Epcot’s Future World in 2011: Lost Concepts and Disney What-Ifs

Step back in time to late 2011 for a live, nostalgic walk-through of Epcot with theme park experts Len Testa and Jim Hill. In this classic episode, the duo explores the transition spaces of Future World and the rich cultural details of World Showcase, peeling back the layers of Disney history to uncover fascinating “what-if” concepts, abandoned ride designs, and the corporate sponsorship struggles that shaped the park we know today. From the monolithic slabs of Leave a Legacy to forgotten pavilions and unbuilt roller coasters, this casual stroll offers a masterclass in Disney Imagineering history.

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Epcot’s Future World in 2011: Lost Concepts and Disney What-Ifs Transcript

Len Testa: Hi, this is Len Testa in Epcot with Jim Hill. We’re doing another episode of our unofficial guide Disney Dish with Jim Hill podcast. It’s a beautiful sunny day in Orlando. It’s about 75 degrees outside. Sun is shining. We’re getting ready to walk through Future World Plaza, the very beginning, the very entrance of Epcot. You guys can hear some background music. Yeah, that’s beautiful. Epcot’s my favorite park, Jim. How are you doing today?

Jim Hill: I’m in Epcot. I meant to share your enthusiasm for this park. I love this park. It’s the world’s greatest theme park, And plus we’ve got food and wine going on here, too.

Len Testa: All right, that helps. Liquor definitely helps Epcot. All right, so we’re going to walk through the plaza here. And as we go through, we’re coming up on, we just got past the security entrance, which is nice. It’s actually such a slow day here that they’re not doing a… They’re just kind of letting people pass. So we’re walking up now, we’re passing the stone monoliths, the Libid legacy tiles. If you ever want to have some fun, ask Sam Genoway what he thinks of these things.

Jim Hill: I can imagine. I can imagine. Now these are… This is honestly probably the last project that Imagineer John Hench worked on for the company. I know the joke, know, the effective… The faces here are everyone who died walking around World Showcase Lagoon. But it’s honestly not what John was shooting for. The idea was this was going to be… This is a mythic structure. This is like, you know, Disney’s Stonehenge that, you know, and you have this iconic giant, you know, golf ball, you know, here at your entrance to the park. And it just, he wanted, it just seemed very sterile to him, the space, you know, and it’s so-

Len Testa: So wait, so it was sterile, but his idea of getting rid of sterility is adding monolithic slabs of rock. How about a plant? Does anybody have a fern?

Jim Hill: Well, the idea- The idea is to break up the structure. I mean, think about it. You know, how long ago was it when you entered the park here and they had the three pieces of acrylic sticking up out of the right, right.

Len Testa: Yeah, that wasn’t any better. But mean seriously, we’ve walked from the entrance to almost to the base of Spaceship Earth. Has anyone seen a plant?

Jim Hill: In the future, Jim, there will be no foliage. No, mean, if you look at the cobblestone, what they did here, again, the idea is to put natural, I mean, stone, natural stone and stone-like shapes to frame Spaceship Earth, to take some of the onus off of, again, the giant tinfoil ball, you know?

Len Testa: Is that what it is? Because I never got that. Yeah. I do see. So we’re at the base of the fountain that’s in front of Spaceship Earth. And to Jim’s point, if you look at the ring on the inside of the… of fountain. You guys can hear the fountain in the background. But the fountain ring is essentially made of raised cobblestones, like the kind of cobblestones you’d see in the street. It’s different colors and some of them are actually sticking up higher. So they’re actually not wet and because they’re not wet, they’re a different color, a lighter shade than the ones that are getting wet. So you’ve got sort of these deep mud browns, you’ve got some of these really light beige colors. It’s all, it all works out pretty well. But I gotta tell you, James, mean, looking back over this, mean, between here and the Monorail station, there are sort of trees on either side, but this place could do with some grass.

Jim Hill: No, no, absolutely. And here, here is the thing. this was supposed to exist for 25 years. In fact, you remember buying the LEVA legacy tiles. I have one. Okay. But you if you look at the language there, it’s not into perpetuity. They will be here. Your face will be on that slab for 25 years and then they can resell the space. But to be honest, Disney is looking for outs. They want to tear it out. They know it doesn’t work. but 25 years, I mean, they’ve got at least another 15. Oh, yes. Oh, no, they got more than that. You know, I mean, so was it 25? Is it 25 years from the date of the last sale? There you go. Oh, my God. So that was like well into let’s put this way, my daughter and I have one. that’s. So she made her first trip when she was five, so they’ve got at least another 17 years of that?

Len Testa: Really?

Jim Hill: Yeah, absolutely. Killing me, killing me. No, it’s killing them because it was like, again, this is the curse of a wonderful model and then when you make it full size, something doesn’t work.

Len Testa: Yeah, that’s the thing. We were talking about this earlier, but I mean, I get the idea of something like Stonehenge. as what you’re going for it it probably work on paper it doesn’t work in three d.

Jim Hill: You know, they found out the hardware, were literally three to six months into the first install of the little metal things, and they had a child brought into the first aid who had laid on the wall and had burned all the way up their back. Seriously. Yeah, I bet. Oh, yeah, it’s got to be incredibly… I mean, it’s metal in the Florida sun. What are you expecting? No, that’s exactly it. at all angles, it became a boondog. You know what they could do? They could rotate the the stones they could lie them flat right and it could be like japanese cooking but but the the imprints when they sear the meat it’s your face on the meat. So instead of Benny Hottie, you’re cooking on top of Ben Hanna.

Len Testa: That’s right, that’s right. Lovely wife, Sari. Lovely people, lovely. They’re from Brooklyn. They’re So we’re walking past Spaceship Earth, still one my favorite attractions of all time. Storytelling superb. What do think about the new scene that went in a couple years ago?

Jim Hill: First of all, it’s kind of interesting that they found the space to do that. But at the same time, the computer room, you have to acknowledge that. Where we are, In fact, this is kind of the monkey in the back of both Epcot, the future world section of Epcot, as well as Tomorrowland, because the future obviously keeps moving forward. you know, the story of communication, circa 1982, know, yeah, computers, lovely. And now, mean, think about it, know, or just, you know, what you’re carrying in your hand to record the show probably has more electronic power to it than the original, you know, Mr. Lincoln figure.

Len Testa: Alright. It probably does. So I’m walking around with a little handheld digital recorder. So that’s, you know, they’ll have to circle back. In fact, I know that there’s language built into the contracts here at Future World. In fact, that’s a lot of reason that many of the sponsors bailed out after a while. They were under, as part of their sponsorship agreement, every 10 years they had to freshen their pavilions. I mean, literally, you know, you had to agree to bring in new exhibits, new technologies. And you know, there was subsequent language, the effect of you had to do smaller retrofits on top of that.

Jim Hill: Right. So it wasn’t just a big bang every 10 years.

Len Testa: No, no. And this just for a lot of people became an issue. It’s like, I don’t know if I want to be involved in Epcot, where it’s a it’s a money pit.

Jim Hill: Yeah, or it’s well, it’s it’s an expense that you have you have no choice, right?

Len Testa: Yeah, so whether it works or not, but this was you know from day one when they started to go out and chase sponsors for Epcot or chase countries for Epcot They never got the response they anticipated and it was because of the was it because the concept or was it because of the the contract terms?

Jim Hill: Actually, it’s it’s something entirely different that without a charismatic Walt Disney out front to sell it.

Len Testa: Yeah, mean just the problem is that, you know, this is a part of the Disney history that people really don’t understand, but Walt built up an organization that he had amazing lieutenants. mean, people he could turn to and go do this, but they were lieutenants. They weren’t leaders. And then when Walt died, all of these people who were wonderful foot soldiers for him got promoted to leadership positions and they couldn’t go. Some of them couldn’t lead. Yeah. mean, and more to the point, they couldn’t go to a GM. I think what Marty Sklar tells this wonderful story about trying to sell the sponsorship of Space Mountain to RCA. Eventually they did, right? But here’s the thing, was Walt Disney who figured out they were going into the meeting and they were at RCA pitching the early early concept for it and so Walt was at one end of the table or Marty was one end of the table with the art and it’s a giant lengthy table and it’s eventually, Walt’s like The guy who makes decision is at the other end of the table. Bring the artwork down to the guy. Don’t do the 300 VPs between you and the guy who makes the decision. But a Walt knew how to do that. A Walt knew who was the decision maker in the room. Get me there. And the problem was with Epcot. It was meeting after meeting after meeting with sponsors that when they came in, they insisted on their narrative. mean, if you think about, for example, Country Bear Jamboree. The future of energy and add solar gonna do anything with solar. Leave me alone. It’s petrochemical.

Len Testa: That’s right, you know. So we’re just, we’re walking, we’re in the middle of an invention’s plaza right now. We’ve got our future world plaza. We’ve got, we’re by the tipboard. The interesting thing about the tipboard now, Jim, it’s gone from being, remember that sort of carnival lighting theme? It’s actually high res digital displays now. And apparently they’ve got a Twitter feed set up now. So if you follow the, if you follow a hashtag, and I think it’s 2011FW, something like that, Epcot. I’ll get you the hashtag. But if you follow that, it’ll actually tweet out what the current wait times are. The interesting thing though about the display gym, I don’t know if it’s just that we’re getting old, the words to describe each of the attractions are maybe an inch high. And you’re in the Florida sun, so you really have to stand literally next to the thing to actually read them. But I give them credit for trying. Med props for trying. Hey, you wanna walk into into InnoVentions, see what’s going on there?

Jim Hill: InnoVentions, by the way, in case anyone doesn’t know, is a blend of two words, Inventions and InnoVentions. And, you know, more to the point, this is… For lack of a better term, this… this whole area, it was born. Michael Eisner went to the Consumer Electronics Show.

Len Testa: Oh yeah, has a Total Consumer Electronics Show vibe to it.

Jim Hill: He came home, he went off to one of them, and they were at that point looking to what they were going to do with CommuniCorps. And it’s like, have you seen this? Let’s do this. Let’s do this. It’s fresh.

Len Testa: So we’re walking by Where’s the Fire, which is a game where you play, it’s a fire safety game, you look for things like exposed wiring inside a house. It’s a lot of fun. IBM Smarter Planet display coming up. We’ve got computers. Actually, this is a lot like, I would say that the display here is a lot like IBM itself. What the hell do they do? I mean, didn’t they used to build hardware? But now what does IBM do these days?

Jim Hill: I would imagine even the board of directors is asking that question. I think if ever there was a symbol of IBM now, this is it. I kind of sort of get it, but if I was pressed to say… these are the goals 123 you wouldn’t do it and just but the interesting thing you walk through this space and again it’s different deal than a different deal than a different deal. So there’s no visual harmony. There’s, if anything, exhibits, you know, fight visually to hold your attention.

Len Testa: It’s true. Now we’re walking past another great piggy bank adventure. I actually like this. This is pretty good, but they’ve, you notice they’ve put up a wall around this now. So before there used to be a small sort of almost like velvet rope type things that would keep you out. Now they’ve got a, looks like a six foot high wall around one end of it. But the piggy bank adventure actually is a lot of fun. It’s great. for kids under 12.

Jim Hill: the wall actually went up because, again, there is so much stuff in here that mom and dad would lose track of children that would wander off. so while you’re facing the screen trying to figure out with Johnny what’s going on, little Sally would wander off to the next exhibit. And eventually security made an issue of it and that’s what we are today.

Len Testa: That makes sense. So we’re now walking past a series of, looks like, video games for Disney Pixar films and there’s a bunch of those as well. You know, again.

Jim Hill: Or as I like to call this, this is the idea for Disney Quest. Really, wouldn’t they just… I mean, look at how many people are here. There’s one, two, three, five… There’s probably more people here than in House of Inventions right now. They could charge 20 bucks for this, you could stay all day, it’s air-conditioned. I don’t know, Jim. Sounds like a business on old me. Oh, there you go. That key phrase again, air-conditioned in Florida.

Len Testa: Yeah, it’s actually a nice day outside, too, but it’s not terribly crowded. What is this? Disney Rewards Photo Place. Ah, this is the character greeting for Disney guests. Disney Visa card holders. I get it. Alright, this is the… we’re passing back by the other side of… where’s the fire? Where they… people get to touch a real fire engine. And there’s a quick fire drill thing going on. I don’t know, do you come to Disney World to participate in fire drills?

Jim Hill: Well, you know, in a weird sort of way, I don’t necessarily have a problem with it. If a kid takes away from a vacation… how to survive a fire, that’s a good thing.

Len Testa: I’m good with it too. you know what think would be more realistic here? Is if they let one family member actually set the fire. I think that would be a better idea. Wanna walk through the other side of interventions? Let’s keep going. It’s air conditioned and we’re walking. We’re already moving in that direction anyway. Again, this is… This was what makes this place tough. is just keeping it fresh, just keeping it, you know. Right, so some of the ideas are very good. When done right, storm struck over in Innoventions East, which we’ll talk about. Very good attraction. I do like the piggy bank adventure, guys, if you’re listening and you haven’t been to piggy bank adventure, go ahead and try it. I think that’s good. there’s the IBM thing. Actually, I never understood, because they had a video game here too, right? Remember you used to walk up on an elevated stage over to the left? I never really got what the game was either. Maybe I’m just old. Nah, let’s play MyBM.

Jim Hill: But that’s the other issue. They would bring these guys in to Glendale, they’d show them the prototype in a warehouse, and it’s like, oh my god, this is gonna wonderful, and yes, of course, it’ll sound good. Not realizing that three equally loud, colorful things will be in front of it back to it, to either side.

Len Testa: Right, in isolation it all makes sense, but when put together. The sum is less than the, the whole is less than sum of its parts. Alright, so now we’re back out in the sun, we’re in Future World West. To our left is the Imagination Pavilion, straight ahead is the Land Pavilion. Let’s head to the right and go to the seas. How do you feel about the seas, Jim?

Jim Hill: I think… You’re pro water? Me like water. This is actually, as far as retrofits go, is probably one of the more charming ones in Epcot. The interesting thing is they did… For quite some time, they had the Little Mermaid themed redo. A Little Mermaid themed ride? It’ll never work, Well, it was more the effect of… Next thing you’re going tell me is they’ve only got money for five scenes in the ride and then I I I I I didn’t say that he did No, it was more to the effect of is Ariel an effective character to do education with and in the end what they decided was that you know Ariel has her fan base, but you know when you look at Nemo and more to the you know the character of Mr. Ray you already have you know a an educational character, but you know The interesting thing is even this version of the ride, the original version wasn’t what they planned.

Len Testa: Wait, the original version of the C’s ride with Nemo? Or the original, the Deluge?

Jim Hill: Yeah, mean literally this was going to be an epic ride through attraction. fact, at one point as you’re in your introductory scene, the wall was going to split open and a 20 foot tall figure of Poseidon was going to… But again, 20 foot tall AA figure who was literally going to swing his Trident and open the sea for you when there was going to be a bubble vehicle that you rode through and explained the tiny ecosystem. And only then after Trident had deemed you worthy that you understood about the sea, you then allowed in the sea base Alpha. cool. Yeah, mean, the Omni Movers, the little taste of what you do with the Omni Movers is literally, that’s a fourth. you know maybe a fifth of the amount of right track they were initially going to do. But no, this became the franchise that worked here. It kind of makes sense. this was, mean we’re talking, Ariel was going to go in here as late as 2003. But that was part of the Project Gemini project, where literally you were going to gut Spaceship Earth, you were to put the time racer attraction in there, you were going to put the rainforest out in of the land and you were going to have the coaster that zoomed through the tree tops of the rainforest. I this would have been green and lush and much more character friendly. And this, don’t get me wrong, the work they’ve done here is good. I again, think Merm Nemo, for all of it having piggybacked on the Nemo submarine voyage for Disneyland, is still an effective and fun attraction. They move people through, there’s rarely a wait. I mean, there’s a wait when it opened, but now, mean, it’s, you know, walk on five minutes most of the time. No, that’s it exactly. Are there any plans for a coral reef?

Jim Hill: Every restaurant at Walt Disney World now is in play. You know, I mean, it just, it’s kind of, it’s just the age we’re facing. In fact, remind me, I was talking with a friend about the change on the… the reservation thing they’re about to do where you you know how you can make multiple reservations with a credit card?

Len Testa: yeah they’re actually I think they’re cutting back on that now where you you you can’t well they’re about to put a ten dollar hold fee and if you don’t show really?

Jim Hill: yeah I mean literally last night I got called about that so that’s you know they’re gonna creep that out like Sometime between now and November if I’m understanding correctly so roughly between now and the time the podcast comes out We should start seeing version one of that come out That’s a 10 bucks. I’ll have one info. We want that our one. No one’s gonna make reservations anymore The problem is that you’ve got all these people who have figured out how to game the system. Yeah, I mean the effect of what they figured is that all the reservations have to be under a name. For example if I make a reservation to do James Hill and then I make another reservation at a different restaurant at Jim Hill and then another reservation under Jimmy Hill. You can hold three different reservations and walk into a park and decide where you want to go. And the computer system still accepts those. So now it’s like, and what they’re finding is they have a no show rate that can vary from 25 to 40%.

Len Testa: Oh yeah, yeah. So during off season, it’s huge. During peak season, it’s like 5%. We’re walking, by the way, for those of you listening and noticing the change in background noise, we’ve just walked the back entrance of the CIS Pavilion. So we’re in C Base Alpha right now and we’re walking through the gift shop. When this initially opened, when it was United Technologies… By way, that’s the only thing I know about United Technologies is that they once sponsored C Base Alpha.

Jim Hill: Well, it was definitely kind of a difficult shoehorn. They were the ones that were willing to come in. But did you have any idea before then what they did as an organization? mean, was like Amalgamated Industries Incorporated. They were… They did helicopters… Really? Yes. I mean, it was really not a great fit. But it got this place open. I mean, and that… know, that… They were really sweating.

Len Testa: They were sweating in terms of getting sponsors for this thing? Because this is huge!

Jim Hill: They struggled everywhere to get sponsors for this thing. I mean, for example, one… the windows of Black Pavilion. They thought, oh, we’re going to have no problem. We’re going to have insurance companies. We’re going to have pharmaceutical companies. You know, we’ll get this locked. And it took them years to get med length. Wow. So we’re up on the second floor now of CBCL. This place is incredibly noisy. It’s way noisier than I thought it would be. So we’re coming up on the manatee display. Manatees, of course. What was the thing about manatees? nature’s tofu or something like that? Is the manatee out?

Len Testa: don’t see the manatee but I could be blind. you were a Florida boater, their nature’s speed bumps.

Jim Hill: They are the sweetest creatures though. I had a cousin who worked at SeaWorld. In fact, he left SeaWorld to come do large animals for Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Please don’t make the joke that him being my cousin, he had lots of experience with large animals. But I remember one day, he takes me backstage and it’s like they have this… this pool that casted me maybe 30 feet across and ridiculously see green water that you can’t see him but there were three gray lumps and he like he hands me a head of lettuce and just put it under the water and it’s like okay and the lump drifts over to you and it’s like they have you know I’m now feeding amenity and they have the softest mouth they just this and in fact it was that you just pet them they’re they’re bristly but they’re really sweet gentle creatures that unfortunately in our age of jet skis and you know you know, just they can’t make it.

Len Testa: Yeah, it’s from a different time.

Jim Hill: Well, the weird thing is that if you talk with the people in animal collection at SeaWorld, there’s actually a hard number that everybody has agreed to that when they go out and do the count, you know, in Florida, and amenities have drifted below that number, it’s an agreed upon number that’s okay, they are now at a non-survival point, and we go out and collect. And, you know, they’re gonna try to save the species that way. really? So, yeah, I mean. So now we’re walking back in the, so on the second floor of the observatory, we’re walking now down into the tunnel where we’ve got glass windows on either side of us and we see lots and lots of fishes swimming by on the other side. So on the left hand side we’ve got dolphin, on the right hand side lots of little fish. And again, Jim, everywhere we go we see animals. Them’s good eating. I can’t believe how noisy it is here.

Jim Hill: Yeah, well. Again, because I have family that worked this. have a great story to share about the dolphins here were psychotic.

Len Testa: The dolphins were psychotic here?

Jim Hill: Well, the thing… We’re not talking about like Mercury and Mars back when he was on cocaine, right?

Len Testa: No, as in there are, if you’ll notice, are rays in the water here. Right, stingrays, right? Okay.

Jim Hill: And the dolphins got so bored here that they actually, invented a game. And just above the water here there are steel rails, support rails. And what the dolphins figured out what they could do is that they came up under a ray fast enough and they could flip it out of the water onto the steel. And it was like literally the people would be working here they’d see and a ray would come out and it’s being dangling. It’s like crap. And have to go out and fix it. It was like Jimmy go get the rays. Yeah, but it was was literally the dolphins were entertaining themselves because they were so bored. and it would be you know that became part of the okay you know we would actually had to put up a friends to keep okay the dolphins will stay in here and that’s nice because you know is in the dolphin side if you notice in the dolphin side there aren’t any other fish over there yeah no absolutely that’s because you know they can’t play nice they can’t play nicely with the other fish that’s what happens this is why we can’t have nice things but no this is so impressive so beautiful. So I love it when a message of ecology is shouted at you Jim because that that really makes the message more effective when people scream at you. What is that? Is that a tarpon? I think it’s huge! Yeah, no, alright, and you’ve got you know, this means they’ve got a back door on the other reasons to see natural light here right now is they got the back door open. That’s right. So Jim and I are looking out looking at the second floor we’re looking into them the deepest part of the main tank and there’s light filtering in on the back wall and the only reason we can see the back wall is apparently somewhere above us someone left a door open and the is streaming in it’s kind of I’ve never actually seen this before and I’ve been here a lot but again there you can see this steel ray so again if we were dolphins loose they’d be dangling around that’s right we can see the steel that’s amazing that’s fine right looks like we’re roped off and they’re the dolphins themselves they’re nice doing well. This is good. It’s nice here. You know what they here? Seats. Well, you know, they don’t, they want you to come in. They don’t want you to linger, you know. We’ve got a throughput thing we gotta hit. No, that’s it. Exactly. But it is. It’s well done. It’s charming. There is, they’ve just now begun to acknowledge that they have a, an issue with the acrylic here. Really?

Len Testa: Cause this thing’s like seven inches thick, isn’t it?

Jim Hill: It’s not so much… It’s the clarity. Oh, whoa, It’s not as clear as it could be?

Len Testa: Yeah, I mean, notice that it’s… It’s sort of a dulling, a yellowing… Yeah. I thought that was my eyes. I thought I was just getting old. So now you’re facing a situation where do you replace your acrylic? You know, um… How would they… They’d have to… They’d have to, uh… Would they drain the tank for that?

Jim Hill: It’s a… That’s the thing, this isn’t like your home aquarium where you just go buy another one and put the fish in that for a little bit.

Len Testa: No, absolutely. if we hang here for a minute, we’ll get the big show moment. Okay, so, so Jim and I have walked out now of the main building. We’re looking down over the first floor and a diver… diver is just now coming out of the tube where he was… They fill it with water and they transport him up into the end of the tank. He’s coming out… Now he’s coming out. it’s like a superhero coming out of the phone booth. You’re gonna Clark damp. And they’re filling the tank again with water slowly. Now if you were an evil scientist you’d be going, whoa, right now. That’s great. Again, there are great show moments. Again, this is Disney. They can tell stories. They can dazzle you. But Epcot, so often… It wasn’t Disney deciding what stories were being told. was the sponsors. so desperately needed to make the money, you know, the money to build this place. Right. So often they would end up defaulting to, what is, what is this sponsor? What is it you want to do? Well, what’s your idea?

Len Testa: That’s how I feel about this attraction. I love the idea. And I remember the original movie where they talked about you, the season, everything. It was a great introductory movie, but then you get to see base alpha and it’s, it’s so unstructured that It’s not cohesive. Like I get the idea that you can go from place to place and discover stuff, but where’s the overarching thematic element? Where’s the thing that says this is what CBS Alpha is?

Jim Hill: Well, the other thing actually for the redo for Nemo, in hindsight is always 2020, but they went with a blue color scheme, know, shades of blue. Remember when you were initially in here, this was somewhat white, somewhat austere, but the color actually helped. light in the room and you could see.

Len Testa: Yeah it’s pretty dark here right now by the way so now we’ve got the teals and blues and it’s it’s dark.

Jim Hill: And that’s what kind of bit them in the ass. Now couple that though with you’ve got you know the first of the living character in issue you know attractions in hero shows. You’ve you know Turtle Time with Crush and you know that since it opened has been you know a top five show for the part. It’s still You know, they exported the technology to other parks, So we go to Disneyland Paris and they’ve got a Stitch attraction that does… That’s the only Stitch attraction that works anywhere in the world.

Len Testa: Well, but you know… And I don’t think it’s Stitch, by the way. I think it’s the fact that the show works, not that Stitch works.

Jim Hill: Also, you know, the nice thing is that Stitch is an alien and with the park having… It’s a multicultural park. Oh, you don’t have to understand. Yeah, no. struggles with language, you struggle with language and that actually makes it workable.

Len Testa: that totally makes sense. No, they’ve actually talked about bringing that show stateside here but you the reality is that you know.

Jim Hill: We’ll speak English.

Len Testa: Yeah. So it’s like where’s our struggling moment? that’s funny. That’s good. Alright well anything on the horizon for The Seas coming up?

Jim Hill: That depends on who you talk to.

Len Testa: Is there a sponsor now for this pavilion? I don’t think there is.

Jim Hill: No. And, you know, that’s where the conversations get kind of interesting because if all goes according to plan, there may be another Nemo film. Finding Nemo 2? Well, no. Revenge of Mr. Well, the interesting thing is actually Ellen DeGeneres, who’s really… been leaning on them very hard about, you know, I want there to be a new Nemo film. You know, I liked making this and Disney’s like, well, you know, here’s a woman who has, you know, this talk show that’s very popular, who loves working with us. like, can’t we accommodate her in some way? Can we do a Christmas special or something? No, seriously. Absolutely. Seriously. And it just, so the notion is that if we’re going to do that, is there anything we can piggyback on? is can we do, if not a ride film, can we do a 3D experience, can we do something? You know, just let’s take advantage of this window. But the problem is that, again, Pixar being as secretive as it is, nobody is willing to talk about it yet, you know, we’re in very, very, very loose-leafed area right there. But the idea is to take advantage of that and just repurpose things and bring it here.

Len Testa: Yeah, it would kind of make sense. I mean, I think… Isn’t it true that everywhere within the film division now somebody on the film is saying how are going turn this into a theme park ride?

Jim Hill: Oh, no, absolutely. They refer to them as the speed teams now. That if you’re a tent pole film or an animated feature, there are literally meetings every week where it’s consumer product sits down, PR sits down, theme park sits down. Where are we in regard to we’re 18 months out, we’re a year out, we’re six months out. What are we doing to get the word out? How are we going to capitalize on this? How are we going to extend the brand? that’s where we are now in regard to Living Seas. It’s just sort of the notion of this is where we’re having that conversation about can we do something more with Nemo or can we do something more with Ariel. In fact, getting back to the… the Coral Cafe that there’s at least, you know, the 20 or $30,000 that’s been sent on the notion of Ariel’s Grotto, a re-themeing of that, you know, as a restaurant. So like the same name that they have out in DCA, but here, and actually a grotto under the sea. That’s it exactly. But at the same time, why, you know, it then becomes the constant argument of why spend the money. When you’re selling out every you’re sitting already, you know, it’s interesting. All right. So we’re getting ready to walk into the land but I actually like the land pavilion quite a bit I like a couple things about it. Number one. I like the artwork on the way in the sort of the strata. Oh, also it’s you notice it’s one of the few attractions that have a lot of trees around it.

Jim Hill: Mm-hmm

Len Testa: So the one thing I don’t like though, this is a little cardio test that you walking uphill You know in the morning and if you do this, you do it once to get your fast pass You do it again maybe to eat lunch. You do it again to ride Soren. At end of the day, you’re on your little stair master thing going on here.

Jim Hill: Well, know, it’s… But again, you have to get up here so there could be a basement. Again, That’s right. They’re making you walk up the stairs just on the outside and it’s a ramp. You know, this isn’t the kingdom. We don’t have utilidors here. Well, no. We have one corridor that runs under, you know, the… Comedicore in inventions area, but that’s it, you know. But here, I mean, you have to get up to this level so you can do your boat ride on the ground floor.

Len Testa: On the ground floor, that’s right. Because this isn’t Las Vegas and you’re not gonna put the boat ride on the second floor. So I do like this entrance way too because you get to, well now they’re stacking wheelchairs in front of it, but wow, that’s a lot of ECVs. That’s what I mean, this is what I’m about. So we just walked into the Soren Pavilion and literally the entire front rail from, over by Circle of Life. all the way over to the ramp to Soren is filled with ECVs. It’s like a convention of ECVs. 15 in a row, taking up literally the entire, you cannot walk all the way to the rail because ECVs are there. this is one of my favorite entrances. Number one, sight, right? So you walk in, you’ve got the tall ceiling, you’ve got the balloons floating in the middle when it’s a little bit more sunny. Well, I guess they’ve got it dimmed. But sometimes there’s the streaming through, but also you’ve got smell from sunshine seasons below. Cheese bread. Cheese bread. Essentially, the sensory season is fabulous, by way. And then you’ve got different attractions, they’re well distributed too. So you’ve got Soarin’, to your left. You’ve got Garden Girl straight in front of us, so they’re actually not serving lunch, but if they were, they’d be there. You’ve got the land, like around the two o’clock position. And then you’ve got Circle of Life. Some things are working out pretty well. Let’s take a walk back down to Circle of Life. We’ll walk around the pavilion. Anything new going on with Circle of Life? Is conservation still in, Jim?

Jim Hill: The interesting thing is that they were quite seriously talking about changing this film out and then suddenly the Lion King is the top, you know, the… Lion King 3D right now is the top film. Two weekends in a row. it’s just suddenly, it’s like, wait a minute, why would we change this? Why would we take this out?

Len Testa: So you notice though, Jim, they’ve actually added signage. So when you come in now, they’ve added signage that points out the Circle of Life film. This wasn’t here a few months ago. So when you walk in now, if you go to the right and you walk towards Circle of Life, there’s actually signage that explains what Circle of Life is. And it’s got Timon and Pumbaa, which is interesting because if you’re looking at the marquee for Circle of Life, all you see is really you see a globe and you kind of see Simba, Timon and Pumbaa, but they’re dark. their dark silhouettes against a bright globe. It kind of doesn’t really explain what and also the the title Circle of Life an environmental fable is not selling it to kids.

Jim Hill: No, no it isn’t but it did but again to their credit you know and Disney is about recognizing that you know from a signage point of view. But yeah, the other thing that’s interesting about this film is that it was it was actually done by the old Florida animation studio all of the animation was in fact a number of animators who actually worked on Lion King who did the… In fact, Florida basically did the I just can’t wait to be king number from the… Just can’t wait!

Len Testa: king! Oh, I was in the gym. was not picturing all that. Sorry.

Jim Hill: It’s alright. But yeah, they worked on it. it’s, you know, it’s a historical artifact of what this, you know… A more innocent time. When the studio actually used to be a studio. Hey! I remember that, vaguely.

Len Testa: So now we’re walking downstairs, we’re gonna walk past Living with the Land and past some ride named Soren. Living with the Land, I still love it. I still love the attraction. It got me interested in hydroponics, not for growing weed, I might add. I’m the one. But the sad part of that attraction is the narration has gone away. Yeah, so it used to be human narration, which, I mean, it hit or miss on the human narration. But now it’s just automatic and it’s lost some of its charm. The interesting thing that’s the exact same thing they’ve done on the buses. In fact, Disney…

Jim Hill: That’s right, no more bus driver narration.

Len Testa: And supposedly it was actually to shut down the infamous bus driver rumor. That the bus driver would entertain you by, well you know they’re gonna do the Smurf ride. A fifth gate is coming up soon. It is. But hey, I didn’t say that. Anyway, over here, so we’re walking up towards Soarin’ right now. So we’ve got bathrooms to our left, we’ve got Soarin’ straight ahead of us. 55 minute wait, I’m guessing it’s not really 55 minutes. We’ve got a 7.45 return time for FastPass. We’ve got people exiting from the boat ride. Hey Jim, have you ever been on the tour?

Jim Hill: behind the scenes back in the day though I mean it’s been a number of years since they’ve done it plants still grow the same way it’s totally cool well you know except for the horrible horrible man eating ones but actually what intrigues me about this attraction is that that literally when they put soaring in there’s good huge chunks of food rocks literally just feet off to the left of this I mean you you are cutting through parts of the theater. So essentially it’s to the left of the stamp entrance, But they’re right there. mean, literally behind the wall. fact, cast members, you if go… So if Tone Locke ever makes a comeback or… There you go. Get a food wrapper. yeah, it’s still not all there, but there’s enough there that… But, you know, again, theme park fans, you know, you know, are affectionate toward these things. The people who build the attractions are not. It’s like wall up. If they can’t see it, I don’t need to spend money on it. I don’t need to change that. And so it’s there. Speaking of things that are still there, let’s head over to the Imagination Pavilion. I hear there’s still some stuff on the second floor. So anything about Sunshine Season, have you eaten here recently?

Jim Hill: Yeah, in fact, I was backstage, this was 10 years ago now, and I was visiting a friend in Imaginary again. You know just walked up by the loading dock and literally sitting there on the loading dock, you know, just out in the Florida sun is the little house and the rooster. You know, remember, in here it was like every 15 minutes to mark the time the rooster would come out and… Oh yeah, right, right. It’s literally, it’s the whole house, it’s the assembly just sitting out in the sun. Back up the truck.

Len Testa: Well, that was the problem. I had a Geo Metro. spoiled again. Because I know they look in the windows and it’s like… Excuse me sir, I don’t remember you coming in here with your rooster friend. We just met. Yeah, that’s right. He asked me for a ride. He’s asking me to help move his house. that’s it. That’s fantastic. Alright, so we’re walking out of the land pavilion. A lot of people coming in here. I’m surprised the garden girl doesn’t do lunch. I don’t know.

Jim Hill: That is a surprise, but you know, the other thing they come up again, if you think about it, right now during food and wine, you don’t want people sitting down.

Len Testa: No, you want people moving around, going booth to booth, spending $3.25 per snack. absolutely, absolutely.

Jim Hill: But the other thing, frankly, that this is something that a lot of the restaurants at Disney World and a lot of the longer attractions are dealing with, as the ticket price creeps up, you you know this from the touring plans, that people aren’t really happy unless they get in at, what is it, nine point? Nine or ten attractions per… That’s it, exactly. And so actually the more that they if they did more they’d be even happier. But you know, so the reality is to sit down for a leisurely sit down meal. Yeah. So Epcot’s only open, Epcot’s open 12 hours a day on average. But not all of it. But not all of it. And the thing is too, if you’re going to you’re going to spend 90 minutes of it on on meals, you’re essentially taking what 15 % of your 15 % of your day to one meal. So that’s that’s why Quick service is flourished and unless it’s appointment dining or character dining. I mean, again, that’s one of the notions of changing Coraline, Coral Cafe, Coral Reef, an aerial dining experience. But even then, it’s just sort of like, I’m already doing well with that. Why would I change that? Let’s walk over to the Imagination Pavilion. This is an interesting walk from the land.

Len Testa: So we’re leaving a scented, so they’re piping out smells from Sunshine Seasons. It’s canopied, it’s dark, it’s shaded, it’s cool. And just as you leave the border of the Lant Pavilion, bam, you’re out in the Florida sun, and it’s 100 yards of concrete. It’s like the DMZ between attractions. All we need here are like Korean snipers up on the tower, and it would be more difficult. Just imagine it’s cooler than that. Get a home for that. Yeah, that’s it. Just imagine. Use your imagination to think you’re in Iceland or something like that.

Jim Hill: But this is, you know, lots of people have talked for years and years about the change out. of imagination and again this this honestly wasn’t disney’s fault again getting back to the the language it’s in the contracts that right at the time when this pavilion had to be changed in and kodak actually insisted but all the problem was the kodak was spinning it was the rise of the digital camera there film business was falling to the floor they didn’t have the big money for the redo didn’t have forty million dollars to spare you know and in fact home so you know it was and yet at that point it was something Pinder and Figment were quaint and I will tell you because I literally had a good friend who worked on the redo and he called me one afternoon and he said well they just sent me the list of celebrities for the attraction. It’s Gavin McLeod. Michael Jordan. Really? Well, was literally who Disney had relationships with, who the theme park rides were available to. And at one point they literally did a… The idea was you were being inserted into Michael Jordan’s imagination. And at one point, in fact, he sent me the art of, you know, with this giant sort of, you know, basketball-like copper structure. but had like a funnel going off and the idea that you were going to be put into this thing and then pressurized and shot into Michael Jordan’s imagination and learned about how to be an excellent athlete and Everybody was like this is the worst idea we’ve ever heard and how do we kill this? Who thought of this and how do we find them?

Len Testa: So we’re walking through the back of Imageworks Is there anything going on? Is there anything going on with the with the attraction by the way?

Jim Hill: You know, it’s weird on the back of this being a year where there have been a couple of very high profile appearances by, you know, the Dreamfinder character, coupled with how well the merchandise sells. There are always conversations now about, well, could we bring him back? But it’s like, it’s an exact… There have been, you know, they’ve discussed different iterations of it. You know, one version was, it’s like the Dreamfinder’s son has to learn the family business. And, you know, or we get a celebrity to be the Dreamfinder. you know, I’ve seen, again, the same thing. It’s the list where they had Steve Martin as the Dreamfinder. They had Jack Black as the Dreamfinder. know, Jack Black as Dreamfinder might actually work. That was the idea that you go with a young enthusiastic. He could do sequels. And it’s a strange time because it’s just like everyone acknowledges there’s affection for the character but the other thing is that and nobody ever talks about this but Dreamfinder and Figmen It’s they aren’t just Disney’s they are co-owned by Kodak.

Len Testa: they really? I didn’t know that. so there’s intellectual property shared.

Jim Hill: That’s it. Exactly. You know that this was a character that was invented for that pavilion and so now you’re in this situation where If you’re do something with him, you have to get the character, you know, have to get Kodak on board.

Len Testa: I’m gonna see what this one does. So Jim and I are now playing with the Figments Melody Maker thing where you wave your hands and you get to different things. We’re doing apparently whatever, no matter how I wave my arms, I’m doing tuba. Hope you guys can listen to this. I’ll give you a couple seconds of background music. staring at me with his dead eye. I’ve got, it looks like Ariel in DCA. I’ve got nothing but tuba here. What’s going on? All right. So apparently most of the orchestra is on honors. So we’re walking through the rest of the imagination pavilion. You’ve also got an area where, this was my favorite part of the first version. So it’s lighted squares that you jump on and different sounds come out. This is just an advanced version of what was upstairs in Imageworks. Absolutely. It’s nice to see them revisit the concept. But, and, and…

Jim Hill: Doesn’t everyone want their living room to work like this?

Len Testa: I’m not coming to your house. No, I… Again, this is what was affordable. know, in fact, they recognized from the first horrible redo that they had to do something. They found more money. You know, and they literally lifted up pieces of the track to try to put them back into the attraction. The interesting thing about this, about Imageworks from my perspective is the, you know, the Fignance melody thing is great. The sound squares that you jump on and make noise, that’s great. Really everything else is webcams to send pictures back home and they’ve got one, two, three, four, five, seven, nine of them. It’s the bulk of the space is really webcams. And I know that was great technology. back 15 years ago, who, dude, my iPhone does this now. Better I might add. What else is eating up 90 % of the space? Oh, retail is eating up rest of the space. I mean, just, was, they had to persuade when they were doing the redo that they were going make money. And this is between print on demand and, you know, in fact, that’s the other part of the story that in regard to shutting down the original… version of the attraction. They didn’t tell the retail people. They just asked, well, we’re going do this, we’re going to take Figmen out. And it’s like, are you high? You’re going to do what? We make $500,000 a year off of plush for Figmen. Where’s my half million dollars?

Jim Hill: Yeah, where else is that going to come from? And it’s like, well, no, we have to do this. Kodak wants us to.

Len Testa: So yeah, between the awful, let’s put celebrities in it, to, know, Doug and I, there was one version where they were actually, Disney had the rights to Wallace and Gromit in the theme park. And we’re gonna I love Wallace and Gromit. And they wanted that, you know. Im motioning to Laurel to go up the stairs at Imageworks. She won’t do it. We’re gonna walk away Laurel, you do what you think is best. Alright, you wanna walk over to see Future World East?

Jim Hill: so sorry, EO, how long is this thing gonna be here? By the way, Michael Jackson’s still dead. another part of the story i think we talked about this earlier with the the amount of money george lucas is a very interesting deal with the waltham’s net company The deal is not only with the money he makes off of helping to develop the attractions and that sort of thing, but for every year an attraction is open in an individual Disney park, every single attraction that has his name on it from the mind of George Lucas or whatever it is, he gets a million dollars a year. Wow. Okay. So when they decided to bring Captain EO back, there was no person on the planet more thrilled than George Lucas. Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. Four hundred or four billion dollars for doing nothing. For something he did 20 years That’s it exactly. Just hey You know that I I love this idea says Lucas. So do you need a quote from me? Or my accountant?

Len Testa: So we’re walking back towards Inventions East. We’re going past the upside down waterfall in front of Imagination. It’s to our right. To our left is the back of Inventions West. this is the of the, it used to be the Epcot history thing was here. They’ve got restrooms and stuff over there and we’ll walk over that way. It’s nicely shaded over here too I might add.

Jim Hill: Absolutely. But again, for a temporary display space, know, and again, you keep these things in your inventory just in case you need them. just circle back for just a second. I got this from the head of communications and imaginary. Jackson, Captain EO will stay open as long as there’s a crowd. And then when…

Len Testa: Define crowd though, did they say?

Jim Hill: Well, you know… mean, still pulling in a few people. It’s probably doing better than imagination was. I hate to say this, but with the Conrad Murray trial going on right now, it’s like, hey, yeah, let’s go see that. Michael Jackson is still in the news one way or the other. Yeah. Cirque du Soleil is starting its tour. It’s Michael Jackson themed show next year. I would anticipate…

Len Testa: Is that a tour they’re going to Vegas with that?

Jim Hill: Well, just this morning I saw the ad for the stop here in Orlando. So it’s a concert tour. Wow, really? anyway, if you don’t like Captain EO, I don’t have good news for you, it’s here for a while.

Len Testa: That’s fine, because originally they said, originally said it’s a limited engagement. They actually promoted it. Limited engagement. You know, we don’t know how long this is going to last, but now we’re on year two, right?

Jim Hill: Yep. And I would anticipate at least another two. At least another two. At least another two.

Len Testa: And they’re going to replace, they’re going to bring back Honey and Shrink the Audience then? Because at that point it’ll be 30 years old, right?

Jim Hill: No. In fact, at that point it’ll be 20 years old. They got so many guest complaints about the snake. Oh, the effects in scaring children. And that was the thing, you bring your kid in, you sit them down, and yes, you’re walking in and they’re saying, by the way, this show has intense effects, intense effects, and who listens?

Len Testa: No, no one listens. um, oh! we’re walking past the middle part of Future World right now and there’s this really neat display that’s called Discover the Cranberry. It’s a cranberry bog in the middle of Future World. So right before the entrance to World Check, you can kind of see the US Pavilion off to side, but they’ve got this sort of triangular-shaped wooden planter. about two feet high. Around the edges are ferns, know, bushes, cranberry bushes. And in the middle is this cranberry bog, it’s about two feet of water, and they’ve got somebody from Ocean Spray standing in the middle of it, and the thing is filled with cranberries, it’s hysterical. Well, again, a floating planter, if you will. It’s a floating planter, that’s right, it’s water filled. So how long do the… they replace the cranberries? Those are real, right? Real cranberries.

Jim Hill: They came from the corporate headquarters in Lakeville, Massachusetts. What’s funny is that when they initially proposed this idea last year that did it for food and wine, and Disney wanted to test how long the cranberries were going to work. again, normally when… it’s fruit, it’ll perish, right? It’ll eventually go bad. Ocean’s Prairie does this all the time. They’ve built bogs at like Rockville Center, they built them on Hollywood Boulevard. They’re there for three days and then they’re gone. So they’re three days. Yeah, okay, so they’re talking about doing for six weeks So it’s like let’s do a very scientific Study so what they did is they filled a kiddie pool with water put it out back at Epcot filled it with cranberries and Every so days a few days would check to see how well the cranberries did they lasted like two or three weeks So now that just the plan is that okay, you know when they start to go off They will just take them all out and a couple weeks. We’ll get a skimmer. That’s That’s right. So But actually it gets better there as part of food of food and wine I forget the name of the chef but they’re going to do a cooking demo in the bog.

Len Testa: No! Seriously. they’re not using electric blenders I’m presuming here with that. That was my question but you know they promised me photos. With the Cuisinart? they hold the Cuisinart?

Jim Hill: Never mind that just standing in the crater. Never mind ocean spray the guys from OSHA will be there going no you don’t no you’re not. Watch out for that I mean just that kills me. That’s gotta be classic.

Len Testa: So we’re walking back towards the fountain right now. There’s not a show going on but you guys can hear definitely hear music going on in the Passing the stage that was built for what was the name of that stage show the Mickey’s Colorscape or something to that effect. mean the gimmick was… Mickey’s Colorscape didn’t involve LSD?

Jim Hill: Well, Georgia, actually what was funny is that they actually took… It was a show that had been done in front of the castle. It’s the Cinderella Castle of Tokyo Disneyland. You have to understand that you’re bringing an incomprehensible Japanese theme park show and dropping in the middle of Epcot. What could possibly go wrong with that? So it’s all of the characters on stage and it’s aliens arrive… And I say this this is the older edition of Epcot before they really did you know they really upped the colors right so it’s like the theme is that the aliens are arriving to steal all of the colors From Epcot yes, so they arrive it’s like wait a minute beige never mind obviously someone else has been here They’ve stolen the beige and replaced it with taupe Sandstone you know show kind of derailed in the first couple of minutes. That’s classic.

Len Testa: Alright, so we’re making our way to Future World East. We’re gonna walk through Inventions real quick. Sure. Alright. Elliot, do you like Electric Umbrella by the way? It’s one of the few places you can get free drink refills.

Jim Hill: Yeah, and here, know, particularly in this park, that’s a lifesaver.

Len Testa: Oh yeah, because we just walked through, what, three miles of concrete? And looming in the distance. Looming in the distance is mission space. That’s another one of those great what-if attractions. mean, don’t get me wrong, what’s there is good if you remember to keep your head pointed straight forward. You know, the… Yeah, I haven’t seen that many warning messages since Stialis first came out.

Jim Hill: Oh, no, no, absolutely, absolutely. But the original version of it was that you were actually supposed to get out not on, you know, I mean… not a simulator, not a test to go to Mars, you were actually supposed to fly to a space station and step out into this huge space that they were gonna convince you was in space, actual deep space, with this really relatively easy to pull off illusion. mean, mind you, it was a lot of computer power to do it. But you had windows on the floor, windows on the wall, windows on the ceiling, and you a starscape. that naturally rotated through all of the windows. nice. And just the whole notion of, I am some place because I can look out the window and see where I am.

Len Testa: Nice. So we’re in Invention East right now. We’re walking through the Underwriters Laboratory Lab where you get to play with different things and test them and break them. It’s a lot of fun. The thing I like about this the most is it’s hands on, right? So you can try and bust up a television and see what it’s like to open and close the door a million times. And just for effect, you guys have been here before, you know that there are pads where you can jump on a pad on the floor and when you do that, a door opens and closes. And as of now, each door, so the leftmost door, has been opened 974,500 times. into 88 times 89. So that’s great. Here’s one of my favorite rides though in all of interventions right here. It’s some of all thrills. Classic ride. I don’t know how much these things cost Jim, but if you ever need to stage a party, you put one these in your house.

Jim Hill: This is another one of those great what might have been this is the kooka arm. This is the kooka arm that’s the basis for the Harry Potter attraction over at Universal, right? And was supposed to be the basis of the Incredibles ride for Tomorrowland at both Disneyland and Disney World it totally would have made sense as an Incredibles ride. In fact, what was great about this proposed ride was that you could literally fine tune it. mean, you got on the thing and there were five buttons in front of you. And did you want the Jack Jack level, the Reload of Lee Gentle, all the way up to Mr. Incredible, where basically it shook you into the fillings came out of your head. Nice. It’s a great ride, though. It’s very customizable. And kids love it. Kids love the fact that you can actually, it’s interactive, right? can play with the track layouts and do whatever you want with it. it’s rewritable because the maximum score is just under 1,300 points. But they give you a score at the end. And depending on what your score is, if you’re at 500, they’ll tell you, next time do this and this and this, and it’ll be much more intense. And I think for teenagers, that’s like a… That’s

Len Testa: Could be, for interventions it’s not a bad attraction, it’s not bad at all. It’s a similar, you go through a natural storm and the cool thing is they walk you through all the things that a tornado can do and then they give you a series of choices on how you design your own suburban house. Things like whether you have a pitched roof or a flat roof and whether the sides of your house curve in a little bit or whether they’re straight. each of those decisions, whether you have shingles or tiles.

Jim Hill: Or you make it out of balsa wood?

Len Testa: I think it’s actually straw… No, wait, wrong story there, sorry. yeah, then they simulate a storm and then you go. But it’s pretty neat. It’s actually not bad, it’s in 3D too. Actually it’s 4D because they throw water on you when you’re going through the storm.

Jim Hill: You see, now that’s classic Disney education. it’s entertaining. Yeah, it’s entertaining and you’re learning something.

Len Testa: Let’s say I’ve learned now that the second floor of my house needs to be pitched in a little bit so that it’s not acting as a sail for the wind when tornadoes come. Absolutely. Absolutely. I it’s very good. Let’s walk back through Inventions because it’s air-conditioned and we’ll pick up with with Universe of Energy. So we’re walking out here and it looks like on our right they’re doing a new attraction called Habit heroes presented by Blue Cross Blue Shield Anthem and Blue Anthem and Blue Shield of Florida so I’m guessing that if it’s called the habit heroes and it’s sponsored by an insurance company I know what this is I know this is gonna be you’re gonna get halfway through the ride and they’re gonna decide that you don’t have coverage anymore they’re gonna kick you off sad but true but realistically know, Disney is on a health food kick. Disney is on, you know, the cliché of the theme park fan who is heavy set and eats only junk food is starting to worry Disney.

Jim Hill: Because it’s not how they want to represent themselves. Well, plus the parks are huge too, right?

Len Testa: I mean, it’s hard to get around if you’re… Yeah. Again, the 15 vehicles we just saw. That was actually amazing. I’ve never seen that before. That many ECVs stacked up. So we’re walking up to a universe of energy right now. We’re walking at the site of Inventions and we’re walking up onto the mirrored side of energy so all we see are the mirrored tiles and we’ve got the reflecting pool out back you know I think if they focus this the right way you could actually burn down in inventions isn’t that like an Archimedes mirror or something like that?

Jim Hill: Don’t tell people that. I’ve never actually seen it so what Monorail going overhead Monorail Burgundy again is that the exit to energy right there?

Len Testa: dumps you right over Ah dumps you right here. Okay good so let’s walk past energy anything going on with energy by the Well again remember we were talking about Ellen DeGeneres pushing very heavily to do the follow-up Nemo project. She was great in this, the way. She’s really lent this thing new life. The interesting thing, too, is because she sort of got her second wind with her talk show, and Bill Nye is still in the news, and he’s still active, this thing is what, 15 years old now? Yep. It’s still going strong. they’re looking to refresh. But the problem is that Ellen really no longer looks like Ellen did then.

Jim Hill: No, she looks slightly different. She’s getting older, but she still… no, no, no, no. It’s just the notion of… And more to the point, our attitudes toward technologies have changed subtly. So a giant oil refining company isn’t the best sponsor for you?

Len Testa: We need a variety of opinions on this, or variety of voices. what just happened in the Gulf.

Jim Hill: So as part of the bigger conversation with her is like, if we do this, would you be then be willing to help us with a redo of energy? The conversation is progressing. I won’t say that definitively, you know, it’s going to happen, but the conversation is progressing. So, Ellen wants to do a redo of Nemo, and this is sort of like, if you do that, you know, if we do that, can you do this for us? There you go. That makes sense. But anyway, here we come on mission space, and just kind of interesting to have to watch them take one of the simulators. fact, isn’t it interesting that the green one, is it the green one that actually spins?

Len Testa: The green one does not spin. orange one does so actually they should have inverted it green should have been for vomit as far as I was concerned but for the for the spinning end. yeah but what I’ve heard is I’ve heard that the green side will always have a lower weight than the orange side so even literally if there’s no one in the park there’s literally no one in either line the orange side wait time will always be higher than the green side just so if you have any doubt about which attraction which side you’re gonna go on you go on the group you prefer the green side just to avoid liability. Wow, okay. Makes sense.

Jim Hill: you know, again, sadly, this was a ride technology. They were hoping to walk around the world. And after all of the problems and, you know, the couple of, you know, between the health issues and the one or two people who, you know, seriously, know, there’s at least one or two people who walked out of this thing and keeled over. But the reality is… But there people who walk off of Snow White and kill over. it just happens. I mean, again, there’s 20 million people a year. Some people, statistically, will just It’s a city. It’s a full-size city. you know, just randomly, this will happen. But again, because the death was linked to… Yeah, they just come off the ride. Yeah. So it just, it became a ding. And now, this is not going to travel. And now, on the other hand, we’re walking up on test track and…

Len Testa: So you mentioned, sorry, you mentioned the deaths. Remember when there was the monorail accident a couple years ago? One of the things that we did for the guide was we figured out the deaths per passenger mile of the monorail versus of walking from the contemporary to the Magic Kingdom to try and figure out which mode of transportation was safer. So turns out that the fatality rate for pedestrians is significantly higher, like between 10 and 100 times higher than the fatality rate on monorails. No matter I don’t know how the monorail thing turned out but no matter what monorails are safer than walking.

Jim Hill: well also, you know to be honest if those who have lived in Orlando number of years now will tell you that you know there was a rather famous monorail fire back oh that’s right yeah they were they had to have back oh and they were on the berm rather sorry they were on the they were on the the track right in the middle. but it gets better they one of the theaters here in town turned it literally they did a musical called the great monorail fire and it felt like a community theater thing It it was in Rift on Disney. There were so many people who work for theme parks and who work with Disney here that it just did great business for the better part of two or three years.

Len Testa: The things you guys can hear in the background are the different cars for test track. It sounds like they’re really putting them through here. I they’re running through like every 10 or 15 seconds it seems like. It’s definitely got great capacity. More to the point.

Jim Hill: of you in California you’re going to get to ride a slightly dumbed down version of this in Carsland next time. Same technology right?

Len Testa: Actually I heard different car technology but same idea.

Jim Hill: the only difference with this one is there’s actually going to be a moment in the thing with two cars on the track where you’re going to race and pass one another. side by side right so that’s the thing right.

Len Testa: and is that going to be random so that one side wins sometimes? Or does random does random cost money?

Jim Hill: Well more to the effect of it’s getting random past legal Got it. You know in vehicles full of people so so we’re walking in the back of test track right now we’re gonna go into the Discovery Center where they’ve got all of the GM cars and The last time I was here Jim the thing that the thing that I noted was Jim had just started stocking Chevy volt sorry volts and they actually had one here. They’ve got a volt here, but you can’t touch it. Like here’s our new car. It’s going to save the company. You can’t get anywhere near it. Is that the one up there on stage?

Len Testa: I don’t know. Let’s go say. Okay. So we’re passing by a series of nondescript General Motors cars. There’s a Cadillac. Is that the volt? Seriously, we need… Remember the days when you could tell GM cars from everybody else? Fins. That’s what GM needs, Fins. Alright, we got a Cadillac, we’ve got… Oh, this is the Volt! This is the 2011 Volt, the all-electric. 93 miles per gallon, 37 highway. Gas only, 37. Let’s see if we can get in. Is it open?

Jim Hill: Oh, you can get in the Volt these days! Thank you, GM, for listening to me. You know, it looks like a regular car. It’s, uh, so we’re not se… So this is the second vehicle we’ve been in today besides the boat. It looks like a regular car. Actually, it’s pretty spacious. I’m kind of excited, actually, about the Volt. Yeah, I’m hoping you can catch this too. It’s not bad for a little car. Good. I’m glad to see it’s open. I hope they sell a million of them. Good for them. It’s lightweight. It’s small. It’s sleek. Is that a Sunroof? Durable 2 to 4. 2 to 4. No, it’s fine. fine. And the rest of it is just big GM cars. But the Volt is, I think, the star here. Although I’m a little scared that no one else is beside this other than you or I. You and me. It’s not a bad looking car. Alright. And that concludes our tour of… Actually, everyone’s over at the red convertible Camaro. Now I understand. Yeah, got it, got it, got it. That’s cool. All right, should we walk over to World Check-In? It’s only 1.24 miles, All right, fabulous. Let’s walk over. Maybe we’ll grab… It is food and wine, so maybe we’ll grab some food and or wine. A beverage, a beverage, we need a beverage. Where will we find a beverage? Food and wine, Alright, let’s go. Yeah, the exit’s that way. I love the gift shop. They cut a break with cars?

Jim Hill: Well, mean, think about it. You you’ve got this kind of scene of new merchandise. right, right. Cars and merchandise. Got it. A test truck. a franchise that they just they want to keep going. They just did Cars 2, is there gonna be a Cars 3?

Len Testa: No, actually the interesting thing is they have decided that from here on in it’s planes. In fact, John Pryor has just agreed to do the voice of a little Piper Cub character that you know basically is It’s just picture cars only done with 747s and in fact the the Learjet that Flynn Mcmissle traveled in around the world is kind of the introductory characters in this world.

Jim Hill: neat. So we’re gonna take a short break while we walk on the concrete walkway. Again, more concrete, Jim. concrete walkway over past the Odyssey to Mexico when we will pick it up in Mexico. See you guys then.

Len Testa: Jim, we’re here in World Showcase. We just walked past the Odyssey restaurant. We’ve got our nice cold Coca-Cola here. Interesting thing for me in terms of architecture for the Odyssey restaurant is there’s this pier that extends out from the Odyssey almost halfway, or about a third of the way, towards the bridge between Future World and World Showcase. And this pier is completely exposed. They’ve got a couple of seats with umbrellas at the end of it, but… There is literally nothing shielding you from the direct Florida sun on this pier. So it’s this concrete slab elevated above humid water. And there’s literally not a soul on this thing. It’s a modern day. It’s only like 82. When it’s like 95 degrees outside, mean there’s no one there now, no one would be out there. But the Odyssey has been closed for years, are doing anything with the Odyssey,

Jim Hill: Well, the Odyssey is one of the wonders of life, believe. It is pressed into service these days for special events, wine pairings or that sort of thing. there’s a an ambitious plan much in the same way that fantasy land has been extended reinvented in order the process of being over the magic kingdom Epcot, the heart of Epcot, the transition point between World Showcase and Future World is being eyeballed very heavily. Well, think about it. So many people come here and love to dine, but they also want to dine and watch, they want to watch Illuminations. the interesting thing is one of the primo places that you can actually watch Illuminations is Dead Center. Right here as you come up and so one of things that they’re eyeballing is You know in a weird sort of way moving the gift shops down rather than having them close to the water actually having them closer to the The entrance itself actually pushing out into the bay which has your ridiculous concrete thing right? But that then you put a giant Restaurant sort of a crystal palace that has lots of glass so you can see the affairs see the fireworks now Now if you do that though, it then proposes that if you’re redeveloping your waterfront area, you’re pushing out… Since we’ve got the bulldozers out… That’s right. Couldn’t you be doing something with Odyssey? where this gets interesting is that’s where they’ve talked about doing the Brazil. Brazil? Well, and that’s what’s funny is just lately the Brazilian press is all full of, you know, hey, Disney’s talking to us again and Disney’s like… No, we’re not. You know, and that’s the whole point of a confidential conversation, is it supposed to be a confidential conversation? Yes, we’ve actually seen tweets coming from people who said, can anyone speak Portuguese? Yes, yes. I need to translate this press release. So, going to be interesting to see that, like I said, this This plan extends beyond fantasy land. you know, now and remember, that was one of the things that frustrated people about the Cameron World of Pandora Avatar deal, is you’ve got Jay Raziddle talking about, well, we’ll just not do something we were gonna do. And it’s like…

Len Testa: So what did he just shut down? Exactly. So nobody knows where he shut down yet. Yeah.

Jim Hill: And so it’s like, what did he just pull the money for? Is that the redo of the heart of Epcot? Is that something else that was supposed to go into Animal Kingdom?

Len Testa: Amazing. So we’re inside the Mexico Pavilion right now. One of my favorite pavilions, not just because they have tequila, but because of the atmosphere and the plaza on the inside. there a, so Jim, you and I were talking about this at our meet, but one of the things I really like about what they’ve done with Mexico in terms of food and beverage is they’ve brought in, well they brought in new restaurants. now Mexico has two sit down restaurants, right? They’ve got Sena Gel, they’ve got La Hacienda, they’ve got the Cantina, and then they’ve got La Cava del Tequila. So they’ve really got four places for food and beverage. But the other interesting thing I really like about this is that since it’s not Disney run, you can actually talk to the people who run these things. So the people who are on Twitter, you could eventually meet. if you follow Kava Del Tequila on Twitter, you can actually come and ask to meet the guys who do the Twitter feed in Walt Disney World, which is really neat. you can’t get that. I let’s face it, not that I don’t love every single part of Walt Disney World, but I can’t imagine the guys at China doing that. But it’s a great thing, I really, really like it a lot. But that level of response to social media, mean, again, that’s the sort of thing where you then develop a relationship with a customer, they come back because, the guy came out and he talked to me.

Jim Hill: Exactly. So we were here on Saturday and Humberto, who’s one of the guys who does the Twitter feed, was leading the tequila thing.

Len Testa: And we know this because we were here one time tweeting out, hey, let’s go to La Cava. He, again, through Twitter, invited us in for some free chips and salsa. And so us sat there and planned to meet for 300 people. But it was literally because, hey, this guy, know, so somebody tweeted out, we tweeted back, you know, over a tequila and some chips, we said we should do meet. But those guys are really doing it. Disney’s kind getting into social media, but…

Jim Hill: It’s it’s classic Disney. We’re gonna get into social media. Let’s put an organization behind it with a strict hierarchy and an entire three ring notebook of rules around it.

Len Testa: No, that’s it exactly. That’s it exactly. Alright, so you wanna grab a drink? Sure. Thanks, Joe. So Jim and I are now walking back out of Mexico. We’ve just had a quick quality check of the wares, the sampling of the wares at Reserva de la… Sorry, at La Cava, we had some Reserva de la Familia. It was wonderful. We’re staggering now past the… This is where they did the Donald meet and greet, the three caballeros. By the way, I learned by the way yesterday at the Mexico meet where we ordered 150 margaritas that my Spanish improves with drinking.

Jim Hill: Well, to double back on the pavilion we just looked, this is the template for what they’re trying to do with all of the World Showcase pavilions. If you think about it, inside of a five-year period, you freshened up the rivers of time attraction by folding in the characters. You’ve created the character meet and greet area. You’ve totally redone your restaurant out front. You’ve added your tequila bar. You’ve totally re-energized this. You’ve created new, not only new venues for the family and new family experiences, you’ve also in cruise, you know, the amount of money you’ll make out of your restaurants and get people excited about coming back in. They’ve got four places now to spend your money on food. So this is, this is the template. This is, do you think it’s any coincidence that Mexico is run by an external group rather than Disney though?

Len Testa: Well, you know, that is that, that’s what they’re looking to do. Was it, was this a case with them where Disney said, here’s the idea that we have or maybe they came to Disney and said here’s the idea that we have and Disney let them try it because it was relatively low risk for Disney because they get a cut of that those sales right?

Jim Hill: they do they do so so really if they wanted to try it out if they wanted to put in a fourth at a fourth dining venue and they wanted to bring in you know tequila experts like Hilda they could do that this doesn’t really risk anything to Disney no but but at the same time you look at They are the ones who brought the expertise and the level of authenticity, the level of personalization. And now it’s a question of, how do you do that again? Right. What do we do then? You know, I mean, face it, we’ve walked now we’re here in Norway and we’re here at the, you know, just outside of the anchor house, which of course is where they do, you know, the princess breakfast, get the storytell, you know, the storybook dining. And you want to talk about shoehorning in something that doesn’t fit. Oh, geez. Yeah. This is so Norway.

Len Testa: I love the pavilion and I’ve actually been to Norway. I’ve been to Oslo. And so we’re sitting in front of the, the Norway pavilion right now. left is the Stave Church, which I love by the way, it’s one the iconic things. You’ve got the Puffins Roost and the Kringle Bakery Ag Cafe. You can see sort of the back of the attraction over here, back of Maelstrom, and then you’ve got Restaurant Akershus, which is, it’s the right architecture, mean, sort of rural, old, Norway does actually look like this. Interesting thing, so in Oslo, there’s a Norwegian architecture museum. But it’s not a building. It’s a collection of buildings that the Norwegian government has transported from around Norway to this one, like, you know, 500 acre park where you can literally walk in the buildings. They have literally an entire apartment block, a block of apartments in there from, you know, this is what Oslo looked like in the 1950s. They preserved it and moved it. There. This is, this is representative Norwegian architecture. Yeah. So, so actually going to Norway, I can tell you, it looks kind of like this. Yes, startling lack of princesses. Yeah, I didn’t see as many princesses, although they were all strikingly beautiful. mean, the men and women in Norway are amazing. But yeah, no princesses. And it could be so much more, although again, I will say my breakfast buffet in…

Jim Hill: Oslo in the hotel did actually have herring. I know, right? That’s bracing right there. But again, it’s just going to be interesting to watch the 10 year plan here as they walk around and attempt to do this to all the pavilions. Now, mind you, some of these things are hit and miss. I mean, as we get over to Italy, I was kind of shocked to hear about them shutting down the pizza place there for the three or four month three due. You’ve heard about this?

Len Testa: I heard the Vietnam police closing or I know the other restaurant that uh… to tell you is closing i my understanding was it was the the new pizza place that was shutting down for a review and you know startlingly so we were just there yesterday actually okay uh… i hope i’m wrong but supposedly there was some issue whether i mean sometimes it’s actually a good issue as in hey we need to increase our capacity we have you know so many more people coming right uh… but it’s always a little startling to have a facility that’s just been open suddenly close. the so I know that they don’t get a whole lot of use out of the well when we get to Italy we’ll talk about it but they don’t get a whole lot of use about it on the patio seating I never see anyone out there and that could be a that can be sure we’re coming up by the way on China guys and they’re the acrobats are actually performing right now. So it’s a little loud outside in China. is there anything going on with the China pavilion?

Jim Hill: You know, they just opened the new shopping area. Have you seen it?

Len Testa: Not yet,

Jim Hill: But as for China, yes, there’s… But the interesting thing is this is all piggybacking on Shanghai. I don’t know what you’ve heard about the entrance area for example for Shanghai Disneyland, but there’s no Main Street. There’s no Main Street in Shanghai, China? You know, there’s gonna be… I mean, there’s no retail corridor, there’s no shops. You’re gonna come into a garden. Is that a cultural thing that the Chinese government wanted to do or is that a Disney thing?

Len Testa: This Disney trying to be respectful of the Chinese culture, but I’ll tell you from chats with folks at Imagineering, they’re like… I’m not sure this is gonna work. mean, you know, but at the same time, realistically, what does turn of the century America mean to, you know, a Chinese national? It’s like, okay, interesting set of buildings. And in fact, they had an original take on the main street that was fascinating. It was literally taking iconic pieces of Disney architecture from Disney and Pixar films I met at. For example, you’d walk down a street where Gasto’s from Ratatouille is right next to the Darlings house from Peter Pan. Nice. You build the street of buildings that you recognize from classic Disney animated films leading to the castle. And that was in there. They looked at it. It’s out. Now it’s a garden. Really. And again, speaking of things that are out here, we are walking through what would have been Africa. Yes. So we’re at the African Opus for now. You may have heard the drums as we go through. They’ve turned it into a retail area, but this has got to be the largest unused space in World Showcase. think.

Jim Hill: No, absolutely. But there’s a giant expansion pad back here. And I think it’s if you ever seen the 1982… television special for the opening of Epcot. It’s literally this sad sequence where it’s Danny Kay and Alex Haley who is the author of Roots was actually going to narrate the the film that drove this attraction. They’re standing there in front of the model. it’s like…

Len Testa: Well, if you look at the Epcot book, right, the building, you know, tomorrow’s whatever, it’s got the whole thing about the Russia Pavilion, the Africa Pavilion, all the artwork is there. Everything’s there. Yeah.

Jim Hill: And in the end, it’s just this little sad moment, know, Danny shakes hands with Alex. Well, I’ll meet you back in here. It’s like, absolutely. And then, and then neither of lived to see it. Well, again, the only problem, and again, this is where it, this was what was problematic about Epcot. That, that, you know, sometimes people came forward. mean, for example, you mentioned the Russian Berlin. The, they had sponsors lined up multiple times. But the problem is Disney would all okay and go poking at who the sponsor was. And actually they’d figure out the money was coming from the Russian mafia. And these days they’d be like, okay Actually, the word would be oligarch now, wouldn’t it?

Len Testa: There you go

Jim Hill: But in the case of the African Pavilion, it kept coming back to South Africa, was the only place that came to… Blood diamonds?

Len Testa: Yes! Was it really? Seriously! And it was just one of these no-suits like, oh no Thanks, really no Yeah, and it just, again, just broke the back of it They couldn’t it made That’s funny. Ah, so we’re here It is actually October and we’re in Germany for Oktoberfest. Jim, had we not had a very lovely shot of tequila about five minutes ago, I’d be buying you a beer right now. So, what do think about the Germany Pavilion? I kind of like the outside. The thing I wish about the German Pavilion was that it needed more depth. So it’s got a restaurant, it’s got a good restaurant, right? mean, Beer Garden’s very popular, it’s good. It’s relatively easy to get into. The shopping is good as far as shopping goes. It’s actually, seems to be like decent quality stuff. There’s just no reason to come here, right? Other than you need a place to eat or you really want some some Riesling, right, wine, why would you come here?

Jim Hill: Well, we’re actually walking toward what was supposed to make you come here. So we’re walking in past through Summerfest actually. We’re walking towards a giant mural on a wall. This is an interesting entrance though for a… for a restaurant with the archway and everything like that it almost looks like the entrance to a ride. was the entrance to a ride. are, in fact, what’s sad is if you walk through that wall, in fact it’s now used as rehearsal space for high school groups who come here and perform. There is a full-size ride building back there. and it was going to be for the Rhine River ride. You were actually here, the boats were going to come up, you’d board, and then you’d float for five to ten minutes past miniature recreations of the Black Forest and great pieces of German architecture. It was going to be charming. you know…

Len Testa: Yeah, really, it’s kind of funny because we’re standing in the very front of the building. It’s where Summerfest is. They’ve installed sort of the counter service in the front here. And then there’s some tables, but dear God, it’s nothing, it looks nothing more like than the entrance to a ride. I mean, you’ve got a huge arch here. With a banner that says welcome and you’ve got actually you’ve got that you’ve got a pastoral scene. You’ve got a castle mural You’ve got you’ve got the river itself It looks like they’ll watch this space Absolutely, and if you think just how easily you drop the queue in yeah, yeah I mean you could you could definitely put a put a queue right in here very easily It would dump out inside and as you walked out you would pass the you know the the Oktoberfest restaurant and it’s like Bratwurst, I smell Bratwurst. I need the coleslaw and some hot potato salad.

Jim Hill: It was something that was supposed to happen. fact, was it a funding thing that they couldn’t find a sponsor for it? Or was it just that we’ve got enough boat rides? Well, the interesting thing is the structure was there. They built it. it’s yeah. I mean, they’ve already built the building, right? Yeah. And it’s sort of like in the case of the Japanese pavilion where they had built the structure to put the meet the world show in. I mean, it’s still back there. They have this giant show building that no show went into. And now it’s used for temporary storage. And, you know, it just The belief was that okay in year two three you know we’ll add this stuff but not understanding that in year two three of Epcot’s life 1983 1984 Oh recession. Not only that but you change out Disney’s management. know.

Len Testa: yeah nobody yeah so that was the that was the beginning of the Eisenhower era right that was the end of the Miller era. So we’re walking up now we’re leaving Germany we’re walking past the bathrooms on our left and the miniature train set which I love by the way. It’s adorable.

Jim Hill: But yeah, so much was going to happen and just ultimately, you know, just again, ICER came in and you have to just say one of the reasons ICER came in is Disney stock took a severe hit after Epcot opened because it was like now suddenly the financial community was actually paying attention to what Epcot’s attendance was because this was his $800 million project. $800 million. It’s adorable. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, that was kind of the beginning of the end for that management team. Now, mind you, Card Walker… set up Ron Miller and Ron Miller got a lot of stuff going. mean, whether from the Disney Channel to Touchstone, I mean, the first Disney adult films, but just didn’t get enough time.

Len Testa: that’s amazing. So we’re coming up on Italy right now. We’re passing the gelato and espresso stand. We’re coming up on the replica of the St. Mark’s Square, the Basilica. You’ve got the juggler out. That’s very good. So interesting thing. I was in Italy earlier this year and I was in Vicenza so it’s halfway between Milan and Venice in the Veneto. Lovely place. It’s actually got a square that I swear to God looks almost exactly like this. Obviously it’s much larger but it’s got sort of this building. It’s got this campanile, this bell tower right here and then it’s got shops like this. The only thing that would be different, real Italy has far more gelato and shoe stores than Epcot does. I mean really like it’s like It’s like the entire business of Italy, as far as can tell, is selling ice cream, shoes, and leather goods.

Jim Hill: Well, maybe some of the Disney can make a nice shoe-shaped ice cream bar.

Len Testa: Honestly, if they put a shoe store in here and they sold gelato outside, it would be Italy, as far as I’m concerned. Wow. OK. It was lovely. was lovely. So anything going on with the Italy people?

Jim Hill: Not so much, but I… Well, they got the two restaurants around us, so they’ve got a Viannappoli that just opened. We ate lunch there yesterday. It was fabulous. They are like any other restaurant, or actually any other country in Epcot. They are looking to increase the amount of character interaction. In Italy, really? And well, they’re looking to actually do… In fact, it’s kind of bit them in the butt. They were working with Julie Taymor to do a… a live stage version of Pinocchio and they’re actually going to bring those interpretations of the characters here but Julie kinda went dark and then Julie kinda went to go work on Spider-Man and I think we all know how that ended so I don’t know if that’s actually gonna happen but it’s interesting you’ve stopped here between America and Italy because you’ll notice there’s a large chunk of space here yeah there is actually so between Italy and the United States Pavilion this actually was going to be out behind the American Pavilion they were plans based on how well Epcot did during its opening years to build and it just boggles the mind to hear this a second lagoon.

Len Testa: So a lagoon like a figure eight shaped lagoon?

Jim Hill: Well more to the effect of a large reflecting pool type lagoon the idea was there would be space back there for upwards of five to six more pavilions and what they wanted to do was actually dropped the soviet union at the other end of the reflecting pool so you have you know america across from its you know and united you know i think it was the freedom pool or they were they were discussing something to that effect that’s classic yeah but the interesting thing is that that was of course before they built you know point of vista street or bonavista avenue whatever they call out there and more to the point the Caribbean. In fact, where the Caribbean Hotel is sitting right now is pretty much where the Soviet Pavilion would have been sitting.

Len Testa: my god, that’s amazing. You know, but at the same time, mean, there are huge pieces, expansion beds, and you just don’t see them because of the ornamentation. mean, for example, when they were going to do the Swiss Pavilion, was going to, obviously because Switzerland stands between Germany and Italy, it was going to be dropped there with the Matterhorn out behind all of these places. Yeah, um, no, it’s, you know, you have to understand that there was a time that Epcot, hoped to have 32 countries in here. Wow, and so they’ve almost tripled what they have now. Well, for opening day they only had eight. Alright, let’s depart Italy and head to the often-misnamed United States Pavilion. I swear to God, Jim, it’s not called the American Adventure. That’s the name of the attraction that’s on the inside. The outside is the United States Pavilion.

Jim Hill: good, No, that’s… It’s kind of a fascinating attraction in that they tried and tried and tried to come up with a way to make this work. You know, one version, was a flume ride where you were going by figures, you know, of American folklore while… Daniel Boone, David Crockett. Paul Bunyan. Paul Bunyan? Seriously. And, but again, with a blaring, you know, this land is your land, this land is my land. And then from there, finally after like the third try and they actually brought in a Hollywood filmmaker as an outside contractor and I’ve been trying for… upwards of 10 years to get the name of the guy who turned in the really lousy version of American Adventure. Yep. And finally, Randy Bright was like, well, look, let me try. And he’s the one who came up with the show. He’s the one who came up with the whole war wagon concept of film elements and AA figures and all that. And it works. Mind you, it, you know, because of course they had to get a sponsor. Okay. Sorry, Jimmy. want to pause your, I just heard for second. So it’s food and wine.

Len Testa: You expect to see people walking around with alcohol this dude just walked by us with a beer in each hand and then a frozen slushy alcoholic drink cupped it grabbed in his mouth He’s holding onto it by his teeth. I love food and wine Jim. I love food and wine That’s American ingenuity at its finest. That’s what it is right there. That’s what made this country great. Anyway, again, he comes up with a concept The rest is they say it’s history But again, it’s only what they could get American Express and Coca-Cola to agree to. A fine company by the way, American Express. But, you know, just the whole notion of, we’re going touch on slavery, we’re going touch on World War II, and speaking of which, we’re coming up on the Japanese Pavilion and this, they actually had built the… So it’s interesting that the United States Pavilion is between Italy and Japan, two countries that we fought in World War II. We’re gonna put Morocco there right in Germany, right? So it’s it’s German It’s like the acts of the axis powers right between the American is it but we’re all friends now. That’s true We’re all friends, right, you know anyway, they did the it was actually World War two that that defeated In a weird sort of way the meet the world attraction coming into Japan. I mean they built the structure and But the word began to get out that when the show was installed you know for tokyo disneyland and i want you to send what’s weird about the stories tokyo disneyland opens in eighty three right there and so obviously again meet the world was going to be a phase two attraction was going to show you know open as the park at more popular but as people began to go over and visit tokyo disneyland and it literally get to the moment in the story of the history of japan where World War II was going to occur. they’re in the middle part of the 20th century. there’s just, the theater goes black. There’s a thunderous crash. And basically the narration says, and then something bad happened. And then it’s almost dot dot dot. And then, we, you know, we learned from those times and we became the nation we are now. And it was like, it’s like, wait a minute. In the state that is filled with World War II retirees, you’re going to put in an attraction that goes dot dot dot and then something bad happens. And I was like, that’s it. No, no sale. I mean, was just like, no, we can’t do that. And, um, and Disney then couldn’t go to its, you know, its partners at Oriental Land Company go, Oh, by the way, we’re going to change the attraction that you spent all that money on and put it in a World War II scent. That would have been offenses to them. So, so here we are. Wow. That’s amazing. So, uh, so what we got though, from a Japan pavilion actually is pretty spectacular. It’s one of the best, I think, executed pavilions, for one, without a ride. So this is, think, you contrast what Japan has with what Germany has, neither pavilion has a ride. I think Japan is much more interesting. Number one, it’s got a huge retail space, the former Mitsukoshi department store here on the ground floor. Up above you’ve got two different restaurants. You’ve got Tokyo dining and the grill. But farther back though, they’ve used the space farther back now, they’ve got a sort of a food retail thing where you can do sake samples. And then to the right, they do, they always do some sort of Japanese art. It could be, you know, cartoons or animation. One time it was tin toys, sports. And now it’s been, for a couple of years now, it’s been spirited animals, but it’s… It’s an interesting display because it’s a nice little walkthrough too. But at the same time you look literally you see this gateway. This was how you were supposed to enter. You go through these double doors and in fact you can actually see the giant set of doors that were going to be meatballed. Oh yeah so we’re actually walking farther into the Japan Pavilion. We’re coming up on the… If you guys are familiar with it you walk towards the back and there’s this nice little bridge. And it’s a sort of covered arch and you walk through the arch and I think there’s what? There’s a horse? A horseman? A samurai on horse on one side but then it’s a huge set of very formal, very heavy looking double doors like eight inches thick each and then that leads to the bridge and then that leads to the back part. It’s set up like a a courtyard like an imperial courtyard. Absolutely. But at the same time it was you driving you in again you literally that’s where just meet the world right there. That’s where the sign was supposed to be. Wow. That’s impressive. Yeah. This is a this is a great entrance. So you walk past you walk past the entrance arch and there’s this moat on a castle and you’ve got these huge rocks going up you know three or four stories to this curved sort of Asian art curved arts roof roof line and you’ve got you’ve got the it is like it’s like entering a castle this is fantastic. The color scheme is very consistent you’ve got the grays you’ve got the dark woods going in but it’s really a well conceived attraction. You have this dramatic entrance to nothing. You’ve got gallery space. again this could have been a ride. But the funny thing is that again Eisner comes on board he walks around Nebcar it’s like look we need thrill rides. and one of the things they were looking at is like, well, it has no mountains. So there was one weird moment where they were not only talking about building, know, bringing the Matterhorn, which by the way, the Matterhorn, they tried to bring the Matterhorn to Florida multiple times. fact, it was… is the world’s first tubular steel roller coaster. hear anyway, it’s a rumor going around. But Nunes actually wanted to build it in the back of Fantasyland. In fact, what he wanted to do was that the train would go through the Matterhorn And as you the train was rolling through they do a snow scene and you will literally get the blast of ice nice nice But here you know that so they had the model and so they think they drop it in behind Italy and Germany and it’s just like okay could work there, but here they were thinking well wait a minute Why don’t we do a Japan bullet train? What’s your mouth Fuji? Okay, but here’s where it gets interesting so yeah, why couldn’t they make a double train well? Here’s the problem you start by being Mount Fuji When the film company that you have to deal with for the entire theme park is Kodak. Okay, Fuji film. Yeah, so so they were so the the Kodak has got wind of this and said Can we have a call? Can we have a phone call on this? So now the project gets named Fire Mountain. good. Fire? Sounds like Adventureland. Okay. But, you know, but again, this is Eisner walking in the door. This is the Hollywood guy. And it’s like, you know what? Need something in there. And I swear to God, I mean, this sounds so unlikely, but I have talked to the Imaginers and they actually showed me the drawing. The bullet train was going to bring you three times over the course of the road in close proximity with Godzilla. me counterintuitive because you’re running out of energy at the end of a roller coaster. But you looped over Godzilla’s head and through his mouth and then you went into a… Like as the mouth was closing?

Jim Hill: Well just, I think he was… Oh he’s eating you. He’s supposed to be eating you. Ah, so again, if that was the concept I totally would not have got it the first time I wrote it. But again, it was one of these things where they went to Toho and Toho said, that’s very nice. And we would like this much money. And Disney said, don’t really like it that much. Toho being the guys that own the rights to take Godzilla. There you go. So again, propose, not build.

Len Testa: That’s amazing. So the Godzilla thing would have been interesting. And the funny thing is, is it probably would have looped back now because there was a mini Godzilla revival. Five years ago, right? But who knows what they could have done with with Disney’s with Disney’s backing on it. More to the point, there’s another Godzilla movie coming in like weeks. Is there really another Godzilla movie? Yeah. Really? So we’re walking up on we’re walking up on Morocco right now past and again, is is food and wine. And it’s more importantly, it’s food and wine in the afternoon past quitting time when more locals are out. We’ve got quite a quite a crowd coming up on Morocco. Morocco, Jim, actually, I think is my favorite pavilion in all of World Showcase. love the design and I love the architecture. I was young the first time I came here. Did they used to be a film here?

Jim Hill: No. No film? was just imagining? They had a tourism video something? I mean literally there was one of the shops that sort of had a magic mirror.

Len Testa: That’s it, that’s what I remember. Let’s walk through the Morocco Pavilion. It honestly has some of their very best theming. So the thing that I like about it is the paths aren’t linear, so it kind of curves around. And there are multiple ways to get there. It’s almost like a Moroccan market. The no one ever goes in the sword. We’re facing the pavilion You’ve got the sort of the archway the blue archway in front of us to our left is a is a display on Moroccan style. So it’s personal artifacts from Morocco. I swear to God nobody ever goes in it. We’re standing here right now No one is is opening the doors. It’s air-conditioned. It’s quiet. I guarantee Jim we go in there’s two people or less now Let’s go try it out. So we’re going through the Morocco pavilion one of the interesting things about the Morocco pavilion is that If I understand correctly didn’t didn’t the king send over like his personal? is personal artists to work on this, but so we’re in the space and there’s exactly two people besides Jimena. But it’s totally funded by the royal family. It’s a wonderful space, by way. It’s really nice. So the thing I love about this is we’re into the, we’re into the Morocco, by the way, Jimena and are the only people in the Morocco Valley, but look at the intricate tile work of the stucco on the walls. This isn’t just a flat wall. There’s All sorts of geometric patterns in the walls and each one these are done by hand. This is not, know, hey, we’re going to stamp this out in a factory in China and we’re going go do this. This is all done by hand. It’s amazing. The tile work, but even look at the ceiling. The ceiling is the same way. Literally it’s floor to ceiling. Nothing but detail. The intricate artwork on the wood that keeps you on the sides. It’s really nice. All of the tile work, mean years and years and years of craftsmanship went into this. You smell the leather. smell the It’s right. It’s cool in here. dark, it’s quiet, it’s incredibly detailed. We’re entering what might be actually my entire favorite space in all of Epcot. So you go through the back door of the Moroccan style display and you enter into this fabulous courtyard. It’s a two-story courtyard and there’s a fountain in the back. It’s two stories, you look up top and it’s incredibly detailed. all tile on the bottom, tiled columns, it’s got four columns on each side. It’s just a beautiful space. It’s open at the top, it’s a square. On the bottom floor is nothing but tiled walls, blues, yellows, reds, greens. On the second floor is sort of a white wash, a white stucco with brown wood balusters all around. then these incredibly, these very pretty lamps in shades of yellow, green, and red. And it’s opened up to a beautiful blue sky. The thing I love about this is… It’s a great place to sit and relax. Very few people ever come in here, very few people actually make it this far back in the pavilion, number one, Number two, it’s got little benches set up for just sitting and relaxing, and you notice it’s all in the shade too. And then you’ve got the fountain over here, so you’ve got a little bit of noise. I think this is my favorite space in all of it.

Jim Hill: Yeah, and the sad thing is the time this most often got used. Do you remember when Hulk Hogan and Chris Lemon were shooting that action series here? This was… They did that on Seven Seas Lagoon. Well, but you you remember they fought terrorists. they were literally… I mean this became the unnamed Arab country in countless… Morocco did? Yes, in countless episodes. So they would stay all sorts of… you can hear this tranquil, wonderfully detailed courtyard would be full of, you know, squibs and the fake machine guns so Hulk and Chris Lemon could defeat the evil. But yeah, that was in the day when they were using Epcot basically as their backdrop for these foreign sets. Yeah, traveling the world.

Len Testa: So now we’re in the very back of the courtyard. We’ve got there’s again. There’s another front in the distance. We’ve got a restaurant Marrakesh here. Have been in a restaurant Marrakesh?

Jim Hill: Yeah, it’s one of my favorite restaurants and it never gets it’s never crowded by the way Do see the see Heather doing water runoff here on the walls? So the water comes up from the ceiling and then it runs down instead of pouring off It comes down here and then ends up circulating here. It’s a very nice way of doing I love Morocco. No, you have to, if you’re going to make it back to Marrakesh, you have to do the tea ceremony here. Have you ever done that?

Len Testa: No, I’ve never done this tea ceremony. What time is it? time do do it?

Jim Hill: Actually, I’d say, again, I did this like five or six years ago. I’m not sure what the times are today, but it is such an elaborate presentation. mean, it’s at the restaurant, at the restaurant, a tea ceremony. Then it’s they do this, this hot mint tea that you, it’s so counterintuitive. You would think you’re in Florida. This shouldn’t be refreshing. It’s mint. It’s mint and it just it’s gotta be cool. Yeah. No, no, seriously If you can make sure to get there for the tea ceremony, it’s just it’s amazing. Is it part of a meal or you just just show up?

Len Testa: Well, they get it. That’s the weirdest part is that they get so little attention back there. It’s true, know, it’s like hi We’re here for the tea ceremony. Oh, okay so it’s funny cuz Morocco is number one Morocco is my the restaurant where I take people who Don’t aren’t sure whether they’re gonna like ethnic food Number one, because you can always get in last minute. Number two, literally every single person I’ve ever taken here has been surprised about how good it is. There’s really nothing wrong with the menu.

Jim Hill: And more to the point, this was actually the first pavilion that was built after Epcot opened. Obviously China opened somewhat late and there were individual films and that sort of thing. But this sort of gave you the sense of what they could do if they had full support and full money. From a government-sized entity. Have you ever been to a tangerine cafe by the way?

Len Testa: No, can’t Oh, it’s fabulous! So they’ve got shawarma, so they’ve got lamb and chicken and beef and stuff. It’s really good. Yeah, actually it’s one of the… We ate here for our pre-half marathon lunch. It was great. But you know, the saddest part of this story is that there are so many people who will use the bathrooms next to Morocco, but will not go into Morocco. The bathrooms are pretty popular, but yeah, it’s amazing because it’s a wonderful… it’s a wonderful attraction. Hey, between here and France, there’s actually enough space for a small pavilion. Like a Luxembourg. Not a pavilion, but the actual country itself. Actually, what’s fascinating, if you ever manage to get backstage… You mean legally yes all right between France and Morocco Every single one of the food things that we’ve the little individual food carts that were walking by here the pork yep Whatever they that’s where they live the rest of the yeah. So we they they walk us back there for the before the marathon and the half marathon so it’s funny because you can actually You know you’re walking back there. It’s like four o’clock in the morning They’re walking you back to the race start for the half marathon so you’re going behind stage backstage at the and you’re walking past the food and wine booths, but they’re just shuttered. They’re all there. You can see the names on them. You can see Belgium and Canada and stuff like that. But there’s nothing there. It’s really weird. It is, is.

Jim Hill: But at the same time, I’m just a fan of how the machine that is a theme park works. Yep, and that’s where they store them. They don’t store them in a warehouse. They store them outside. I think they just touch up the paint every year. No, that’s it. That’s it exactly. Just dress them up, them out. They’re there for the six weeks and they sit and wait for the next Seat Center shows. Sure, so we’re walking away to France right now. So we’re packing passing back the Crepes stand and then there’s a champagne stand. To our left is, is this Chef de France? Which is amazingly popular. You’d think French food would not be that popular.

Len Testa: The thing that I like about France, it feels like France, right? So there’s little alleyways and stuff that you walk through. The thing that amazes me about the attraction, well two things really. One is the film hasn’t changed. Number two, if you’re looking at the pavilion, so we’re facing the Eiffel Tower, the Chefs de France is to our left. We’ve got fountains in front of us. We’ve got the film straight ahead. There’s a pretty big distance between us where we’re at and the right. It’s a garden and then there’s a huge space back over here that really isn’t used for anything. If you go past the Parfumier, there’s really nothing over there. you wonder like, was that… Let’s walk this way. Walk it up. So we’re walking up the street. We’ve got, again, we’re walking. Chef’s is on our left. Impression de France. The theater is in front of us. We’ve got the perfume place to our right. But Jim, I want to show you this over here. This is where I think they should have moved the patisserie over here and put the parfumerie over there And I don’t know why they did it because if you walk through here Alright, if you walk through the the Beaux Arts gallery In the library, there’s a there’s a lovely little arcade right here, right and it’s sort of like a French arcade, right? Like they have in Disneyland Paris, but you walk through this side and we’re walking through it now. It smells really good actually. So after a day of walking around in front of a smelly tourist to walk through the perfume place in France, by the way, is a huge, huge relief, I must say. So we come out on on the quai, and there’s nothing here. Okay, they’re getting ready to do an aurora meet and greet or something, but, but there’s really nothing, I this is beautiful space. You’ve got flowers everywhere. You’ve got, you’ve got the, the river and the, the lake in the background you’ve got this it’s usually a paris behind you look there’s like six people here this this to me is like this is a completely unused space okay.

Jim Hill: there was at one time a plan for a crazy cabs through the streets of paris ride i mean a kind of a mr toad’s wild ride. The wild ride to Mr. Toad?

Len Testa: the wild ride to Monster Toad. There we go.

Jim Hill: As opposed to… I’m not doing the frog-leg jokes. The why… No, wait. It actually… Sorry, I’m doing iterations of this joke. It’s the ride wild to Monster Toad. There we go. But, you know, they just recognize… In fact, that’s… I remember… Talking with Gary Goddard about this and they were you know after a while it was like they were doing every pillion It’s like you gotta be kidding me. It’s another movie, and we need rides We need rides and so they wanted to do you know just figure it’ll be fun We’ll just do so a silly version of Paris and the car will rock back and forth and you know and in the end You know they did the proposal they had the artwork They just couldn’t find a sponsor and more to the point a lot of the people they approached you know neck you know you know Like the car company so it’s got a Peugeot and it’s like you know it’s like you know they were offended you know Tom you know everybody they went to.

Len Testa: And really it’s funny because I’ve seen the theme park attractions that Peugeot sponsors. They could do better. So they’ve actually got this ride in Alton Towers. It’s Peugeot mini drivers or something, whatever it’s called. But it’s the lowest capacity theme park attraction I’ve ever seen in my life. There’s no way it can get 60 people per hour, 60 people per hour.

Jim Hill: If you could go out and give people massages faster than that. Yes, so Peugeot could have done better. So I think they said no to the wrong company here. But again, so many of these Epcot pavilions were supposed to have a phase two. mean, for example, we’re going be crossing the bridge shortly. we’re going over this bridge. Is this the that was inspired by the Pont des Arts? That’s That’s correct. But for England alone, there was the English Music Hall. There was the River Thames attraction. There was even the Christmas Carol ride through. all of them designed. know, mean, that one, literally you were going to go buy show scenes out of Christmas Carol, whether it was the ghost of Christmas present. Just thinking of the souvenirs. And actually, Germany has a little bit of a Christmas place, but they totally could have done that. Wasn’t the postcard invented in Greek? The Christmas card was invented in Greek. I believe so. I do believe so. But in the end, it opened. Epcot did OK, but not the sort of attendance levels that Disney had promised and that was kind of the beginning of the end for that iteration of the Disney Company’s management team. That was when the green mailers may begin. Right, That’s the beginning of the end and the entrance. So here’s the funny thing, Jim. So we just walked through German sausage. We walked through pasta in Italy. We walked through baklava and coffee in Morocco. We just walked through wine in France. Now they make you walk up a steep bridge. is really your car. Are you dead yet?

Jim Hill: Well, you know, that was always the story about Alfredos. that yeah in Italy yeah I mean so yeah so fettuccine alfaretto is like 27 or 2800 calories right most of it bad fat literally people go in and eat the giant bowl of you know fettuccine carbonara and start to walk around the world show because and literally they’d make it in fact my understanding is they literally begin to put the the tribulators either side of Italy yeah it’s like okay so you know they typically make it as far as Japan you know so we’re gonna put the So if we need to run electrical lines for the defibrillators, it’s gonna be Japan.

Len Testa: That’s awesome. That’s beautiful. Alright, so we’re gonna walk through the English garden here. You know, Jim, as far as I’m concerned, nothing says a walk through the, a trip to the English countryside, except for meeting a man named Trevor. Hello, Trevor! Oh, Doctor Who? Actually, Timekeeper, but okay. There we go. So we’re walking through the back of the UK pavilion right now, which has like… England, think, is an old country. It’s what, three, four, five hundred years old? Just kidding, just kidding. Don’t want to get into all that. It’s got examples of every piece of English architecture here. It’s also got a nice little hedge maze, which is pretty popular in English amusement parks, by the way. And the backspace here is lovely. Number one, it’s quiet. There’s only like three people here. Number two, it’s shaded and they’ve got benches. But here, right in front of us, in fact, you can see a little bit of the International Village. we’re actually walking towards the back of the UK. We’re facing out towards the landscape. And behind us is what used to be the Millennium Village. Remember back in 2000, was a big… Epcot was the host park for the Millennium celebration. We’re looking back towards the structure that hosted the Millennium Village stuff. That was, by the way, if ever there was something that was designed while people were on drugs, Millennium Village. Absolutely. Do you remember the Israel ride? So it was a ride through biblical times and I swear to God, this is actually the first conversation you and I ever had where I knew that we would like each other. Chim and I are talking about the Millennium Village ride and we’re recounting our experience going through the Israel ride. So you got on board a ride and it was like a motion simulator but it didn’t have a roof so you were looking at a film projection and you met, was it Moses?

Jim Hill: yeah. met Moses and he was taking you through history.

Len Testa: And I was telling Jim this and we both said it almost exactly the same time. Like literally 30 seconds into the film, didn’t you think you were in a Mel Brooks film? at any minute you were waiting for the 10,000 year old man to come out, right?

Jim Hill: I’m 30 seconds into this thinking this is either incredibly bad or it’s going to be the best Mel Brooks thing ever. And Mel never showed.

Len Testa: And he never showed him. Yeah.

Jim Hill: But literally, if he would have showed up at the end, would have been brilliant parody. Speaking of Mel, and we’ll get to this at some point at the studio, but remind me to talk to you at some point about Hotel Mel, where literally, the Tower of Terror was going to be basically in celebration of young Frankenstein. Actually, I got… Craig McNair Wilson who worked with Mel on this thing said it was the greatest gig in the world. were never going make the attraction but Mel would come over every Friday to the Disney studio and we worked for like a half hour and then he’d go on the patio at the Disney studio commissary and he would proceed to tell his show business stories. It was the greatest time of my life. Great, great, great stories.

Len Testa: Line, we’re coming up on World Showcase players here. I think we’re gonna have to walk around them to get to the UK. But there’s your first iteration of Street-Misphere. That’s right, it was, wasn’t it? Yeah. Let’s walk through the sports shop here. The SAC Theatre created these, was so successful. In fact, again, that’s Craig McNair-Wilson, who worked with them and helped develop these shows. and he in turn went off to do all of the Street and the Sphear for Disney Hollywood Studios, or then Disney and Jim. Yeah, the Street and the Sphear characters are actually very, good. I like them a lot. like them quite a bit. So they’re also using this store as part of Kim Possible, right? one of interesting things about Kim Possible is you can actually go in the stores and do interactions.

Jim Hill: Yeah, mean, that’s actually one of things I love about that game. And in fact, it makes me a little concerned about Trying to sort of retrofit that sort of next-gen adventure into… The Parks, mean, for example, they play-tested and prototyped a National Treasures version for not the studios, mind you, but for the Magic Kingdom. it totally would have worked in the Magic Kingdom. Well, it was around Liberty Square, was around Frontierland, but in the end it was just sort of like, this was kind of when Nicolas Cage was spinning in and the worry was, I don’t think we’re doing National Treasure 3 now, though. Bruckheimer insists they are, so, I mean, it’s a good franchise. was great. it’s, know, I get it. So it’s one of those things where, well, how many American conspiracies can we get into? Yeah, that’s the thing. It starts to look like a, was it Dan Brown? You read the first, what was the first one?

Len Testa: DaVinci Code. The DaVinci Code, yeah. The first one, can cut it. The second one, you’re like, okay, I get the picture, right? You don’t need to go on for 500 pages. Did you have a third one? He has a third one too, right? Yeah, yeah. In fact, isn’t that to be coming out? I’ve read two. I literally have read them all.

Jim Hill: All I know is that both Tom Hanks and Ron Howard are like, you know, we’re good. Yeah, you know what? It was a magical time in my life. I will always remember our collaboration fondly. Thank you. Good night.

Len Testa: That’s why we’re coming up on Canada right now I Do love a Canada. I’ve been in Canada many times. She went to Vancouver this summer. It a lot of fun. Thank you people in it What do they call people in Vancouver Vancouverans? Lucky so Vancouver the people in Vancouver have to be the luckiest in the world number one They’ve got the mountains number two. They’ve got the ocean number three. They’ve got free health care And they’ve got martin short actually. Did you see Martin Short do the cameo on How I Met Your Mother?

Jim Hill: No! He’s doing How I Met Your Mother now. It a circle. Oh, cool. It’s nice. Good for him.

Len Testa: Alright, you wanna walk up? Sure. So we’re walking up the Canada Pavilion right now. Maple Syrup to your left. The funny thing is, Circle Vision closed? Oh, looks like it’s closed. Oh, enter right and it’ll show you. Are they doing construction here? Yep. Jim, did something used to be in this building?

Jim Hill: okay, sorry guys, sorry. in neglected dimension, so the hotel facade is completely wrapped right now in some sort of construction wrapper. So it’s the picture of the facade, but you can’t actually see the building itself and behind it is more construction stuff. Looks like they’re doing something on the inside. Restaurant space? They wouldn’t put up a wrapper that big unless there was something going No, absolutely, absolutely. But again, remember what we were talking about in regard to what was going over at Mexico. this is, you know, sort of take an individual element, buff it out. You know, they have just, well, not just, we’re talking two, three years now for the Martin Short thing. They’ve redone that. They’re looking to do some new entertainment offerings. But at the same time, it was what we were talking about earlier, that I’m always fascinated by these wraps that they throw around the buildings because it’s… It’s actually a guest recovery thing that they found that people complained less about their photographs being ruined by construction.

Len Testa: All right. If they just threw a blue tar, people would freak out. Yeah.

Jim Hill: But now to have something like this, which means that it’s an approximation of what the building looked like. It means your shot still sort of kind of works. Yeah. If you’re not looking really closely, if you’re looking at the people in the picture and not the buildings, it kind of makes sense. Absolutely. And what do you think is going here? So by the way, so we’re looking at the back of the pavilion. To our right is, sorry, our left is the retail space with the giant totem poles in front of it. But then the main building itself, again, a huge wrapper. If they were just painting that, well, I guess they could be just painting it, but that seems like an awful lot of detail just to paint. You know, to be honest, I haven’t heard anything about this, but I will go dig and find out. interesting thing is, and I’ll just mention this, there is no counter service restaurant in Canada. And it’s extremely difficult to get into La Celia because now it’s a, so it’s a two table service credit signature, Disney signature restaurant. No table service. If I had to go out on a limb here, I’d say thats either retail or it’s dining because they’ve gotten neither. Now we do have, you know, I’m looking at both stairs and a ramp, so it’s ADA accessible. There’s nothing there. mean, there’s actually nothing back there either. So on either side of the building, so you’ve got some of sort of like Newfoundland type stone cottages to the left of the path and to the right you get the huge building. You could put a kitchen there.

Len Testa: but isn’t this the queue for Icar- Oh, Canada.

Jim Hill: No, no, the Q’s the Q’s from the back. Remember you go up the stairs? Well, that’s what I’m saying. get past the waterfall and then you down the stairs and then you go to the left. Well, but this is still the feeder line for that, right?

Len Testa: So it’s got a… The feeder line, goes, goes, well, number one, when was the time there was a line that long for Oh Canada? Alright, never mind. Number two, even if there was the line, they’ve got, remember inside Oh Canada, they’ve got that huge lobby to hold some people. Then you could back out all the way. If you wanted to run the queue, you could run the queue towards the water- falls and leave this just for a restaurant service. Oh, all right. We’ll meet back here at the next podcast.

Jim Hill: Yeah, we’ll meet. Yeah, so maybe six months from now we’ll redo this one.

Len Testa: Let’s walk past LaSalle and see what’s going on. Have you been here since it’s been the two-table service credit?

Jim Hill: No, I have not. But again, I know about the dangers of eating cheese soup in Florida. Yeah. It’s lovely.

Len Testa: I told you the story about meat and cheese soup, right? No. So Pam Brandon writes the Disney cookbooks for Disney. She’s one of the authors of the Disney cookbooks. I contacted Pam and I said, hey, I love the cheddar cheese soup at Canada. Can you send me the recipe? So she sends me the recipe and now I’m a guy, right? The idea of proportion in dining doesn’t do me any good. I should have been suspicious when the first ingredient on the list was a pound of bacon. I wanted a cup of soup, Jim. She made me two gallons of soup. but you know, once you start making it, So I made two gallons of cheddar cheese soup. So it’s bacon, onion, cream, and it’s like four pounds of cheese, right? Like a gallon of heavy cream, like two chopped onions and a pound of bacon plus the bacon fat. And that’s all I ate for a week. At the end of it, I smelled like onion and bacon. It was just exuding from my pores, but I was so happy. What are the point that it says something about your health received that you your heart valves did not close?

Jim Hill: That I didn’t seize that I didn’t seize it So we’re looking over the butcher gardens the gardens thing you get the little building in the back That’s actually the sort of the cast member stuff for the very we’re looking back towards the Rocky Mountains. It really is a lovely pavilion. It’s one of the most scenic. I think it’s a villain What’s interesting is that you know in fact we’re working at another Weathal Rogers was the guy who did a lot of the mountain sculpting for Disney. Yep. And it’s it’s interesting to watch how he worked and you know I mean he did Big Thunder he did and if you compare the work that was done here with say the work that was done on Expedition Everest right clearly you know there’s a level of sophistication you know to building fake rocks. yeah yeah I mean if you think about how Expedition Everest looks as compared to the rocks that we’re looking at here which so the Expedition Everest mountainside is much more weathered and pointy here the rocks are much more angular Again, the edges are rounded so it’s gone through some weathering but they’re much more chunky I would say.

Len Testa: Yeah, but again the interesting thing is when you’re down in among it, when you’re walking along the stream, you buy this. totally, yeah could be in a canyon somewhere in the Rockies. You can’t buy off on it quite as well, where on the other hand Expedition Everest works from a lot of different angles. Yeah, from the bridge in Africa, from the bridge coming in from Dino Land. all just works. true.

Jim Hill: That’s why, you know, I of all people I’m going to be fascinated to see how they pull out Pandora. know, just the whole notion of… That’s a huge engineering and design problem. That’ll be interesting. I did get somebody though to confirm that this may be the place where, and I guess they’re doing the daytime test to see if they can pull it off, but have you seen the magic, the memories in me show on that’s projected on yeah, it’s fabulous. I think it’s better in Walt Disney World than in Disneyland.

Len Testa: Well, in fact, I was watching it from the bridge into Fantasyland near Tomorrowland. You’ve got a much bigger chunk of the castle. It’s better canvas, yeah.

Jim Hill: Yeah, because they do it on the small world facade, which is pretty big actually in Disneyland, but it’s not the same sort of scope as the castle. But supposedly the projection effect that they do for the castle is how they’re going to do literally the moon of Pandora. the shimmering? It’s a great effect. Yeah, no, absolutely. For those of you that are listening that haven’t seen Magic Memories in You, a couple of things. One, go out on YouTube and look for the show. But number two, look for the similar kinds of effects. The first time I saw it was in Europe, actually, back three or four years ago. They had taken a house for Christmas and had done a ghost project- Sorry, Halloween, not Christmas. Had done a ghost projection on the- So they made the actual- The house turned from a regular house to a ghost house. So the house became a ghost. And it turned from brown to white and then it shimmered and stuff. was amazing. So they can do that with Pandora. That’s interesting. And in fact, to sort of bring this full circle to do the, back to who we started talking about today, John Hench. John had this idea, mean the interesting thing is Disney attractions have to be, you know have to have so many people go through them an hour, have to, you know, that they have to be, you know, have to be able to operate, you know, seven days a week. Yeah. And John proposed, look, what if we went the other way? What if, you know, for example, we had a vacant lot on Main Street and and then the sun goes down and fog rises up and then you look back in the lot and there’s a house there that wasn’t there before. Nice. literally you enter the attraction through that. It’s just the whole notion of doing attractions after dark, doing special shows. In fact, they did a full presentation. They did a mock-up of Pirates of the Caribbean. The interesting thing is in the Pirates of the Caribbean building, the boats are actually kept inside the building but they’re gonna track thats just behind the facade yep which means there’s an entire loop that people don’t go on and so the idea was that when the Sun went down the attraction would close for about a half hour they’d reset so literally you now would float through these new scenes and now you would just do these projected light effects where you know you you’d have your pirates but now they you’d project desiccated faces on them and you’d then also send people through the back section and have an entire new show scenes. Nice, nice.

Len Testa: But again, that’s, that, this is, you know, the problem is again, you’ve got to get thousands of people through an hour and more to the point people get disappointed if they can’t get on their favorite attractions.

Jim Hill: Right. So yeah, you can’t limit it to 500 people a night or something like that. absolutely. Ah, it’s a shame. Ah, this is wonderful. All right. Well, any, final words on Epcot, Jim?

Jim Hill: I think we should definitely revisit this in, six months or so. No, no, absolutely. Absolutely. No, Epcot is, you know, it’s an ambitious park that, you know, in the end, when you look at the craft of it, I mean, Yes, you know future world is a little too corporate and yes, you know, there aren’t enough countries. But when you think about how many people come here and particularly this time of night after work on a month random Monday. Yeah, I mean, you know all the locals that turn out or how many of the other parks, you know dump get it out of. I mean think about you know Animal King’s Coldest League at five today all the people who are coming over here to eat and to enjoy this and to have a site You know right by the water to watch a Lumina—

Len Testa: I mean, this is how tens of thousands of people every night end their Walt Disney World vacation. It’s true. You know, it’s not a bad way to go. It’s the place that I end up every night. It is my favorite theme park and I’m excited to see what might develop here. Alright, well for Jim Hill, this is Len Tosta. Thanks very much for listening to the show. There are a couple of other episodes available for the Animal Kingdom, for the Magic Kingdom Resorts, and for the Magic Kingdom. We hope you guys listen to that. Thanks very much for listening and we’ll talk to you soon.

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