Is Velcro Really an EPCOT Innovention?
Author: Mike
In the dumbing down of attractions at EPCOT to please what must be a pre-adolescent crowd, the low point might be the “Slap Stick Theatre”. The Velcro Corporation has paid what I’m sure is substantial sponsorship dollars to do an audience participation re-make of the Lucy and Ethel candy factory sketch. Now I’m a fan of Velcro. It’s one of the inventions from the “space race” that has become a part of everyday life. But putting diapers on dolls and sticking as many to your apron as possible is nothing new. And it just doesn’t seem like it will have any real impact on our “Future World”.
It’s sad that the only reference to anything that might expand the horizons of young minds is a spacesuit in the case where visitors can dress Velcro frogs. Frogs! Why not astronauts? Or hand out real Velcro sample kits rather than these pieces of frog clothes that are not good Velcro but are more like the Post It note equivalent.
It seems that when exhibits are being created by these outside sponsor companies, they ought to have some direction from the Disney Imagineers who should set a standard for excellence. It just just doesn’t seem like this is an attraction that will stick with people when they go home.
Tags: Innoventions
2 Responses to “Is Velcro Really an EPCOT Innovention?”
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February 25th, 2009 at 7:57 am
The Velcro exhibit was entirely designed and implemented by WDI (Imagineering). Velcro paid for it and came up with the idea for the space suit. So, the only addition you liked in the exhibit came from the sponsor. Everything you didn’t like came from WDI. WDI is not what it once was…
February 25th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Thanks for your information. It sounds like you know this from the inside. It’s not what I had hoped for. I try to keep an optimistic outlook in life. The “If you can dream it, you can do it” mantra has always worked pretty well for me, and I think it should be as we move forward.
Maybe the Imagineers have been overcome by the malaise that has hit our country. Maybe it’s just that the forward thinkers are retiring, and the new group has not been mentored properly. Maybe there should be an outside advisory panel of longtime Disney fans to remind them of what worked. I would encourage new hires for Innoventions projects to view extensive archives of what “CommuniCore” used to be like. It was a gathering spot. It was open, with windows that looked out on the surrounding attractions. It was full of energy and young minds being stimulated by the interactive exhibits. It wasn’t a repackaged video arcade.
I can’t believe that Marty Sklar, who heads Imagineering, ever approved anything in this design, nor what is now exhibited in Innoventions.