I was recently asked why Disney is abandoning the theme of Epcot, by my brother. He is a very causal theme park visitor, who probably visits a theme park once every two or three years. Epcot is his favorite theme park, and he heard people dismissively refer to Epcot's new additions as making the park into IPCOT.
He asked me if the popularity of Epcot has gone down recently, or otherwise why Disney would be changing the focus of the park. I feel like I see this sentiment expressed fairly frequently online among Epcot fans and casual theme park visitors as well.
In 1982, when Epcot opened, Disney has the intellectual property rights to a handful of classic animated movies and a vast library of light family fantasy comedies that aren't very good.
The classic animated movies mostly all had rides, shows, or experiences at Magic Kingdom (with the glaring exception of Mary Poppins). The light family comedies mostly did not have a presence at the parks (but what would a Freaky Friday theme park attraction even be?)
So in a very real sense, Disney didn't have any underutilized IP to inspire theme park attractions at the time.
When Epcot was built, a large portion of the cost was paid for by sponsoring corporations. Epcot was built for $1.2 billion (equal to about $3.8 billion today), but a large share of Spaceship Earth was paid for by Bell System. Universe of Energy was mostly paid for by Exxon. Horizons > General Electric. World of Motion > General Motors. Imagination > Kodak. The Land > Kraft Foods. American Adventure > Coca-Cola and American Express...
Likewise, the other World Showcase pavilions were sponsored by consortiums of companies from those countries.
Not only did Disney get money from these companies to build the pavilions, they also got money to run them each year for the duration of the agreement.
Because of that, the sponsors of these pavilions had a fair bit of say about what goes on inside of them. General Motors wanted to tell the story of transportation as though they were the most important part of that history. You couldn't have an attraction based on the Absent Minded Professor and his flying Model T or based on the Love Bug (Ford and VW were not the sponsor, after all).
So the 1982-1983 Epcot attractions were based on stuff that Disney and the sponsor could agree about.
Disney also had the problem of needing to make good on the well publicized promise to build EPCOT, a city of the future.
But after Walt Disney died, nobody knew how to do that. But if you squint, you can talk yourself into thinking that a world's fair-type park with optimistic visions of technology and society are kind of like a city of the future.
So that explains why Epcot was built the way it was to begin with.
So, why is it changing?
In 1989, Disney-MGM Studios opened. In 1998, Disney's Animal Kingdom opened. With both openings, overall resort attendance increased, but a large portion of the new parks attendance was cannibalized from Epcot. Very little of the new parks attendance came from Magic Kingdom.
I can't find a full resolution version of this graph, but it still makes my point:
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In other words, when Disney builds theme parks with significant components dedicated to intellectual property, it builds attendance partially through new visitors and partially via reallocating Epcot trips.
Disney also has internal polling data that suggests that guests want more attractions based on Disney movies and characters.
In addition to that, Disney now has a giant library of movies and characters that people would love to see in a theme park. Many of these are properties that would be in a theme park already if they were owned by any other studio. (Remember, Universal owns a relatively small proportion of the movies that appear in those parks... Universal pays Warner Brothers for Harry Potter, Paramount for Transformers and Nickelodeon, Disney for The Simpsons and Marvel...)
The sponsorship model has not been as viable in the last few decades. Remember when GM got lots of negative publicity for renewing their sponsorship of Test Track at the same time they were getting a federal bailout? And Test Track is a pretty unambiguously successful marketing venture. That show room at the ride's exit has sold millions of dollars worth of cars!
But now the list of rides with sponsors is pretty short. At Epcot, Test Track is the only ride with a sponsor (Spaceship Earth lost its sponsorship in 2017 when Siemens decided not to renew. Mission: Space lost its sponsorship in 2015 when HP decided not to renew. Imagination lost its sponsorship when Kodak failed to renew in 2010. And The Land lost its sponsorship in 2009 when Nestlé decided not to renew.)
So Disney has a vault full of underutilized IP assets, a park that loses market share to every new entrant, and a stack of surveys saying they want more stuff based on movies and characters. So why wouldn't Disney change the theme of Epcot to be more like Magic Kingdom or Hollywood Studios?
I think it is a mistake for Disney to be reorienting Epcot like this. And I can say why if you are interested. But I think a reasonable person can look at these facts and conclude that Disney should definitely put popular movies and characters in the park.
