Trip Report: Epcot
Reedy Creek I. D., Florida - 11/21/2003

"Coffee, anyone?"

This was where I noticed a huge change from my first (1997) visit. Along the walls surrounding the customer service center there were suspicious looking openings and painted boards. Years ago, you made dinner reservations and such using videophone kiosks to contact the next available operator. All that stuff has been dismantled, and now there is a lobby with an actual customer service counter where you wait in line and then take care of your business with the live person standing there. Lower tech, but probably better customer service.

We proceeded around the corner to Mission: Space. As we did so, an empty 'meat-wagon' popped through an opening in the fence and started driving across the midway. A moment later, a group of about a half-dozen men in blue shirts (I didn't look closely enough to see whether they were mechanics, EMTs, or both) emerged from the same hole and went off in the same general direction as the meat-wagon. What I noticed was that each person carried a chrome-plated pry-bar. Had I been in the park by myself, I would have discreetly followed to try and find out what was going on, but since the other six people in the group were more interested in riding Mission:Space (and since Mission:Space did not appear to be involved in whatever was happening), that is what we did. We entered through the Evil Fastpass entrance and bypassed all the queue theming just as I had a couple of days earlier when nobody was waiting in line.

Inside, as the background video played and the warnings were read, several concerns surfaced in our group. Victoria was a bit concerned about the closed space, Mary Jayne was worried about motion sickness, Dave was slightly concerned about aggravating his bad-but-OK-today back. Nobody bailed out, but they all gave it some thought. We boarded, and on this ride, I took advantage of my relative familiarity (I'd ridden it once before) with the ride to play around with some of the other switches in the capsule. None of them does anything, of course, but they are all mechanically functional...that is, you can toggle them. My familiarity with the ride was not great enough for me to find all the switches without looking for them, though, and in moving my head just slightly I got to experience very sudden vertigo. Not enough to make me sick or disoriented, but still very strange. And I didn't even move my head that far! Looking around the capsule didn't do it, it was all from head movement. Interesting. Anyway, when the ride was over, everyone in the group was impressed and/or raving about it.

Impressed, yes. Sick, no. Ready for another wild ride...well, not that either. In fact, a couple of people expressed interest in coffee and other snacks, to be obtained from a small cafe across from the fountain. I could swear that the fountain used to be much more open than this...or my memory is failing me. What I do know is that the cafe is so close to the fountain that when the fountain does its periodic show, the spray is largely obscured by the roof overhang.

After tea, we moved on around to The Land and took the boat ride through the greenhouse. I must say, I wasn't terribly impressed with the 268-pound pumpkin they had sitting on a scale. The largest pumpkin at the Pumpkin Show [Footnote 2] was just under 1,000 pounds (968 pounds, to be exact). But then, Epcot's 200-pounder is still growing.

We discussed what we still wanted to see, and went over to the Universe of Energy. There an attendant stood at the entrance and indicated that the attraction was closed and would not re-open today. We didn't ask, but immediately wondered if the closure had anything to do with the crowbar guys we saw earlier. I like the response I got on rec.arts.disney.parks when I posed the question: someone suggested that one of the dinosaurs in the attraction had tried to eat one of the riders, and that it takes several guys with crowbars to pry the hydraulic jaws open when that happens. 8-)

A few of us wanted to ride Test Track, and so four of us...me, Dave, Victoria, and Scott...went inside while the other three waited on the midway. The line was just slightly longer than the one I stood in before, but still a shorter wait than Evil Fastpass would require. Besides, this way we got to see the displays of unpleasant things being done to crash test dummy parts to calibrate them. Not to mention making loud banging noises.

"So we get to be the test dummies, then?" Mom asked.

"More or less," I replied. We watched the pre-show film, then boarded the ride. This time I sat in the center of the front seat, with a small child sitting to my right. If you're looking for a wilder ride, that's the place to sit because there really isn't anything to hold on to. We got through all the testing, and shortly after we burst through the barrier test wall, we heard an alarm go off. Through the high-speed run, I heard a high-pitched shrieking, along with activity in the back seat. As we passed below the speed indicator sign, I heard Dave say, "Hold on a minute, I'm a little busy right now!" His cell phone had rung; it was Dave wondering if we were ever going to return from the ride. I don't know if his timing couldn't be better, or couldn't be worse!

The ride ended and we exited, pausing only briefly to gawk at the GM showroom and the retail shop. I do like the Test Track slot-car set, but if I were to buy such a toy it would almost have to be the monorail set. Still, since Test Track is basically a giant slot-car set, it seems appropriate that Disney would sell a commemorative slot-car set.

Night was beginning to fall, and dinnertime was approaching. We started the long walk around the World Showcase, stopping at a few of the exhibits to glance through the shops. In three visits to Epcot, I've not yet ridden Mexico's boat ride (I've heard it described as "muy pequeno el mundo es") [Footnote 3]. We all rode the boat ride in Norway, though, and I managed to get past Germany without buying a pretzel and a beer. Finally, we arrived at France, where we had an excellent meal, which we finished just in time for the evening fireworks show out on the lagoon.

I forget the full name of the show, but it is a variation on IllumiNations. The entire park...well, the entire World Showcase, anyway, is tied together electrically, so the show features not only music, sound, and fireworks on the lagoon, but also special lighting effects on the buildings all around the World Showcase. Light towers and speaker sets had sprouted from various rocks surrounding the lagoon (I swear they weren't there when I visited in daylight a couple of days ago!), and a number of barges had appeared out on the water. The show itself is spectacular, and unlike almost any other fireworks show. "Wishes" over at the Magic Kingdom does some neat tricks with fireworks by firing shells over the castle at low angles. IllumiNations takes advantage of the fact that almost everyone watching has an unobstructed view of the lagoon and takes the show even lower. For instance, a huge shell normally fired hundreds of feet into the air is deliberately exploded right on the water's surface to produce a half-round burst. The feature of this show, though, isn't pyrotechnic. It's electronic. A large metal globe, perhaps 30' in diameter, is floated out onto the lagoon. The globe has a wire mesh surface where the continents should be, and is otherwise an open frame. Covering the continents are high-brightness lamp arrays (probably LED...) so that as the globe slowly rotates, its "land mass" surfaces are covered with color video images. It's quite an impressive display, although there are points in the show where it is relied on to carry the entire show for far too long. It shows images, images that themselves don't really tell a story...they tend to be symbolic or emotional images, but after a while they become mostly annoying, to where it just felt like something else needed to happen...but didn't. A little like Tomb Raider: The Ride in that regard: "Here's a fantastic gimmick, so let's overuse it."

Overall, it's a neat show. It's a lot different from the earlier incarnation of IllumiNations I saw years ago, which made more extensive use of the World Showcase buildings around the lagoon, highlighting each in turn. Perhaps it's fair to say the old show featured all of the nations that make up the World Showcase, while the new show features the world to which those nations belong. Anyway, it's a good show, with spectacular staging and great sound...showcasing all that stuff that Disney's parks do really well.

The show ended, and we joined the crowd for our clockwise hike around the lagoon. When we got back to Future World, I was reminded of the fiber-optic lighting embedded into the concrete pavers around the fountain...when I noticed areas that are not so equipped anymore. I need to look at my (currently inaccessible) videotape from that first trip. It's another of those surprising little things that makes Epcot seem...well...neglected. Epcot is a nice park, it has a lot of neat stuff in it, and everything is in good shape...but it just feels like it hasn't aged well. I'm not even sure why it feels that way, but it does. Ah, well...the good news is that Epcot's new attractions are good ones, and I hear more are coming soon. And best of all, the World Showcase may be the best place in the World to get a fabulous meal, capped off with a spectacular outdoor show.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Footnote 1: Yes, three of us named Dave. [Return to text]

Footnote 2: Circleville, OH, "The Greatest Free Show on Earth", and the last festival of the season in Ohio. [Return to text]

Footnote 3: Refers to another flow-driven boat dark ride...... [Return to text]

--DCAjr

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