First off-- I LOVE EPCOT. Hard. I wouldn't be weaving references to the place throughout my home if I didn't absolutely adore it and wasn't intellectually and emotionally nourished by it. Some of that is nostalgia, sure, but a healthy chunk of it stems from aesthetics and from being reminded to embrace the future (a good lesson as I enter middle age) and to dream big.
Second--I don't take it too seriously, I promise. As I just noted, I am a middle-aged person, and it is more than just a little ridiculous to love a theme park this much. I embrace the ridiculousness, but I also acknowledge it. Plus, a lot of the EPCOT references I put in are going to be of the 'wink-wink-nudge-nudge' variety. There will be some gentle teasing of the concept. Every heady concept is helped by a generous helping of humor and not taking itself too seriously.
Third-- it's not as if the original EPCOT Center was flawless. Far from it. I will eventually go into my feels on the major changes between then and now, but for now I'll just say that while I loved the original park and feel like it's lost a step or two, the place did have some issues:
- Sponsorship: Yes, I know the risk of the original concept was high and that Disney didn't have the cash flow to front that risk by itself in 1982. I also don't think corporations are inherently evil, and I do like the idea of creating a showcase for corporate-driven innovation. However, having the pavilions sponsored inevitably meant message control, corporate brand-building aimed at children, and a noticeable absence of mentions of innovative work being done by the competition. Attractions were changed out just because a sponsorship changed hands, and often the changes weren't for the better. As others have noted, too, a lot of the EPCOT sponsors were bad actors. I don't care how awesome the original Universe of Energy finale was; Exxon does some baaaaaaad stuff (as do many petroleum companies--Google Shell's activities in the Niger Delta, for example).
- Monolithic view of the future: As much as we love a holistic experience in a futuristic environment, the fact is that many people aren't futurists and cling to the familiar, and some people are just as in love with the past-- antiques, historic homes and some form of retro styling are almost always popular. A good trend in more-recent films/stories set in the future is the mix of styles, rather than everything being, say, minimalist chrome. The recent film Robot and Frank used generally contemporary settings but would add in some features (chiefly the robots, but also the home-based videoconferencing and the occasional 'futuristic' car) to alert you that the story was set some time in the future. EPCOT's original Future World may have benefited from some hat-tips to the past and the present, since not everybody wants their day-to-day worlds to vanish completely.
- World Showcase: I'm not including WS in my EPCOT House, for the most part. This isn't because I'm a xenophobe-- actually, I wish I had a much bigger travel budget so I (and my family) could see more places-- but because I think it's a poor copy of the world we live in. Yes, it's good to showcase a variety of cultures and cuisines, and I adore that the pavilions in WS are generally staffed by people from those respective countries. But it's just not the same as the real thing. "Well," you might say, "isn't it better that people who can't afford to travel to these places can at least experience WS?" Yes, absolutely. Buuuuuuut-- and to be fair, this is a recent development and not really true back in 1982-- for the price of a Disney trip these days, you probably could pull off a trip overseas. Seriously. I priced one out recently and I was thinking, "Damn, we could go to Paris for a couple of days for this cost."
- My other ding against WS is that the Earth isn't just Europe. Yes, I know that WS has China and Japan and Morocco, but sheesh, 75% of the place is North America/Europe. Part of that is due to the countries having tourism agencies that could sponsor these places, which is going to leave out most of the Earth...but then that means you haven't built a "World" Showcase so much as a "G7" Showcase. Part of that was the early 80's mindset where we considered Europe pretty damn exotic, and with globalization and increased awareness and contact with the Third World, that Eurocentrism has become dated. If they build another pavilion, I really hope it's Tanzania (NOT "Africa"--ugh, it's not all the same place, people) or India.
- Obsolescence: This is a major problem for the park and has been since it opened. Technology moves too fast for bricks-and-mortar displays, and what's cutting-edge one day can be woefully outdated in months. (My spouse is a technology academic and they don't even publish in paper journals because the technology moves too fast to wait for the production turn around.) In some sense, I wish EPCOT Center had been like a World's Fair: temporary.
- Last criticism: repetition. Again, I get that there's budgets and technology availabilities and blah blah blah. But FW was HEAVY on the "omnimover-dark-ride-with-AA-dioramas" setup, and after a while, that grew dull. The Land and The Living Seas bucked this trend somewhat, and I totally understand the thinking behind the diorama approach-- dynamic presentations of what-can-be dull content, keeping the crowds moving through, and doing so in a way that all ages can ride. But after a while, it did start to feel like they were returning over and over again to the same well. WS was a worse offender, with 3 different CircleVision (I think one was a SemiCircleVision) films with lean-rails instead of seats. They were GREAT movies, and CircleVision is boss...one time. Again, even as a kid I thought it felt lazy. (Granted, I was mad the theaters didn't have seats, so who was the lazy one?)
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