Moving Forward, Sometimes Too Much

The Disney Blog has a great post up about the opening of Horizons at EPCOT 25 years ago, complete with this amazing tribute video:



Horizons and I are the same age - yikes. I do remember the ride from many WDW visits during my childhood, and it's amazing to me how much of this has come to pass. Video conferencing? Check. Underwater buildings? Check. Environmental manipulation? Check. If the song had a line saying "People will tweet on computers," I think my head would have just exploded.

Even though Walt wasn't around for the opening of Horizons, I think this ride more than any other at EPCOT served as a tribute to his visionary thinking. More than anything, Walt wanted to build a better tomorrow, and although EPCOT became a heavily scaled-down version of that dream, Horizons always seemed to serve as EPCOT's statement of purpose. I was kind of sad to see it go. Just hearing the goofy song again makes me nostalgic.

But Horizons was a symbol of EPCOT's past, and as progress demands, was shut down to make way for Mission: SPACE, which - don't get me wrong, it's a fun ride - but is all too symbolic of the flash-in-the-pan whizz-bang attractions that now populate the park. Granted, these newer attractions like Test Track and Mission: SPACE were installed to get rid of EPCOT's stigma of being "the boring park." And while Mission: SPACE and Soarin' fit into the park's overall mission pretty well**, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when Disney finally took the Mickey glove off Spaceship Earth. Because you don't mess with a classic. I still die a little bit inside when I ride the "new and improved" version of Journey Into Imagination. So I dug this up:



Sigh. It's just not the same anymore.

I wonder what changes are ahead for The Life pavillion, which was stocked with some of my favorite classic EPCOT attractions (Cranium Command, anyone?). It'll probably get turned into some upside-down roller coaster that takes riders through the human circulatory system. Which would be awesome, for sure, and definitely not "boring." Personally, I always loved the 80's hokey charm of the park. But who am I to stand in the way of progress?

**I've always had reservations about the message behind Test Track. Is it weird to go into The Land and learn all about the importance of respecting the Earth and the value of organic products and then ride a GM-sponsored tribute to cars, gas, and motors? And not even futuristic cars! Would Test Track be less fun if you rode in hybrids? Experimental Prototype Community of Conflicting Messaging.