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I love to learn. Maybe it’s a holdover from years with education-obsessed parents; maybe it’s a side effect of my lifelong love affair with books and information. Whatever it is, there are few things that make me happier than unearthing something new and interesting and understanding it well enough that I can share that new discovery with others. Don’t get me wrong – I know all about willing suspension of disbelief, and I like a good fantasy better than your average Jane. But when the context calls for it, I want to learn.
That love of learning frames my earliest theme park experiences. Looking back at my childhood, most of my ark memories come from 2 locations – Busch Gardens (I always loved animals) and EPCOT Center. My parents really started taking me to Disney shortly after EPCOT Center opened to the public in 1982 because they were delighted with the educational aspects of the park. As a family that took most of its trips to visit museums, EPCOT fit in with my parents focus…and I certainly wasn’t objecting.
Learning about communications infrastructure at Communicore
As a child, I adored almost everything Future World had to offer. I spent countless hours in the Image Works playground at Journey into Imagination. I had to be peeled out of The Living Seas where I tried every undersea exploration suit and submersible, watched the divers enter the “sea lock,” and read every information plaque about the animals on display. I loved all of the hands-on experiments in Wonders of Life, and I still have fond memories of the video bicycles that let you “ride” through the Magic Kingdom and the tests of how inadequate the nervous system is in telling hot from cold! It was at Communicore that I first learned about economic supply and demand from a free comic featuring Scrooge McDuck.
EPCOT Center, as a Disney theme park, was a lot of fun, but it was deeply foused on two things: education and the future. That pair made a great combination, promoting the idea that only through learning and imagination could we reach the amazing things promised at Horizons and Sea Base Alpha. The future, EPCOT Center proposed, was out there, and if we learned and worked, we could make it a better place for all mankind.
That vision came, in part, from Disney Imagineers’ attempt to bring Walt’s dream to fruition. When Walt started the Florida Project, he began with a vision far greater than any theme park. Walt wanted to create what imagineer John Hench jokingly called “Waltopia” – an “Environmental Prototype Community” that would address problems like urban overcrowding, transportation, poor education, and inner-city crime with technology and planning. Walt wanted to prove that American cities could be showplaces not slums, and he wanted to do it in Central Florida. For Walt, the Magic Kingdom was just a “weenie,” a way to draw attention to the real attraction – the community of tomorrow that showed just what humanity could accomplish.
When imagineers returned to Walt’s vision after his death, they quickly abandoned “Waltopia” in favor of a theme park that remained loyal to Walt’s vision of improving mankind and solving social problems. In the introduction to the official 1982 Walt Disney’s EPCOT Center, Marty Sklar described the park as “a permanent world’s fair of imagination, discovery, education, and exploration…to inspire the visitors who come here, so that they will be turned on to the positive potential of the future and will want to participate in making the choices that will shape it. We believe that in a world where cynicism and negativism abound, there is another story, and we have chosen, with forethought and conviction, to tell it, and to be that voice of optimism.” EPCOT Center was going to be a place about educating people to create tomorrow.
It isn’t that way anymore.
Visiting another Central Florida theme park a few weeks ago, I was struck by how much I learned there. The park, focused on animals, was filled with informative signs, workers who eagerly gave facts and background about the creatures I was seeing, and blatantly educational information about the ecosystem and ways to preserve it. As I drove back home, my mind returned over and over to my experience in the Disney parks, and I realized something: Disney parks, notably Epcot and Animal Kingdom, have shifted their focus from education to entertainment. They are no longer trying to inspire guests to learn how to build a future; they are trying to entertain and thrill visitors in the moment.
At Epcot, the Living Seas has been replaced by Nemo and friends, an attraction less about the potential of man living in harmony with the ocean and more about tie-ins with a popular film. Instead of hearing children identifying clownfish or blue tang, guests are likely to hear “Nemo” and “Dory.” Most of the beautiful display tanks have little or no signage identifying the sea life they feature. Horizons, with its vision of eco-friendly futures, has been replaced by Mission Space, and while the simulated “training mission” to Mars is a lot of fun, it teaches little about the fading mission of space exploration, and seems to suggest that astronauts’ main function is to push buttons on cue.
Is that a bad thing?
The roots of EPCOT Center are unquestionably embedded in learning. Card Walker, in an address to the Urban Land Institute in October of 1976 described the project as a place where “the best creative thinking of industry, government and academia is exchanged” in order “to bring the new knowledge in the most effective ways to the world community.” The original attractions of Future World and the pavilions of World Showcase were focused on that goal. Guests who went through the attractions at EPCOT Center learned “stuff.” They saw the possibilities of the future grounded in educating the people of today.
That dedication to education is a longstanding part of the Disney company. Disney’s educational films still represent clever, charming ways of explaining difficult concepts. Heck, I still show portions of Donald in Mathemagic Land to explain the golden ratio to college students – and they love it. Comics like the one I read on economics built foundations for learning even with young children. Those media combined Disney quality, innovation, and character with solid information and educational principles. They reflected the company’s belief in a better tomorrow…through making information accessible and fun.
But education wasn’t one of Walt Disney’s main goals. Walt made it clear that he “would rather entertain and hope that people learned something rather than educate people and hope that they were entertained.” His company was an entertainment company, not an educational one. Walt was less interested in strict realism than he was in wonder. He easily chose the reliability of animatroic animals and repeatable gags on the Jungle Cruise over the original plan for live displays; his vision of America was one of hope and wonder rather than strict historical reality; his pirates were far more friendly than the brutes of history.
So what about the parks? Has Epcot lost something important in turning from education to entertainment? Is the augmentation of Animal Kingdom with movie tie-in Avatar a detriment to a park focused on wildlife and (in the original plan) cultural myth? Or is the change perfectly in keeping with Walt’s focus on entertainment? Is it a necessity in a culture that increasingly loves being entertained and considers education a painful obligation rather than a pleasure?
For me, that question is a difficult one. Personally, I resent the shift in focus. I want to know what I’m looking at in “The Seas.” I want to learn about all of the animals at Animal Kingdom. I deeply miss the optimistic vision of the future and the attractions targeted at teaching me what I need to know to achieve it. I feel that if I want to be blithely entertained, I’ll head to Magic Kingdom or Hollywood Studios.
But I also know that’s me. My resentment may not be realistic. We’ll never know how Walt would have felt; heck, if Walt had lived, we might have had a short-lived “Waltopia” rather than a long-lived Epcot. Perhaps the increasing focus on entertainment is necessary for the continued economic success of the parks. I have certainly heard enough people complain about the lack of thrill rides at Animal Kingdom and denigrate it as a “glorified zoo” and a “half day park.” And, although they’re not my priorities, Soarin’, Test Track, and Mission Space certainly sustain longer wait times than Horizons, Food Rocks, or World of Motion.
Can Disney find a balance between education and entertainment? Should they try? That’s a question whose answer remains uncertain for me. I still miss the optimistic future that I must learn to create, but I also appreciate the Disney company’s need to guarantee the bottom line. Is there a balance to be found? I’m not sure, but I certainly hope so.
What do you think? Has Disney lost their focus on education? Are they wiser to focus on entertaining guests?
