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Let’s skip forward, more than a decade after the opening of Journey into Imagination. In 1994, EPCOT Center was renamed Epcot '94. That simple change signified a sweeping new ideology that began to take its toll on many of EPCOT Center's classics in the years after. Another Lost Legend: Horizons, was already slated for demolition (it would eventually be replaced by Mission: SPACE) and had re-opened temporarily only to fill in for the shuttered World of Motion (which was becoming Test Track) and the temporarily closed Universe of Energy (which was undergoing its own transformation to become Ellen’s Energy Adventure). 

Image: Disney

In other words, barely fifteen years after its opening, Epcot’s Future World was beginning to crumble. For one thing, Epcot had earned an unfortunate reputation and become a pop culture punch line: it was the park kids dreaded spending a day at. How could the restaurants of World Showcase or (shudder) educational dark rides hold a candle to a day riding Space Mountain or Star Tours?

But the most damning factor leveled against Future World might’ve been inherent in its DNA. Time and time and time again, “the Tomorrowland Problem” had crept into Disney Parks, crippling Imagineers. Put simply: “tomorrow” always becomes “today,” which meant that any land or ride in a Disney park sincerely dedicated to predicting the future would constantly need updated and refined to catch up to current technology and modern vision. (We covered the phenomenon in-depth as part of a standalone feature, Lost Legends: The Peoplemover and Walt's Tomorrowland.) In that regard, Future World might as well be considered the biggest Tomorrowland Disney had ever built, and a lot had changed between 1982 and the mid-1990s. It was time for change.

Image: Disney

And even if, in retrospect, we can boo many of the changes that came to Epcot during this controversial period, we also have to face an undeniable truth: Epcot did need to change. Despite its lofty intentions and the stunning impact the park had upon opening, it could not hold out in the same form forever.

Consider that EPCOT Center’s opening in 1982 was heralded in the press as the “arrival of the 21st century.” The problem is, we’re now talking about the mid-1990s. The actual 21st century was looming on the horizon, and Epcot didn’t look anything like what lay ahead. In fact, Epcot looked very much like the future as envisioned from the 1980s – cold, gray, and concrete.

Image: Disney

For better or worse, Disney’s leadership had set out to reverse the fortunes of Epcot. The changes happening in Future World in the mid-1990s were really just a few piecemeal elements of a much larger plan to radically overhaul the entire park. We chronicled everything we know about the controversial would-be rebirth in its own standalone feature, Possibilityland: Epcot’s Project: GEMINI. While it never went into full effect, many of Epcot’s most controversial additions (Finding Nemo in the Seas pavilion, Mission: SPACE, and the original Test Track) were all part of it. And to make such a radical rebuild possible, Disney needed Epcot’s sponsors to rally.

Sponsors Fall

As Disney scrambled to breathe new life into Future World to ward off “the Tomorrowland Problem,” it turned to the corporate sponsors who had fueled the creation of Epcot to begin with. If Disney had needed their financing to get Epcot off the ground, it needed them to double down now and make good on their terms for keeping the pavilions up-to-date.

Image: Disney

So imagine Disney’s dismay when, rather than agreeing to redouble their efforts within Epcot, the park’s sponsors began to waver. By the 1990s, the world was shifting. Americans’ perception of mega-corporations was changing. After all, do we really want to get a lesson on sustainable harvesting from Kraft? Do we care to have ExxonMobil lecture us about energy as the multi-billion dollar company makes record profits while gas prices skyrocket? Would we still like to visit Monsanto’s Home of the Future? All the while, a shifting economy made it more difficult for companies to explain to shareholders and (sometimes laid off) employees how tens of millions of dollars had been spent on a theme park ride in Florida.

Disney was at a crossroads.

  • Should they reclaim control of the pavilions themselves and stuff them full of Disney characters to attract families?
  • Should they evolve Epcot into a park with embedded thrills at the expense of demolishing beloved-but-tired ‘80s classics?
  • Should they salvage what they could of Epcot’s sponsors and push forward with modest redesigns of pavilions that adhere to the original vision?

Image: Disney

Any one of the three plans would’ve been controversial in its own right. But perhaps worse than any one, Disney tried all three. The once-conceptually-united pavilions diverged: Pixar’s Finding Nemo took over the (still distinctly ‘80s) Living Seas pavilion; Horizons fell to the thrilling-but-brainless Mission: SPACE; and as for Journey into Imagination…? Well…

Battle for Imagination

Image: Kodak

Disney selected Epcot as the hub for Walt Disney World’s Millennium Celebration, eager to show off their newest attractions in a park that had received quite a bit of investment through the ‘90s. One attraction that had not changed much was Journey into Imagination. But it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

Disney invoked the contract that Kodak had signed and made it clear that if Kodak wanted to keep their sponsorship of the Imagination pavilion and its brand ambassador messaging throughout the ride and its post-show, it would need to invest in refreshing the ride in time for the Millennium Celebration.

Image: Disney, Florida-Project.com

Kodak, for its part, was in no place to invest in a Disney dark ride. The photography giant had been in a financial tumble for years, reeling from their shortsighted response to the arrival of digital photography after decades of being on top. Kodak was in such bad shape that in 1999 the company cut its employment by 20%. One out of every five employees was let go. Imagine if you were one of those let go, then watched as the company spent millions redesigning a ride at Disney World. Yikes.

Put simply: Kodak probably should’ve let the Disney sponsorship go to focus on its core assets. (And eventually, they did, famously dropping their sponsorship from Kodak Photo Spots and the complimentary park guide maps across which their logo was displayed.) But a circling shark in the water made that hard to do. For years, Kodak’s biggest competitor – Fujifilm – had been trying to get into Disney Parks.

Image: Fujifilm

So poisonous was the rivalry that Kodak allegedly blocked plans for a Mount Fuji roller coaster in Epcot’s Japan pavilion simply due to the perceived connection. According to insiders, Fujifilm wanted into Disney World badly, and was more than happy to take over the Imagination pavilion from its flailing adversary.

Image: Disney

Kodak couldn’t allow its competitor to weasel into its territory, so they agreed to Disney’s demands to freshen up the Imagination ride. But they would only offer Disney a small fraction of the money they’d requested.

Working on a slashed budget and with precious little time until the Millennium Celebration debuted, Disney’s Imagineers got to work designing something new on the shoestring budget they’d been provided. Journey into Imagination closed forever on October 10, 1998. Less than a year later, Epcot’s glass pyramids re-opened with something very, very different inside… Read on…

 
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Comments

Great article - but the EPCOT map labeled as 1983 can't be from 1983 as it includes Norway and the Wonders of Life, both of which opened much later.

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