This is purely my elitist opinion here, but I feel that there were people who appreciated the extra level of thoughtfulness (who also enjoyed the fun aspects), and then the people who just liked the fun parts. If you create something with a larger meaning that is also fun, the people who are just looking for a good time are going to be completely satisfied, but you've also really got something special.rdeacon wrote:It’s funny how different people view Epcot differently.
I enjoy a good time like the next guy, but I'm not going to post on a forum dedicated to Six Flags no matter how much I like their coasters.
You'll notice people never say "I'm really happy this attraction has nothing to do with humanity's progress!", they only say things like "Oh, come on, it's a fun ride! Who cares if it's just singing fish?". The things the two groups want are not mutually exclusive, but one group wants the attraction choices to make sense. The other doesn't care.
That's basically it. It's a bait and switch.If you hold Epcot to its true idea, like Schnemo does, I can see where there would be some great disappointment...
Of course, but that's the standard straw man. Yes, it needed to be updated, but throwing in popular cartoon characters is the cheap (intellectually, not monetarily) fix.The livings seas was a stale, non-crowd drawing pavilion. It was dying a slow death like the Wonders of Life Pavilion.
That's a false choice. The ideal solution is to create something that fits with the original theme (which is not exactly educational...more like thought-provoking) that also draws a crowd. Something so cool that everyone wants to see it, even if they haven't already seen a movie about it.So is it better to indirectly education mass crowds with cartoon characters, or be more educational and draw less people?
There are few things I would like more than that, but it doesn't appear as though Lasseter is going to perform as advertised. Optimistically, someone who "gets it" will take over in 10 years or so. But I really think the creeping crappiness is going to win the day.I hope that maybe with the new regime, ie Lasseter, imagineering will return to a higher standard, and Schnemo can once again go to a WDW park and smile.
This isn't really a fair representation. I've experienced a fair amount of what I don't like personally (such as the awful Ellen show) and since my complaints are based more on ideas than implementation, I really don't need to see things with my own eyes to have an informed opinion.Mr.ToadWildRider wrote:...Schnemo has something of a biased view as only basing his judgements off of what he hears...
There's just nothing that would make the Nemo conversion acceptable to me. I've seen the video of the ride and I like it, but that's not where my complaint lies.
Epcot used to be a park that became better over time, as your perspective grew. Not everything made sense when you saw it as a young kid, but as time passed, you brought more experiences to Epcot and (at least in my case) my experiences at Epcot resonated in my real life. It was an inspirational park, much more subtle than the MK. (Well, usually.)
I agree that a small amount of Disney characters in Epcot wouldn't be so bad. If there were a section in the Seas that explained what kind of creatures all the main characters were, I wouldn't really get too riled up about that.
I don't like the Caballeros at Mexico because the pavilions are supposed to be representative of the various cultures, not an American re-interpretation of them. Obviously a fair amount of that is going to leak in anyway, so to build it in by design is straying even further from the intended message.
I think a large problem is that people don't understand what Disney used to be. Now "Disney" is synonymous with safe (even bland) entertainment that doesn't push any boundaries and doesn't ask much of the guest/viewer.
But "Disney" with a "Walt" in front of it was groundbreaking. The first feature length animated film, the first real theme park, the first nature documentaries to use the "True Life Adventure" format, the Davy Crockett series (which entertained adults as well as children, and featured all sorts of good stuff like drinking, violence, womanizing, gambling, smoking, relatively enlightened views on racism, etc.), the complex "villain" Captain Nemo, the very concept of EPCOT itself...
None of these things were "safe" and none of them were about falling back on old properties or doing the same thing that had been done somewhere else.
That is what I think of when I think of Disney, but unfortunately, that spirit of innovation was almost completed drained out of the company by Eisner. I don't think it's coming back, but that's not to say I'm not eternally hopeful.
. One like the pre-1994 version and one like it is today 
