EPCOT and the Disney Channel
Jul. 18th, 2007 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acroyearOriginally posted for disneyworld , cross-posted here for my own records.
In the Disney blogosphere and "behind the scenes" literature, a lot of things are blamed for EPCOT's initial failures and subsequent inability to maintain a steady crowd and a loyal fanbase beyond the "geek" market. Walt's death and the inability of the Imagineers to build Walt's original vision (as we've now been able to see in full on DVD) ranks pretty high. Budget crises and crunches also come up.
"Lack of thrill rides" was Eisner's motto, but his subsequent development has split Futureworld into two - a thrill side (Test Track, Mission: Space) and a kids-friendly (semi-)education side (Seas, Land, Imagination). Rather than being a place the family stays together in (Walt's success in Disneyland), its become a place where families split up - mom and the under-10s go west, dad and the teenagers go east, and Grandma and Aunt Louise head south for the World Showcase. It's a very Balkanized place right now and it's unlikely to change in that respect.
One easy target is just the typical audience - nobody wants to be "educated" on their vacations anymore (if ever - see how the educational parts of both coasts' Tomorrowlands are gone). Horizons was doomed from the start to disinterest from a crowd that had to think too much and wanted a day to stop thinking.
But really, there's a much simpler explanation, one Disney could have done (and done beautifully) but didn't.
Marketing. But not in the typical "MBA" sense. Standard MBA marketing was the only thing they did, and it certainly wasn't enough, nor would it be what Walt, infamous for reinventing marketing on a regular basis, would have done.
EPCOT was beautiful, rich, clever, and wonderful when it opened.
But it was also stuck. It was condemned by Disney promotions and marketing to be a spot on a map.
Disneyland was NEVER a spot on a map. Disneyland was on TV, and was on TV first. More importantly, Disneyland on TV didn't show us that Disneyland was a place on a map, but that Disneyland was all around us. History, Fantasy, Science and Science Fiction, Nature, and Nostalgia were all there and all around. By the time Disneyland opened, with that same focus as the TV show in categorizing what we saw, we knew what we were entering: Disneyland in 3D, where we could do more than just watch it, we could live it.
EPCOT was just a spot on a map, a place to go visit. Nothing more. Why? Because EPCOT wasn't on TV. Yeah, the park was on TV, especially in its huge debut with the brilliant (if occasionally politically incorrect by modern standards) Danny Kaye. But EPCOT wasn't. Nothing tied EPCOT to anything else in the Disney arsenal or to anything else in the world around us.
In the oft-asked question "what would Walt do?", I see a very simple answer: Walt, even if he let EPCOT be what it became and not his original vision, would have done exactly what he did with Disneyland: tie it to TV. He would be giving the viewer glimpses into the EPCOT all around us, not just the EPCOT that was the park to be, just as much as he did 25 years before. How? EPCOT would have been a special daily or weekly part of the Disney Channel (personally, I think Walt would have named the channel itself EPCOT and had Disneyland-type stuff be the exception, not the norm).
The Disney Channel had just started a little while after EPCOT, in 1983. It had all the potential in the universe to dominate the children's tv space, which it did, AND link kids into seeing the parks as extension of the fun they saw on TV, which it didn't. Disney's classic characters were all over it, as were lots of new live action programs, but EPCOT was no where to be seen.
Figment and the Dreamfinder shouldn't have been stuck in one building - they should have been the characters to bring educational programming to The Disney Channel on a daily basis. Had that happened, there would have never been ANY suggestion by anybody to take Figment out of the ride 8 years ago.
Ludvig Von Drake, who was always associated with Disney educational programming with his debut in the first Wonderful World of Color, would headline a science show, even if just a narrator to bookend the show (since daily animation is expensive in those pre-computer days) the way Christopher Lloyd bookended the Back to the Future cartoon.
Rather than have people complain about the lack of Disney characters in EPCOT, people would come to appreciate Figment and Dreamfinder as if they always were Disney characters. From there, it would be easy to expand the shows to introduce a new character to represent tomorrow, perhaps inspired by Ward Kimball's early Tomorrowland shows, that could be an additional inspiration for park decoration and icons.
Perhaps too, an animated character, or maybe Dreamfinder again, would give a world travelogue show that would start with the original World Showcase nations and then grow from there. Don't think it would work? What do you think Inspector Gadget's Field Trip was? That series was hugely successful and very inexpensive.
Other new TV shows, educational or otherwise, could have been the driving force for new EPCOT attractions. With the strong Disney Channel tie, they could have done more to put their variety entertainment successes (Kids Inc, and the new Mickey Mouse Club) into EPCOT as occasional features, much as Bear in the Blue House and others have been part of Disney/MGM and DCA.
All of this and much more would have made EPCOT real in our minds and THAT would be what would make the park real. EPCOT wouldn't be a place on a map, EPCOT would be all around us, presented to us in such a way as to make us want to go to the park and live it for a day, just as we live our fantasies, our history, our adventures, and our future for a day.
Hey Disney Channel: it's not too late...
In the Disney blogosphere and "behind the scenes" literature, a lot of things are blamed for EPCOT's initial failures and subsequent inability to maintain a steady crowd and a loyal fanbase beyond the "geek" market. Walt's death and the inability of the Imagineers to build Walt's original vision (as we've now been able to see in full on DVD) ranks pretty high. Budget crises and crunches also come up.
"Lack of thrill rides" was Eisner's motto, but his subsequent development has split Futureworld into two - a thrill side (Test Track, Mission: Space) and a kids-friendly (semi-)education side (Seas, Land, Imagination). Rather than being a place the family stays together in (Walt's success in Disneyland), its become a place where families split up - mom and the under-10s go west, dad and the teenagers go east, and Grandma and Aunt Louise head south for the World Showcase. It's a very Balkanized place right now and it's unlikely to change in that respect.
One easy target is just the typical audience - nobody wants to be "educated" on their vacations anymore (if ever - see how the educational parts of both coasts' Tomorrowlands are gone). Horizons was doomed from the start to disinterest from a crowd that had to think too much and wanted a day to stop thinking.
But really, there's a much simpler explanation, one Disney could have done (and done beautifully) but didn't.
Marketing. But not in the typical "MBA" sense. Standard MBA marketing was the only thing they did, and it certainly wasn't enough, nor would it be what Walt, infamous for reinventing marketing on a regular basis, would have done.
EPCOT was beautiful, rich, clever, and wonderful when it opened.
But it was also stuck. It was condemned by Disney promotions and marketing to be a spot on a map.
Disneyland was NEVER a spot on a map. Disneyland was on TV, and was on TV first. More importantly, Disneyland on TV didn't show us that Disneyland was a place on a map, but that Disneyland was all around us. History, Fantasy, Science and Science Fiction, Nature, and Nostalgia were all there and all around. By the time Disneyland opened, with that same focus as the TV show in categorizing what we saw, we knew what we were entering: Disneyland in 3D, where we could do more than just watch it, we could live it.
EPCOT was just a spot on a map, a place to go visit. Nothing more. Why? Because EPCOT wasn't on TV. Yeah, the park was on TV, especially in its huge debut with the brilliant (if occasionally politically incorrect by modern standards) Danny Kaye. But EPCOT wasn't. Nothing tied EPCOT to anything else in the Disney arsenal or to anything else in the world around us.
In the oft-asked question "what would Walt do?", I see a very simple answer: Walt, even if he let EPCOT be what it became and not his original vision, would have done exactly what he did with Disneyland: tie it to TV. He would be giving the viewer glimpses into the EPCOT all around us, not just the EPCOT that was the park to be, just as much as he did 25 years before. How? EPCOT would have been a special daily or weekly part of the Disney Channel (personally, I think Walt would have named the channel itself EPCOT and had Disneyland-type stuff be the exception, not the norm).
The Disney Channel had just started a little while after EPCOT, in 1983. It had all the potential in the universe to dominate the children's tv space, which it did, AND link kids into seeing the parks as extension of the fun they saw on TV, which it didn't. Disney's classic characters were all over it, as were lots of new live action programs, but EPCOT was no where to be seen.
Figment and the Dreamfinder shouldn't have been stuck in one building - they should have been the characters to bring educational programming to The Disney Channel on a daily basis. Had that happened, there would have never been ANY suggestion by anybody to take Figment out of the ride 8 years ago.
Ludvig Von Drake, who was always associated with Disney educational programming with his debut in the first Wonderful World of Color, would headline a science show, even if just a narrator to bookend the show (since daily animation is expensive in those pre-computer days) the way Christopher Lloyd bookended the Back to the Future cartoon.
Rather than have people complain about the lack of Disney characters in EPCOT, people would come to appreciate Figment and Dreamfinder as if they always were Disney characters. From there, it would be easy to expand the shows to introduce a new character to represent tomorrow, perhaps inspired by Ward Kimball's early Tomorrowland shows, that could be an additional inspiration for park decoration and icons.
Perhaps too, an animated character, or maybe Dreamfinder again, would give a world travelogue show that would start with the original World Showcase nations and then grow from there. Don't think it would work? What do you think Inspector Gadget's Field Trip was? That series was hugely successful and very inexpensive.
Other new TV shows, educational or otherwise, could have been the driving force for new EPCOT attractions. With the strong Disney Channel tie, they could have done more to put their variety entertainment successes (Kids Inc, and the new Mickey Mouse Club) into EPCOT as occasional features, much as Bear in the Blue House and others have been part of Disney/MGM and DCA.
All of this and much more would have made EPCOT real in our minds and THAT would be what would make the park real. EPCOT wouldn't be a place on a map, EPCOT would be all around us, presented to us in such a way as to make us want to go to the park and live it for a day, just as we live our fantasies, our history, our adventures, and our future for a day.
Hey Disney Channel: it's not too late...
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In fairness ...
Date: 2007-07-18 09:50 pm (UTC)