Tarkblog

In an attempt to BMB (that’s Blog More Blogs to the layperson), I’m going to share a few memorable things about Disneyworld that make it so special of a destination to me.

The first, is the EPCOT ball:

This monstrosity is actually called Spaceship Earth, and it’s the centerpiece of EPCOT. Whether you’ve been to Disney or not, I’m sure it’s a recognizable icon.

EPCOT was designed to be a community - an actual city (hence Educational Prototype Community Of Tomorrow) where people lived. That never panned out - while Walt really wanted it to happen, the state of Florida insisted he finish the Magic Kingdom part of Disney first, and he died before that was complete. Afterwards, the Disney company realized it didn’t want to be in charge of an actual community, so when they decided to build EPCOT as the next park (which opened in 1982) it was made into a theme park theme park celebrating technology and the future.

This ball is an 18 story creature that houses a 12 minute ride that talks about the history of communications, from caveman to fiber optics. There’s nothing thrilling about the ride per se, it’s a slow moving ride with narration by Jeremy Irons and lots of animatrioncs. What’s neat about it is you don’t realize that the whole ride you are slowly ascending to the top of the dome. At about 2/3 of the way through the ride, you are at the very top of the dome, which is imposed like a giant planetarium. Then you begin your descent “back to earth”.

What’s neat about the ride is it’s impact on making you remember what was said. I can visualize most of the scenes in the ride in my head, and can hear the narrator’s voice say some of the more compelling lines.

Also, it’s air conditioned, which makes for a nice break from the Florida sun.

Also neat is the fact that the whole ball sits about 20 feet off of the ground on pylons, so you can walk completely under it.

Yes, Spaceship Earth - you are a great Disneyworld monument.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 31st, 2005 at 3:37 pm and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.