6. Wonders of Life

Image: Disney

Though Epcot's real Wonders of Life pavilion was the last to open in Future World (seven years after the park) and the first to fully close, plans for a pavilion dedicated to health and the human body were some of the park's earliest. Even that soon into development, Imagineers had also settled on the Life pavilion being a carnival, showcasing the wonders of living along the Midway of Life.

As the model above shows, this Life pavilion may have had the same basic styling (albeit, an '80s carnival rather than a '90s one), but the arrangement and selection of attractions in Possibility World's version is very different, from walkthrough sensory experiences to full-on auditoriums. 

Image: Disney

The pavilion's anchor attraction, though, would be a classic, epic, scenic dark ride in the traditional EPCOT Center style. In this case, the Incredible Journey Within would've been a massively-scaled Omnimover through the inner workings of the human body, brought to life with gargantuan physical sets emulating the fluidity and grace of humans' lungs, circulatory system, and more. 

The real story

The Incredible Journey Within was just too ambitious, and designers began to realize the difficulty of creating the massive moving sets they'd need. The success of Disneyland's Lost Legend: STAR TOURS signaled a new, simpler (and much rougher) way to send guests into the human body – screens! That's where the story of the Lost Legend: Body Wars picks up.

7. Energy

Image: Disney

While the outside of the Energy pavilion may look familiar, here in Possibility World, the inside is completely different. In our alternate reality, Disney stuck to their original idea for the pavilion: an exploration of alternative energy sources. Even in the '70s and '80s, it was clear that fossil fuels were a non-renewable resource, and Epcot seemed like the perfect canvas on which to explain to audiences of the era what other ways humans might be gathering their energy in the 21st century.

So here in Possibility World, a trip into the Energy pavilion isn't a lumbering dark ride; it's a nimble one with guests seated in trackless vehicles exploring the large footprint inside of the building.

Image: Disney

One highlight? The encounter with a massive, gigantic solar collector. Back in the '80s, this huge, iconic centerpiece to the ride would've been merely decorative... though scientists knew solar energy would be a sincere avenue of energy production some day, it wasn't quite advanced enough in the '80s to actually generate the power needed for this attraction. Maybe in this version of Epcot, though, the collector could've been repurposed as real here in the 21st century, when renewable resources are more important than ever and just the topic Epcot should be covering.

The real story

Epcot's alternative-Energy pavilion was snuffed out for a few reasons... First of all, it was difficult to base an entire attraction around such a young, emerging area of study. Second of all, oil and petrochemical giant Exxon came on board as the pavilion's sponsor... Conveniently, Disney decided that the energy pavilion could minimize talk of alternative energy and instead focus on Exxon's core product: fossil fuels. 

The Lost Legend: Universe of Energy became a tour through the prehistoric world with a somewhat tangential explanation of how dinosaurs and prehistoric plant matter became today's oil, muddled even further when the ride became Ellen's Energy Adventure in the '90s before closing altogether to become a Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy roller coaster. 

7. NEVER BUILT: Science and Invention Pavilion

Image: Disney

Very little is known about the "Science and Invention" pavilion once planned for Horizons' spot in the park (check that park-wide concept art on page 1 again to see it in context). All we know about it is based on the concept art above by Disney Legend and famed artist Herb Ryman (who, y'know, also created the first concept for Disneyland with Walt). 

8. NEVER BUILT: EPTOT Pavilion

Image: Van Eaton Galleries, via Micechat

Recently, our friends at Micechat did some digging to explore more about a never-built pavilion concept for Epcot. Early on, designers noticed one glaring issue with EPCOT Center... As said by Disney Legend Rolly Crump in his book, Kind of a Cute Story:

"We realized there wasn’t much there for kids to do. Scott Hennessy came up with this pavilion called EPTOT, which would have been for little kids. We made a model of our idea to show to Management. Each section of the pavilion represented a little kid version of all the pavilions at EPCOT. There was one for The Living Seas, one for The Land, and so on."

Image: Van Eaton Galleries, via Micechat

The EPTOT pavilion would've been a colorful, playful amalgamation of Future World's pavilions, providing a perfect spot for kids to leave behind the intellectual dark rides and ambitious futurism of Epcot for a chance to just... play!  Crump continued to explain, "It was basically a mini-play area based on all the big pavilions, but Marty Sklar and John Hench shot us down. They thought EPCOT was strictly for adults and not for children.” 

Possibility World is all about imagining what could've been... But it's good to remember that common saying: good ideas never die at Disney. And EPTOT may be the perfect example...

Image: Disney

The real story: While designers at that time may have thought Epcot was exclusively for adults, times have changed! Not only will Epcot soon host an entire pavilion centered around "play," but play has been widely studied as an area of science and human development, meaning that the seemingly-silly concept actually fits perfectly among Epcot's pavilions dedicated to space, imagination, land, sea, and communication!

Realities being written...

Image: Disney

In a park as storied, legendary, and controversial as Epcot, there are a million alternate reality versions – each slightly different from the one before. One version of the park, for example, might just be today's Epcot with all of its Lost Legends restored – and for most of us, that wouldn't be such a bad park to visit!

One thing is for sure: Epcot's future is constantly being rewritten. Though many of the would-be rides we mentioned here are simply concepts passed-over from the park's opening, another handful date back to that Project: GEMINI overhaul that only came to pass in piecemeal bits, never as a full refreshing of the park's style and identity. Maybe that's for the best... A new vision of Epcot is taking shape...

Will Epcot ever find the right balance of reverence and relevance; history and future; brains and thrills? Or will its identity continue to muddle, weighed down further than ever by mis-matched intellectual properties, invasions of Disney, Pixar, and Marvel characters, and closures of classics? The only way to know is to keep watching...