Construction walls that had been covering Epcot for four long years finally came down last week as the last segment of a major park redesign was completed. World Celebration, as the new attraction at Disney World is called, is now open to the public, and while many like what they got, others are being a bit less forgiving. But one Disney fan has tried to explain a bit more clearly why the area doesn’t work.
I haven’t visited Epcot myself since World Celebration opened, so I can’t give my own opinion on the area, as I refuse to pass judgment based solely on pictures, and I don’t pretend to be an architecture expert, but one fan who’s Twitter thread has gone viral lays out why the new area doesn’t work for him, and I can’t really argue with the points being made. The primary argument is that, especially during the day, the area just feels like any public park in the world, without any of the special touches that make theme parks, especially Disney Parks, special.
First, let's start with basic aesthetics. Good themed architecture uses color, movement, and detail to set an atmosphere. There is no (daytime) color in DP other than plants and rust. There is little interesting detail in material or design. There is nothing kinetic.
The new land has a garden, including a new statue of Walt Disney himself, and based on images it looks nice. Having said that, if you have access to a nice public park, it might not be anything you can’t get at home, and for a lot less money. The Celebration Garden wakes up at night, however, with lighting truly changing the space, but that’s not enough according to this argument, because Epcot isn’t open all that late…
Saying "but it's colorful/moving at night" ignores that even on the shortest day of the year, the plaza has 8 daytime hours and 4 night hours. That doesn't excuse everything looking bland and desaturated in the day.
In this case, I would have to argue that the problem isn’t with Walt Disney Imagineering, but rather with the management of Epcot. The fact that Epcot isn’t open late enough to enjoy World Celebration enough at night could be fixed by simply keeping the park open later. I know people like to retire to Florida, but the fact is every major theme park in Orlando acts like all its guests are elderly and can’t stay up late. The city rolls up the sidewalks at 9 pm and it makes no sense.
There’s nothing wrong with World Celebration as it is, at least according to this argument, it’s just not enough, and expectations for Walt Disney World should be higher. It’s an argument we’ve certainly heard before, and not without good reason. WDI is responsible for those expectations, having done such great work in the past, and frequently promising a lot.
And Disney admits the total lack of creativity. DP's concept art at least had... something. Some sort of design before budget cuts ripped it out. This was replaced with nothing. pic.twitter.com/bFv8Ccig8KDecember 10, 2023
There were clearly a lot of ideas for World Celebration that did not happen. Budget cuts are a thing that always has to be dealt with, and with the global pandemic hitting in the middle of this construction, things took a lot longer to accomplish, and clearly many ideas that were planned did not end up happening. There was an entire planned Mary Poppins attraction that was canceled as a result of the pandemic and a major upgrade to Spaceship Earth was also canned.
Maybe we’ll still see these ideas one day. It’s certainly possible, but I think a lot of Epcot fans are happy all the walls are down, and hopefully, we won’t need to deal with them again, at least for a while.
