The Decade Epcot Ruled

Full disclaimer: I was born fifteen years after Epcot Center opened. I wasn't able to experience the original 1982 line-up in its initial form. In fact, by the time I visited Epcot for the first time, it was not only celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, but its headlining attraction, Spaceship Earth, had undergone two major refurbishments. Heck, that year later saw another remodeling job, but that's a conversation for another time.

I feel while Epcot is not the theme park it was in the 1980's and early 1990's, it is still very popular and still offering a lot of potential that has been neglected and removed over the years.

Recently, I was talking about the greatest theme park ride to be destroyed. Mind you, it's not the greatest theme park ride standing (that honor goes to Pirates with Haunted Mansion following closely behind) or even the greatest theme park ride to have never materialized into its fullest form (that honor goes to the Western River Expedition). Yes, we are talking about Horizons, which graced the east side of Future World from 1983 until it permanently closed in early 1999.

I have had the great fortune of talking with members of what I call the "Epcot Center generation", which consisted mostly of teenagers born between 1967 and 1969 who presumably grew up with Walt Disney World and took advantage of the optimism embodied by Epcot Center.

You got to understand that Epcot Center was all the rage at Disney World during the majority of the 1980's. Sure, you had the bookends of Big Thunder opening in 1980 and the opening of Disney MGM-Studios alongside Typhoon Lagoon and the Pleasure Island complex at the Village, but since at least 1966, there was talk about EPCOT that had morphed from a working prototype of a futuristic city into a theme center where industry and culture would unite.

What the Vacation Kingdom was to the tykes of the 1970's became the ultimate playground to the scores of teenagers and young adults in the 1980's. I mean who doesn't think of 1980's Florida as a mixture of vaporwave aesthetics, glided shopping malls, the setting of Miami Vice, and ultimately a decade of optimism mixed with rampant consumerism, a stricter enforcement of the War on Drugs, and an overall conservative facade of society.