by Jim Korkis
Epcot
Reflections of China
When the China Pavilion opened in 1982 it featured a Circle-Vision 360-degree movie called Wonders of China giving foreigners a glimpse of areas of China that had never been seen before by outsiders. The film closed in March 2002 and was replaced in May 2003 with a new movie called Reflections of China.
Jun Tang, vice president of China Affairs for the Walt Disney Company, worked with government officials to implement Disney’s strategy in Chinese relations and maintain a consistent presence in that country. His challenge was to manage the contract negotiations and to seek support from China’s film communities to produce a new film.
In the twenty years since the first film, Hong Kong and Macau were returned to China and Shanghai became a thriving international metropolis.
Tang said in 2002:
A project like this always has its ups and down. China is so big and there were so many things we needed to take into consideration. But the filming was much smoother than the original twenty years earlier. With the advent of reform in China, working with foreign companies is more commonplace. This made our job much easier. All you need is communication.
David Katzman was the director for Theme Park Productions and in January 2002 took a team of Imagineers to China. They screened the original film Wonders of China to representatives from the China Research Institute of Film Science and Technology. Then they went over the film scene-by-scene, shot-by-shot.
Despite language difficulties, Katzman explained, the group mapped out a plan to update the film:
Some of our technical and production terms don’t translate perfectly. We’d get these puzzled looks from the Chinese about things we take for granted. We had to constantly try to explain ourselves.
Because of these difficulties, it took several months for both Disney and China to negotiate and approve everything.
Imagineering senior show writer Steve Spiegel took the outline and created the final script.
In the original film, the character of Li Bai, a Tang Dynasty poet, was the narrator, and Spiegel felt it was so effective that he wanted to duplicate that same element in the new film. Unfortunately, the original actor who played the part of Li Bai was not available, so another actor was cast and made up to look not only like Li Bai but like the first actor as well.
Spiegel recalled that another challenge arose because the narration had to be in English, but the new actor cast in the role spoke no English at all:
We had him pronounce everything phonetically. Then we went back and re-recorded the dialogue with another Chinese actor who spoke English.
Twenty-five percent of the original film was able to be kept because it primarily featured scenes of China’s natural beauty, which had not changed in any significant way, and it saved on the costs of production. However, the other seventy-five percent was new footage or footage that was originally shot for Wonders of China but not used.
Tang said:
When you look at the landscape, the beauties of China have not changed. The changes in China are not in the construction of the buildings. It’s in the people. They’re more open, more engaging, and more sophisticated.
Nine cameras on a specially made platform were used to photograph the new images over a two-month period that included filming in seven Chinese cities. When filming the Huangshan Mountain sequence, over three dozen locals were hired to lift a 300-pound camera unit up 16,700 stone steps.
Epcot
The World Showcase Art Galleries
The six art galleries in World Showcase allow WDW guests the opportunity to more closely experience other cultures.
While each pavilion is staffed by cast members from that particular country along with merchandise as well as representative food and beverage locations, the purpose of Epcot was to be educational and give greater understanding of America’s international neighbors and their cultures.
Each gallery was designed to be of museum quality and to preserve the genuine artifacts from light, heat, and humidity. The collections usually rotate out after three years based on the assumption that it takes an average guest about three to five years to save up enough money to return for a visit to Walt Disney World. In addition, the items on exhibit are generally on limited loan from private collections or the country itself.
Van Romans, Director Exhibit Development Walt Disney Imagineering in 1989, stated:
The galleries at Epcot represent a very, very important part of what I think the theme park experience is all about.
Guests expect the rides. They expect restaurants and merchandising spaces. But they don’t expect to see absolutely wonderful historical things from other countries being shown. They are very surprised. These galleries are intimate and unique and hold some wonderful treasures.
We worked closely with the cultural ministries in each country and I think that the United States and, in particular, Florida should be very proud that these collections are right within their grasp to be able to enjoy.
The whole gallery program emphasizes these treasures. The material is all real. It is directly from their culture, directly from their history. We are the jewel box of the parks.
Currently, the exhibits on display include:
The American Heritage Gallery, located inside the American Adventure building, houses a private collection called “Re-discovering America: Family Treasures” from the Kinsey Collection. Art and artifacts pay homage to African Americans who helped build and transform a nation.
The Gol Stave Church Gallery, the smallest of the galleries because it is housed in a replica of a stave church, has previously featured an exhibit called “The Vikings: Conquerors of the Seas,” but with the transformation of the pavilion, it now showcases “Creating the World of Frozen” about the research in Norway that led to the making of the popular animated feature film.
The Gallery of the Whispering Willow, adjacent to the waiting area for Reflections of China to give guests a chance to experience it before the next showing of the film, showcases “Inside Shanghai Disneyland” featuring artifacts from Disney’s newest theme park.
The Bijutsu-kan Gallery, inside the castle at the rear of the Japan pavilion, houses “Kawaii—Japan’s Cute Culture.” Kawaii is rooted in Japan’s Shinto past and has become a fundamental part of Japanese food, fashion, and architecture, and other aspects of its culture.
The Mayan Ceremonial Hall Gallery, inside the pyramid in the Mexico pavilion, celebrates modern Mexican folk art with “Animalés Fantásticos Spirits in Wood.” In Mexican villages surrounding the city of Oaxaca, gifted artisans create woodcarvings of animals, humans, and mythical creatures.
The Gallery of Arts and History, connected to the Fez House in the Morocco pavilion, features “Moroccan Style: The Art of Personal Adornment,” presenting how the craftsmanship of Moroccan decorative arts are a visual representation of cultural identity.
Epcot
Universe of Energy Dinosaurs
How did dinosaurs end up in a pavilion devoted to energy?
While it is now agreed that over ninety percent of oil came from a bio-mass of prehistoric trees and vegetation, generations of people grew up thinking that the oil and gas coming out of the ground was from decomposed dinosaurs, a concept that many people still believe today.
In the “Rite of Spring” sequence in the animated feature Fantasia (1940), Walt Disney and his talented artists brought back to life extinct creatures that garnered accolades in the scientific community. The sequence included Pterodactyls on rock outcroppings while a herd of Brontosauruses quietly grazed near a lake.
One of the most memorable scenes was a climactic battle between a Stegosaurus and a vicious Tyrannosaurus Rex that could never have happened, since those animals lived in different eras, but it was highly memorable and dramatic.
Walt re-created those exact same images in three dimensions for the Ford Motor Skyway attraction at the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair. The Imagineers devised a primeval
world that was one of the most popular pavilions at the fair.
After the fair was over, that primeval world scene with forty-six audio-animatronics dinosaurs was relocated to the finale of the Grand Canyon Diorama on the Santa Fe & Disneyland railroad in July 1966 and remains there today.
The Universe of Energy pavilion at Epcot offers a seven-minute journey through a scenic backdrop diorama surrounding a primeval forest. The diorama stretches 32 feet high and 515 feet across, and took three artists nearly 6,000 hours to paint.
Of course, no pictures exist of such a location, so the Imagineers consulted well-known paleontologists and paleo-botanists to learn as much as they could about the plants and animals of millions of years ago.
Hundreds of books, publications, museum plates, and exhibits and fossils were reviewed. Imagineers even used research to try to approximate the actual sounds prehistoric creatures might have made.
However, this was not meant to be a museum but an entertainment, so certain things were exaggerated and sometimes re-created bigger than they probably were, for dramatic effect.
The thirty-six dinosaurs were the largest audio-animatronics animals ever to be fabricated by Imagineering. They were so huge that they had to be placed in the building first and then the roof installed overhead.
The forest is landscaped with 250 prehistoric trees that rise up to 40 feet overhead. A lightweight foamed plastic, similar to the cellulose structure of the plants’ woody pulp, was used to capture the tensile and compressive characteristics of a real tree that would “sway with the breeze.” The plastics used to fabricate the trees were actually made from the fossil fuels created by the real trees of pre-history.
Fog fills the warm show room, along with swampy smells made by WED Smellitzers. The biggest dinosaurs in the swamp are giant Brontosauruses eating water plants. Duck-billed Trachodons are seen bathing in a pool of water. A number of Ornithomimus watch helpless as one of their own sinks into a boiling tar pit. Numerous Pteranodons perch menacingly on cliffs and rocks.
And of course on an overhead cliff a Stegosaurus fights another dinosaur that was reconfigured to be the more historically accurate Allosaurus.
On September 15, 1996, after a rehab, Universe of Energy reopened with the subtitle “Ellen’s Energy Adventure.” For a short time, the subtitle was “Ellen’s Energy Crisis,” but then changed to “Adventure.”
Because of the latest research that indicated that dinosaurs were more like birds than lizards, the audio-animatronics creatures were repainted in brighter colors with more stripes and markings. The flora was rehabbed as well.
Epcot
Secrets of World Showcase
The sense of authenticity that guests feel as they wander the World Showcase pavilions is due in part to the Imagineers working closely with consultants from those countries to create an accurate atmosphere that immerses guests in the experience of being in a foreign country. Their aim was to capture the history of the country rather than a representation of its modern incarnation.
MEXICO. The Cantina de San Angel located on the promenade walkway is a re-creation of an old Carmelite monastery that became a restaurant in 1915. In 1847, General Santa Ana planned the Battle of Chapultepec at this location. Within its walls, the famous pact between Pancho Villa and General Zapata was formalized by which the former would gain control of the north and the latter the south of Mexico. The main patio fountain served as a drinking trough for their horses.
Inside the pyramid that is a mixture of Aztec and Mayan elements, the typical marketplace setting is officially called Plaza de Los Amigos, or Plaza of Friends. During the day would be a time of siesta with limited activity, so the interior was themed to nighttime and fiesta to help explain why there are so many people and so much activity.
NORWAY. The statue of Grete Waitz near the Stave Church honors the Norwegian athlete who was a nine-time winner of the New York City Marathon from 1978–88. At the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Marathon, Waitz won the silver medal. She added that to the gold she had won the previous year at the Helsiniki World Championship Marathon.
The Stave Church is a replica of the Gol Stave Church built around 1212 A.D. in Hallingdal, Norway, and now found in the Norwegian Folk Museum of Cultural History in Oslo. At one time there were more than 1,300 of these churches, but only a little more than two dozen remain today. The original stave church that inspired this authentic reproduction was saved from demolition by a national preservation society.
CHINA. The circular Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest is a one-half scale reproduction of its counterpart inside the Temple of Heaven complex near Beijing, China. As you enter, there are four red columns decorated in gold that represent the four seasons.
If you stand in the exact center of the columns and speak, the acoustics are exactly like those in the actual Hall of Prayer so you will hear your voice echo, but your friends will not hear it do so. The emperor would come here and stand in this location to pray for a good harvest or give thanks for one that had happened.
The Great Ceremonial Gate at the entrance to the pavilion is designed after the one at the original Summer Palace in China. When an emperor or empress was born or died, they were carried through the gate to represent their entry into the world and their entrance into heaven at their death.
The pavilion was the location for the music video of the song “Reflection” performed by a then relatively unknown young female singer, Christina Aguilera, to promote the 1998 Disney animated feature film Mulan. The pavilion is so authentic that animators from Disney Feature Animation Florida often visited and sketched details for use in the final film.
JAPAN. The Katsura Grill is a small version of the Shoken-tei (teahouse) in the Kyoto Imperial Villa gardens at the Katsura Summer Palace.
The building that houses Mitsukoshi Department Store is modeled after the Great Hall of Ceremonies that was once part of the Gosho Imperial Palace in Kyoto and built in 794 A.D.
Epcot
More Secrets of World Showcase
AMERICAN ADVENTURE. This pavilion was originally meant to be at the front of World Showcase and be made of all glass and steel. It was relocated so that it could serve as the “host” for the other pavilions.
Handmade Georgia clay bricks—110,000 of them—decorate the outside of the building. They were colored and aged to look more authentic to the time period.
Forced perspective is used, such as the windows and doors being taller on the ground floor to make the building look smaller than it actually is so that it more closely represents a building from Colonial America. Although it looks like a two-and-a-half story manor house, it is actually a five-story structure.
Italy. When you enter the pavilion, the building on the left is the Doge’s Palace of Venice, the residence of the ruling dukes that took many centuries to complete. Its design inspired architect Robert Stern when he built the Walt Disney World Casting Center building on Lake Buena Vista Drive.
The tall bell tower is the Campanile that stands next to the Doge’s Palace but is located on the other side; the Epcot version is built 1/5 scale. If the tower had been placed in the real location, then the pavilion would have been larger than the other pavilions. The angel at the top is covered in 14-karat gold leaf. A duplicate of the angel statue appears in the garden to the right.
MOROCCO. Inside the lobby of the restaurant is a reproduction of a signed letter from President George Washington to the people of Morocco. Morocco was the first country to officially recognize the United States of America as a sovereign nation in 1776.
The design of the pavilion was inspired by three cities: Fez, Casablanca, and Marrakesh. Several Moroccan artisans worked for approximately six months doing the artwork for the pavilion. Those artisans included eight plaster craftsmen, eleven tile craftsmen and two wood craftsmen (who worked for about two weeks).
FRANCE. The Eiffel Tower is a one-tenth replica of the one in Paris and was constructed using engineer Gustav Eiffel’s original blueprints. In
Epcot, the Eiffel Tower is more tan and pinkish than the one that exists today in Paris. The reason is that the France pavilion represents “La Belle Epoque” of the late 1800s and the Eiffel Tower is the same color it would have been at that time when it was new.
The bridge is reminiscent of the Pont des Arts, a pedestrian bridge in Paris that crosses the River Seine. The shopping area at the exit of the Impressions de France film was originally meant to resemble the Les Halles marketplace in Paris, but without the glass ceiling.
UNITED KINGDOM. The window on the Royal Doulton Shop showcases the four crests of the major schools of the United Kingdom: Oxford, Cambridge, Eton, and Edinburgh. The area at the back of the pavilion is officially known as Britannia Square and is meant to suggest an English city park.
CANADA. The rockwork for the Canadian Rockies was supervised by Imagineer Fred Joerger, who textured by hand and then painted and aged the gunite, the same cement used in swimming pools that covers the steel structures. Joerger was the resident rock expert for many years for Disney, doing the rockwork for the Jungle Cruise, Big Thunder Mountain, and other attractions.
The steel structure contains plant containers with real plants and trees. Trees were planted in five-foot deep planters with built-in drainage and irrigation systems and are changed out if they grow so large as to be out of proportion.
Epcot
The Flags of American Adventure
The flag flying over the American Adventure pavilion has fifteen stars and fifteen stripes. It was this version of the flag that writer Francis Scott Key saw that inspired him to write the poem “The Star Spangled Banner” in 1814. The 14th and 15th stars and stripes represented the states of Kentucky and Vermont.
The original plan was that an additional star and stripe would be added for each new state entered into the union, but that became unworkable. This remained the official U.S. flag until 1818 when it was replaced by what is considered the modern flag of thirteen stripes and a new star for each state.