Welcome To Screamscape!

Park News - (3/25/08) There’s just something awesome about this new find that has appeared at Epcot’s Flower & Garden Festival. The park is now selling Gnome Mickey statues (see sidebar) that bear a very striking resemblance of the infamous Travelocity Traveling Gnome. From what I’ve been told the full size “GnoMickey” statue is $26.95, a smaller version holding a rain gauge is $10.95, another version that is sitting at the bottom of a planter is $12.95 and finally there is a small plant stake where GnoMickey is sitting on a mushroom for $8.95.
  (3/21/08) The Travelocity Roaming Gnome has returned once again to Epcot for the Flower & Garden Festival. You can see lots of pictures and video clips of his visit here. Meanwhile, MouseSteps has also posted a huge photo update showing off over 200 new photos taken at Epcot’s opening day for the Flower & Garden Festival.
  (3/20/08) Westcoaster.net has posted new pictures from Epcot including their take on the new changes at Spaceship Earth.
  (3/17/08) You can see preview photos of the various Flower & Garden Festival items going up posted to MouseSteps. The 15th Annual Flower & Garden Festival will run from March 19th to June 1st, 2008.
  (3/3/08) Another new exhibit called Don’t Waste It (Presented by Waste Management) has been added to Innoventions East this week (see sidebar), across from the plastic exhibit. Epcot guests tell us that it is a rather lengthy interactive game (can take 20 minutes to play) all about waste disposal that was described as not only being fun but also very well thought out. After learning about just how much garbage a person created in a day you are divided into teams and are given a garbage truck to push around the exhibit. The trucks themselves are said to be pretty slick little machines, complete with working headlights, the beep-beep backup noise and a flat-panel monitor on the top showing off your team’s name and various recycling facts.
  Teams need to sort the recyclables by docking the truck and with each team member on the look out for a certain kind of item from the trash (metal, paper, plastics and glass). From here the truck is taken to a new dock to use some of the waste as fuel. Some of the team will “drive” bulldozers to push trash around to the rest of the team who will use claws to bring the waste up and feed the furnace, keeping the temperature at an ideal range by adding either wet or dry garbage. From here you go to the final stop, the landfill where the garbage is placed, compressed into methane gas and captures, then the remains covered up, stabilized and the land put to some other future use such as a ballfield or public park.
  (1/4/08) The Epcot Flower & Garden Festival will take place this year from 3/19/08 to 6/1/08.

Ride Rehabs - The following information is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate.
Nothing is known to be scheduled at this time.

2008 - World Showcase Restaurant Upgrades - (2/7/08) Screamscape sources tell us that the Nine Dragons refurbishment will be quite extensive and may take the restaurant down from 4/6/08 to 11/30/08.
  (2/6/08) The rumored 2008 restaurant upgrades in World Showcase are still on the way it seems. I’ve heard that the proposed Nine Dragons rehab is still on the boards, though I don’t have a timeline for it yet. It also seems that Disney isn’t done with Italy yet as there are plans in development to expand the pavilion a bit along with side and back that would allow them to add a new quick service restaurant option.
  (7/26/07) The outdoor Cantina in Mexico will also be expanded to offer better waterfront seating for the nightly Illuminations show. In Janurary the Nine Dragons eatery in the Chinese pavilion will be transformed and open up the kitchen area to allow for the staff to put on a little show with their cooking skills when it reopens in late Spring or Summer 2008. The opening of Tutto Italia is the first step in creating a new “interactive dining experience” in 2008.

2008 - Spaceship Earth Renovation - (2/5/08) In a quick update to yesterday’s Spaceship Earth story, it seems the new faces being inserted into the final video portion of the ride has been happening on and off since Christmas. One of our readers included a few photos showing off what the effect looks like, though sometimes the cutout and placement of the head is better than others. The examples posted as a rather poor example, but I have seen other pictures now showing off a much better cropping job.
  (2/4/08) We’ve been told some the second half of Spaceship Earth has been updated once again, finally putting into effect a major feature of the ride has been not been working until now. SPOILER ALERT… Read no further if you want to be surprised.
  So far we’ve seen that they’ve been taking rider’s pictures on the way up into the sphere, and Screamscape was told long ago that the new ride would use some kind of facial recognition software for the second half of the ride experience that wasn’t yet working. Now it seems they are putting those photos to use at last by inserting the riders faces over the cartoon faces into the videos you see during the ride’s decent. If you are riding alone, then one cartoon face will remain. From what we’ve been told there are still a few kinks to work out as no every face appears in the videos and guests wearing glasses often find that their eyes are missing. (CMs in the boarding area have been hear suggesting to guests with glasses that they take them off during the ride.)
  (1/31/08) Thanks to Carlos Frade and a little bit of Photoshop magic, I can now show you a fairly good look at how the modified Spaceship Earth cars now look with the added touch screen panel.
  (1/28/08) A reader ha sent in a picture of the new InnerVision game at the end of Spaceship Earth.
  (1/25/08) A new game has been set up in Project Tomorrow, the post-show area on Spaceship Earth. The new game is called InnerVision and was described as a giant version of Nintendo’s Brain Age game series with a bit of Simon and Dance Dance Revolution thrown into the mix. The basic story here is a future invention where you can stand in front of a large mirror that will scan you, determine your health and transmit that data to your doctor. The game has three phases, a hand-eye coordination game with colored buttons, the Simon style memory game and then a DDR style timing game.
  (12/21/07) Along with the soft-opening preview rides of the new Spaceship Earth, Epcot has opened a new addition to the Project Tomorrow post-ride area called Power City. From the look of the photos at MouseSteps it involves a pair of players with controller sticks that could be mistaken for swiffers controlling the action of the game screen on the ground.
  (12/10/07) All new photos and a video of the Spaceship Earth sneak previews can be found at WDW Magic this week. Unfortunately the reviews are a mixed bag right now, with most people raving about how well redone the first half of the ride is, but how bad the new second half (decent) portion it. Though these assessments may not be entirely fair since it’s also the second half of the ride that is still the most unfinished at this point, so you never know what else may be added.
  (12/7/07) Several readers have reported in that Spaceship Earth did open the other day for a brief sneak preview session, though it was clear that the ride was still having technical issues with many of the video segments and sections that just didn’t appear to be finished yet.
- SPOILER ALERT -
  The following link will take you to see a couple of small photos and a description of the new ride experience that will contain spoilers if you want to remain surprised. Otherwise head on over to ThemeParkAve to check out the preview version of Spaceship Earth.
  (12/3/07) As a special holiday surprise, Disney is expected to soft open Spaceship Earth sometime in mid-December for sneak previews of the newest version of the iconic attraction. According to the Orlando Sentinel, the ride’s new narrator will be Judi Dench, perhaps best known for her roll as “M” in the James Bond films since 1995’s Goldeneye.
  (7/26/07) A few details about the rehab of Spaceship Earth have finally worked their way through the cracks in the geosphere. From what we’ve been told the new updates and effects are going to be fairly “video based” in nature, with one including an attempt to use some new facial recognition software that will provide a more personal ending to the attraction for you.
  (4/18/07) Attraction wide changes are going to be rolled out through the rest of 2007 as the final phases of Siemens sponsorship of Spaceship Earth are put into play. According to the press release each of the ride’s scenes will be enhanced in some fashion and we’ll see a few additional scenes added to the mix, including a brand new finale "which provides guests the opportunity to imagine their futures." Interactive touch screens installed into every car will "enable guests to create their own visions of the future and see themselves in that future." Almost sounds like Horizons, doesn’t it?
  The time travel aspect of the ride’s theme will show how each generation’s innovations have created the future for the generation to follow and "how the spirit of innovation has moved people from the caves to the cosmos." Changes will be made to not only lighting and effects, but also to character costumes, set decoration as well as the narration and soundtrack.

2009 - Illuminations: Sky Dance - Rumor - (1/22/08) I don’t know much about this yet, but I’m starting to hear rumors that a new version of Illuminations may be in the works to replace Reflections of Earth as early as 2009. The working title being tossed around is said to be Illuminations: Sky Dance and by no coincidence Don Dorsey’s website does list something called Sky Dance as one of three current projects they are working on. Don Dorsey has had a long involvement with Disney’s past big nighttime spectaculars: Reflections of Earth, Fantasmic, Sorcery In The Sky and even the original Main Street Electrical Parade. Anyone know more?

2009/2010 - Soarin’ Update - Rumor - (7/17/06) The latest buzz from our insiders claim that there may be plans in the works to open an all new ride film called Soarin’ over America as early as 2009. Anyone know more?

???? - Russian Pavilion - Rumor - (1/14/08) While Jim Hill got everyone buzzing and excited about adding a new Russian Pavilion to World Showcase last week, one of our own sources says not to get our hopes up for it just yet. While they confirm that apparently the old plans were pulled out again and new ideas are being talked about within the halls of Imagineering, they don’t believe that there any support for the project yet from Walt Disney World management who apparently is kind of clueless about the purpose of World Showcase.
  WDW Management sees World Showcase more as a giant retail mall rather than an amusement park, full of shops, food stands and table service restaurants, all anchored by the nightly fireworks show… and they’re good with that. When something is changed or updated in World Showcase, it’s usually due to political pressure from the pavilion’s host country over concerned of outdated stereotypes, which was a primary reason behind the new CircleVision films in China and Canada, and possibly behind the update to Mexico’s flume ride as well. You never know though… if the buzz over bringing Russia to Epcot is big enough, they just might go for it. After all, they’ve kind of run out of the attractions in Future World to update at this point.
  (1/9/08) According to the latest entry at Jim Hill Media, “The Russians are Coming!” No… not in a Red Dawn kind of way, but apparently WDI has revived their old plans from Eisner’s Disney Decade (1990-2000) and is looking to build a Russian pavilion once again World Showcase. This makes sense really since way back in the day apparently the Russian Pavilion got to the point where it was fairly far along in the design phase before the collapse of Russia caused the whole project to go with it.
  Way back on one of my first visits to Epcot back in 1990 or 1991 I was pulled aside by Disney CMs at Epcot and asked to take part in a focus group on possible new attractions they were considering for the park at the time. It’s kind of funny to think about the ideas they presented to us then and what happened to them all.
  Back then they talked about adding some kind of new “Space” themed pavilion to Future World which we know eventually became Mission: Space. A River Rapids ride in the unlabeled African area of World Showcase was discussed, but we know that project ended up being moved into the new Animal Kingdom park project instead. Then they showed off lots of artwork and plans for a Mt. Fuji roller coaster project to go in behind the Japan Pavilion which was the groups favorite idea of all. Of course we how know how this project was kicked around for years, objected to by Kodak, and later revived at Animal Kingdom as Expedition Everest. What they say about Imagineering is definitely true… a good idea is never gone forever but can usually come back when the time is right. 
  Case in point now would be the Russian pavilion… which was probably just about the only concept they showed us way back then that had yet to resurface… until now. Way back then the idea was to build a big building that would have a similar look to the famous Saint Basil’s Cathedral (which is actually not part of the Kremlin). They had an interesting list of attractions they wanted our opinions on as well that included what sounded like big show on the scale of the American Adventure that would merge filmed footage, projected displays and animatronic figures to retell the history of Russia. There was also some kind of slow moving flume ride concept that would be themed to a classic Russian fairy tale that escapes me, but according to Jim Hill it was to be Ivan and the Magic Pike. For those of you yawning already, there was also a thrill ride concept thrown into the mix as well. This idea proved to be the second most popular attraction idea in our focus group, coming in just behind Mt. Fuji and before the Space Pavilion concept was a thrill ride themed to the Russian Olympic bobsledding team. I don’t even think they had any artwork for it at the time, it was just something being talked about, but our group just loved the idea of a wild bobsled ride.
  If the Russian Pavilion idea is coming back, it’s a good time for it. The Russian economy is said to be back on its feet and after spending most of the last decade updating all of Future World, it’s about time to start revamping World Showcase. Of course there is no telling if any of the old ideas will become part of the new pavilion plans or if they have come up with all new ideas instead. Right now we just have to wait and see what develops.