Looking at Communicore Hall in Epcot SD 480p

[Music] [Music] hello and welcome back to Disney Journey I'm retired imagineer Jim schul and on today's episode we're going to be talking about something that's been in the news recently which is Epcot Center and specifically the opening of communicore hall with the opening of this Hall that caps off and finishes the seven-year reimagining of Epcot Center so let's take a moment now in this episode and talk about the hall and all stages in Disney World their history their present and their possible future put on your sun head let's head to Epcot communicore Hall is in the center of communicore Plaza and it serves serves its function as being the headquarters for the festivals that Epcot has become known for through these doors well it's a flex space at least that's what we'd call it's all clear span and it's capable of having a number of events I mean there's a lot of scening area it's air conditioning it's in the shade and there are lots and lots of serving windows for food and drink and just outside well there's a lot of expensive concrete lighting again it's all about having a flex space and here just around the corner is the festival [Music] stage to tell this story well we need to get comfortable you know sit down in our chair get our favorite drink and depending on you know how we feel maybe something a little stronger Epcot started well started on paper with people like Herby Ryman drawing and painting these beautiful concept renderings and there are so many of them but they alluded to an Epcot and a future world that was never built I'd like to call it the mall concept although you know what tennis has to do with future world is still beyond me as part of the process well those concept drawings well they proceeded over into dimensional design and they created models like this one however it was really credited to Hopper Goff to broke the back of what world showcase would be it's no longer a mall as we can see here but it's a collection of neighborhoods each with its own pavilion celebrating its nationality such as this the never built equatorial Africa it was proposed that future world would have looked like this however we ended up with this and why you may ask well anything you want to do with the Disney company is going to cost money lots and lots and lots of money ecut as conceived was both big and expensive and in the center of it was communicore now that was the place that the Pavilion participants had well kind of more the Hard Sell portion of their businesses in fact I worked on the oral field exhibit sponsored by Exxon the bulldozers drove in and for many many years this was a view that guest riding the mono would be greeted by in the middle of Epcot was a construction field but at the end well we ended up with this now it again as we said at the top of the episode it's a lot of concrete a lot of lights and everything set up so it could be a flex space a place that could be transformed for the festivals which are the lifeblood of this park now today the downside is when there's no Festival it looks vacant because well it is vacant it's it's comfortable at least it's cool I hope they have enough electrical outlets to plug in my phone but outside again there is a beautiful stage and uh it's given over right now to the festival celebrating in Kanto in all likelihood this again will be used for broadcasts stage entertainment special events there is no central element or water feature or anything of note as a backdrop for this stage when it's used for broadcasting but it's not such a bad little stage I mean look at all the people there for Encanto little hot though and we'll get to that next you see this Disney has a history with shade I mean as in not enough of it so keep your sun head on and let's head on over to the Disney MGM Studios as we start to talk about the history of shade over stages or the lack thereof over here when the Disney MGM Studios open to guest for the first time they had a stage and it was a last minute thing and as you can see here it was a faux version of the Hollywood Bowl now again it fell to the wrecking ball in order to create sunet Boulevard and at the end of that there's a new stage uh but it was replaced because they put a hunch backstage at the end of the streets of the world which fell again to the wrecking ball in order to make room for Galaxy's Edge the same formula holds as we head now to the Magic Kingdom Magic Kingdom is large and surprisingly doesn't have that much as far as live entertainment stages I mean there's the one in front of the castle but the one we really all think about is the one there in Tomorrowland a temporary stage that somehow has remarkable permanency the Galaxy Palace Theater Grace the new Tomorrowland although it doesn't really speak to me of a being the palace you know you got to love the 1990s at Disney world I mean I don't want to say they were game for anything but look at this galaxy search you got to love mcka spacit and you know when you have an MC host who else would you turn to but this bizarrely puppeted creation I mean yeah he looks like a dinosaur but he's got sunglasses who yeah I give it a pass dancing their hearts out moving over to the Animal Kingdom we find a lot of the same issues again rearing their head again of all of the parks this is the largest and when when it opened really did lack AC or much shade these trees that are grown today are pretty small back then but entertainment was required and so Camp mini Mickey was born and there in a green or greenish area you could see the Disney characters and they'd be posing and they would be greting you or hitting you or pointing you toward the Pocahontas theater where there's this kind of scary looking living tree puppet thing Pocahontas at the very back of Camp mini Mickey was an open air theater and that was given over to The Lion King now being open air didn't really last very long and pretty quickly they enclosed that theater bringing an air conditioning which the guest said thank you very much and it was a place that you could get out of the heat and enjoy a show and it was a good show I mean really entertaining the singers and dancers work their hearts out and it was definitely music that we all knew from the movie it was a good show and honestly I think it was much more of an unexpected hit for the Disney company and it's worth noting that the legend The Lion King show was so popular and successful that it was on the opening day attraction list in Hong Kong Disneyland when that park opened in 2005 when the legend The Lion King moved into its own New purpose-built Theater it was over in harumi which kind of made sense because it was a story based and situated in that continent another theater that changed an animal kingdom was theater in the wild going from an open tent to completely enclosed theater and it's a good theater again it's took a while but it's a wonderful theater so with that we keep our fingers crossed that someday this Stadium will get shade but back to Epcot where we begin you know Epcot has gone through a lot of Transformations there was a period where it was kind of like let's try anything was the rule of the day and who can forget the Daredevil circus spectacular as strange as it seems that you could go to abcot in future world and see someone on a motorcycle I got to tell you it had a certain amount of appeal just you know to see Mickey and the gang in silver costumes that was worth the price of admission but again this was a time where abcot was trying to find its identity and anything that you could throw against the wall you could see what could stick and that would tell you the way that they'd go in the future but again you know there's a little part of me that really wants to see this come back but I doubt it I said earlier that Epcot was an expensive Park and it spent a lot of money but it also spent a lot of their brand not too long ago guests going to Epcot were greeted by this the preview Center and this was the old Odyssey Restaurant that was transformed to become the ecock experience presented by wdi and in there no less a figure than Walt Disney himself was employed to tell the guests about all the wonderful things that were going to be coming in the future to Epcot as it was being reimagined and rebuilt something which I think someone said it was going to be more contemporary more fun and much much more Disney so in the middle of the room was this beautiful projection mapped model and around was a screen lots and lots of new video was shot for it to talk and inform and to you know wet the pallet of the guests hey they really need to come back and come back to see new Epcot and to see what wdi was going to be delivering to them I stood there a couple of times just to see the entire show because it was that good everything about it was a promise a promise of the future a brand deposit if you will and it ended with this because who else would you want to see in England in World Showcase other than well that great Nanny herself Mary Poppins and at the end of the show I walked out of the preview Center knowing that when I came back when they were all done I would see the Festival building I'd see well the play Pavilion I would see Mary Poppins and so much other and I couldn't wait to come back because you see they had made a brand deposit as I walked out of the show space I looked over and well documented made a promise to Mary herself saying I'll be back however that's not what was built and as a result what we had was a brand withdrawal a promise made but a promise broken some of it was built as I said earlier like the stage at communicore and there's really a good entertaining show there with a great cast great classic music and certainly you can't fall people for their energy however for now as we stand in the sun to enjoy this show we think about what could have been and what can be the solutions I mean umbrellas serve a purpose but that's not an end goal maybe you could encase the entire building but you know that would keep people dry and you know safe from the rain the elements but maybe not decut has always been my favorite Park and I look forward to my next visit A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow awaits me well that brings us to the end of today's Journey but we'll go another one real soon until we do I'd invite you to like And subscribe to this Channel and and don't forget to hit the Bell to be notified the next episode until the next time then goodbye from always windy lost Canyon [Music]

Channel: Disney Journey with Jim Shull

Views: 1,304

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Id: tmGGHFGd1Bo

Length: 15min 27sec (927 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 21 2024