market. I wish it explained why GM's cars are so unreliable compared to Honda and Toyota if they really go through all these tests, but I guess that story doesn't have as much entertainment value as the testing process itself. Comparing the old and new rides is a bit of an apples-and-oranges proposition, but I'd have to give the nod to Test Track here.

Journey Into Imagination/Journey Into YOUR Imagination with Figment and Eric Idle: The Imagination pavilion was never meant to be educational in the slightest. It was simply supposed to be a fun, whimisical trip that reminded visitors of the potential of their own imaginations. I've written at length on this before, of course, but in brief the old ride was charming, the newest one is a sad joke, but neither had any educational value (unless you count the present-day post-show area that "educates" you about some of Kodak's more banal services.) The Captain EO movie might have been educational had it been retitled "People You Should Never Allow Near Your Children".

The Land: Although the boat ride portion of the pavilion has changed very little since the pavilion opened, the change from a live guide to a recorded narration track during the greenhouse sequence was an improvement, as everyone now gets the same information. The biggest change at The Land, of course, was the replacement of the Kitchen Kabaret/Food Rocks show with Soarin'. Although Soarin' is definitely the superior experience, it's one of the biggest examples of the "generic Disney-Park-ification" of EPCOT. Soarin' makes The Land one of EPCOT's most popular destinations, but the place was more educational without it.

The Living Seas/The Seas With Nemo and Friends: I've written about the Seas pavilion before. As I said then, my favorite version of the pavilion is WED's amazing original concept that United Technologies was too stingy to fund. The attraction that opened in 1986 was perfectly serviceable, however, and it did a good job educating us on the amazing variety of living things in our oceans. Unfortunately, people today aren't wowed as easily as they were in 1986, when the line to get into The Living Seas stretched almost to the monorail track. For better or for worse, Disney decided it was the ocean's fault. Since actual sea life wasn't sufficiently entertaining, the whole place got a Pixar makeover, complete with digital characters from Finding Nemo that seem to float inside the aquarium (which is still the world's second-largest man-made underwater environment.) I haven't had the chance to examine all the exhibits inside the refurbished Seabase, but from what I can tell the Seas pavilion isn't as much about turning guests' on to the wonders to be found beneath the ocean as it is about entertaining preschoolers.

CommuniCore/Innoventions: The old CommuniCore had more exhibits that tied into Future World pavilions, but it also had lots of cheesy gimmicks (anyone remember the Astuter Computer Revue?) Innoventions plays more like a sales pitch for different corporate sponsors, but such things have a long history at Disney. Still, Innoventions does convey actual information, even if it's not very entertaining. Overall, CommuniCore wins out. It had a teachers' resource center, and there was just more of it. CommuniCore took up two buildings; Innoventions only takes up one.

So, was the old EPCOT Center really more educational than today's Epcot? Yes, but not as much as you might think. The main difference was that it cared about educating visitors in a way that today's Epcot really doesn't.

An Honest Look: The Living Seas

Many people are quite critical of the direction that EPCOT has taken since the lower-casing of the place in 1994. I generally agree, but not all of the changes made since EPCOT Center became Just Epcot have been negative. In this new Honest Look series, I'll be taking a look at the Future World attractions whose latest incarnations are either markedly better or at least no worse than the originals. First up is The Living Seas. Although EPCOT Center was nearly three-and-a-half years old by the time The Living Seas opened in January 1986, the pavilion was always part of the park's original plan. The 1982 book Walt Disney's EPCOT Center: Creating the New World of Tomorrow painted a picture of the as-yet-unbuilt pavilion that was based on WED's bold, exciting initial concept for the attraction. Anyone who pored over that book, as I did at age 7, then experienced the version of the attraction that opened in 1986 must have been disappointed.


The WED Imagineers' original concept had guests being greeted by a giant Audio-Animatronic Posiedon, God of the Sea, who would pull back a curtain of water to reveal the loading area for the ride portion of the attraction. The guests would then board clear plastic bubbles and be taken on a 10-minute ride through re-creations of some of the ocean's wonders, exiting at SeaBase Alpha. In the original concept, however, SeaBase Alpha would actually be located inside the aquarium, giving guests the feeling of really being deep beneath the ocean.

Sadly, the pavilion's sponsor United Technologies was run by the same breed of visionless, pointy-haired MBAs who voted to give Journey Into Imagination the New Coke treatment just to save money. And there was no way they were footing the bill for such an ambitious and expensive project. The attraction that got built, of course, boasted the largest man-made underwater environment in the world at the time, and it initially attracted huge crowds. I remember the first time I visited The Living Seas in late 1986; the line stretched out the front of the pavilion to the monorail track and this was late in the evening after the sun had set. When I next visited in the summer of 1989, the large crowds had disappeared. The line was short and moved quickly. The old Living Seas was perfectly servicable, it just had none of the "zazz" of WED's original concept. More than anything else, it was like a public aquarium you might visit in some place like Chicago. It lacked the old-school Disney charm of Horizons or Journey Into Imagination.
In the original version of The Living Seas, guests watched a short film on the formation of Earth's oceans, then boarded "Hydrolators" that supposedly took them down under the sea to a boarding area where they took a short ride to SeaBase Alpha via Omnimover vehicles called Seacabs. During the ride, you were treated to various views of the coral reef in the aquarium, and upon arrival at SeaBase Alpha you could view all kinds of educational exhibits. In 1998, United Technologies ended their sponsorship of the pavilion, and sometime in 2001 the Seacabs portion of the attraction was closed and the Hydrolators exited directly into SeaBase Alpha, which basically turned the Hydrolators into a purposeless bottleneck. Whatever Disney "specialness" The Living Seas once had was gone. Guests were staying away from the pavilion, and anyone could see that it needed some kind of "fun injection".

Disney's answer was to give the whole place a Pixar makeover. In 2006 The Seas With Nemo and Friends debuted. Gone were the Hydrolators and the introductory film. The drastically enlarged queue area creates the whimsical illusion of gradual entry into Nemo's undersea world from the beach. The Seacabs have been replaced by "ClamMobiles" that move horizontally along the same track the old ride used. Along the way, Nemo and other characters from the Pixar film appear to be swimming inside the aquarium, thanks to some cutting-edge technology. The ride exits into the Seabase (or whatever it's called, now) and there's an assortment of exhibits to browse. (I can't vouch for their educational content; my wife was really cranky the day we visited and had no tolerance for me scrutinizing the exhibits) Of course, the main draw in this area is the "Turtle Talk with Crush" show that utilizes the same technology seen in Tomorrowland's Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor to enable kids to actually "interact" with Crush, who kind of reminds me of Keanu Reeves in sea turtle form. It's not one bit educational, but the kids seem to love it. I visited this new incarnation of the Seas pavilion on Labor Day weekend 2007, and I haven't seen the place as crowded since 1986. The line stretched out the door, even though the indoor queue area is so large that a first-time visitor starts to wonder if there's any room in the building for the giant aquarium they've heard about.

So, was the Nemo refurb a good thing, or did Disney give the Living Seas the Journey-Into-Imagination-New-Coke treatment? Well, unlike the hated Imagination refurb, Disney actually spent a lot of their own money on this one (the pavilion still doesn't have a sponsor), and the new version of the attraction certainly costs more to operate than before. It would have been nice to see Disney make a real effort to get kids thinking about the effects of human behavior on the oceans, maybe working in something about how Nemo and his friends are being affected by global warming (which harms coral reefs) and overfishing. Maybe there's an exhibit somewhere in the Seabase that mentions those topics, but it would have been nice to see them get more attention.

In the final analysis, The Seas with Nemo and Friends isn't worse than The Living Seas, it's just different.