EPCOT's Brand of Magic

For all the discussion of what's wrong with EPCOT*, for all the criticism (justifiable, I believe) of what it's become, there's also a side of EPCOT that all the tinkering, all the cartooning, all the Pixarization, all the teen-flavored additions can't destroy.

Every visitor to EPCOT Central probably has his or her own favorite "definition" of EPCOT. For me, the spirit that Disney hasn't yet destroyed is felt most when walking along the World Showcase promenade right after a summer sunset.

In the summer months, that happens somewhere around 8:30 p.m. The heat of the day is finished, perhaps there's been a nice dinnertime break, and now, well, you know what's going to happen shortly. That's right -- Illuminations: Reflections of Earth is starting soon. Crowds are gathering along the lagoon, some people have been there for hours.

True, in its zeal to separate every last dollar from families with small children, Disney began a few years ago allowing carnival-barker-type hawkers of needless and cheesy doo-dads (light necklaces, LED whirligigs) to set up shop right in the middle of the promenade, and their presence does detract.

But it doesn't destroy.

Because with just the barest trace of light in the sky, with a deep-purple Spaceship Earth "hovering" in the background, with dramatic lighting illuminating every World Showcase pavilion, and with Illuminations pre-show music playing gently throughout the speakers, this is truly a magic place.

It's not the sort of cheap, over-commercialized "magic" that Disney tries to sell today, it's the magic that Disney used to make so effortlessly ... the magic that comes from designing and creating a place that is unique in the world, one that exudes both charm and comfort, that welcomes you and doesn't try to "sell" you. About a decade ago, it was described as "the architecture of reassurance," but it's more than reassurance, though that is most inarguably a factor. It's an assurance and an insistence that this little slice of land in the middle of Central Florida is exactly right.

As you look to one side and see, for instance, the serenity of Japanese architecture or the statleliness of German design, you look to the other and see, across a calm, reflective body of water, a colorful reminder that our future is as optimistic as our past. Just as the Japanese, the French, the Norwegians, the Moroccans developed a style that is distincly their own, Disney (and, by extension, "we") have envisioned a future that stylistically may be worlds away but esoterically is as timeless and confident as anything else in the world.

World Showcase at this time of night is a relatively calm place, too large and, owing to its curved designed, not linear -- which means that we can, at once, make out every other bit of this section of EPCOT from no matter where we are standing, but we can't see down a "main street" in front of us. That presents us with an illusion that we're not surrounded by mobs of people all straining either to find an exit or wait for the fireworks; rather, it propels us forward at a gentle pace -- we can see what's up ahead, but we can't see the road in front of us. It's an unusually tranquil design conceit for a theme park; it doesn't create a sense of urgency in us to do anything but keep walking forward at our own pace ... or to find a spot to sit and take it all in.

That's what's best about this twilight-hued EPCOT: It lets us move at our leisure, allows us to absorb it all with our eyes and ears.

If it's possible to have a "quiet theme park," a nighttime EPCOT is it. It's a beautiful place.



* Sorry, but try as I might, I just can't bring myself to use the lower-case "Epcot." It just isn't right. "Epcot" isn't a word; EPCOT the acronym, whether followed by Center or not, still fits.