If It’s 2 P.M., This Must Be Rome At Epcot
If you want to travel around the world, you have basically two options: You can make careful plans and endure continuous hassle and occasional dysentery, or you can fly to Orlando and buy a ticket to Epcot. After three years using the first method, I figured it was time to try the Walt Disney Way.
So I called the Disney publicity office and told a publicist I was doing an in-depth profile of Epcot’s World Showcase and - although I couldn’t be entirely sure - millions of people might read it. He cheerfully made two tickets available (one for my girlfriend, Signe, officially “my photographer”) and even provided us with a guide, probably to make sure we wouldn’t spend the entire day drinking beer in Disney-Germany.
This was the first time I’d accepted a media-related freebie and I felt, well, a little goofy about it. But since travel writers do this sort of thing all the time and as long as I informed my readers that I was sucking up for free tickets, it wouldn’t be a problem.
We met our guide, Mark, in the morning, and thanked him for the tickets and his time. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, “it’s on the Mouse.” Aside from being one of the finest human beings on planet Earth, Mark is surely one of the most loyal workers in Michael Eisner’s employ and is definitely deserving of a huge raise and, perhaps, his own theme park.
First off, we picked up our Epcot Passports. No furloughed federal worker delays, no ugly passport photo necessary and I was guaranteed there wouldn’t be any pesky customs officials at the borders. The passports came with a complete set of colorful, exotic decals to help fill up any blank spaces that might be leftover after our “world tour.”
We started walking clockwise around the 11 Disney-countries, which, for the record, are Mexico, Britain, Germany, Norway, France, Japan, China, Italy, Canada, Morocco and the U.S. They are evenly spaced around a 1.2 mile manmade lake. First stop: Mexico.
Disney-Mexico is set behind a four-story papier-mache (or maybe Styrofoam) Mayan pyramid. We entered the pyramid, which was - surprise! - a gift shop, and browsed through sombreros and maracas. Then we made our way 20 meters to Disney-Norway, where we took a boat ride past a polar bear (though I never saw one while I was in Norway) and a few papier-mache fjords.
I began thinking the whole thing was shallow, but then it couldn’t be much worse than the view people get when they try to “do” Europe in three weeks. Either way, the experience has the same effect: Your stereotyped impressions are fulfilled and you can stock up on postcards and tacky souvenirs. Only instead of, “If it’s Thursday, this must be Rome,” you get, “If it’s 2 p.m., this must be Rome, and LOOK, there’s Mickey Mouse!”
Are the countries at EPCOT depicted accurately? When I asked one of the Germans working at Disney-Germany what visitors thought of the pavilion, she said just about everyone liked it but German tourists. However, Germans enjoyed all the other pavilions, she assured me.
By the time I reached DisneyChina, I had to visit the restroom. Would they replicate the squat toilets of China, I wondered? No. In fact they ducked the entire issue. There are no toilets at all in Disney-China.
It wasn’t until we arrived in Disney-Italy that I really began to appreciate this cultural biosphere. “Italy” featured a Venetian backdrop and the atmosphere seemed authentic. When I visited the real Venice two years ago, it was filled with just as many English-speaking, video camera-toting tourists. In fact, it was even worse: more tourists, longer lines, more souvenirs.
Trotting from nation to nation I realized that Walt Disney was a visionary. Some people have said the Epcot pavilions don’t reflect the countries they’re supposed to represent, but they will soon. The world itself is changing to fit Disney’s crafted version of it.
Many countries now call their historic treasures “attractions”; they make you buy a ticket and stand in line to see everything; nearly everyone speaks English (in order to sell postcards and trinkets); and one person in every tour group I’ve ever seen, from the Great Pyramids to the Great Palace in Bangkok, was wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt.
Naturally, not everything is colorful, exciting, clean or well-lit on the tourist trail, so, to avoid disappointing us, many countries have taken a page out of Mickey’s handbook. But Disney is better at providing a glossed-over version of a country; they have the budget to hire better singers, better dancers, better costume makers, better sound engineers and light technicians. And Disney entertains you while you stand in line. If you go to Mexico, you’ll find a mariachi band playing by the pool of a five-star American hotel. Why visit Morocco and pay to sit with a bunch of tourists in a five-star hotel to see belly dancers when you can watch better dancers perform in Disney-Morocco inside a genuine-looking casbah?
Is there any real culture at Epcot? Not in the theme park but I thought I might find some among the 2,500 workers, mostly young people from the 11 countries represented. All the imported employees live together in a kind of Disney-fied United Nations. The general consensus was the whole experience constituted one big party.
Many workers thought the French stuck together too much, as did the Moroccans. The Chinese were lacking in English skills, and the Brits, Canadians and Norwegians had formed something of a social club. All agreed the Mexican employees were the most outgoing, and the Japanese the nicest.
All in all, I’d give Epcot a thumbs up. And this has nothing to do with the expensive lunch Mark bought us at Disney-Japan. Naturally, Epcot is not a place for hardened travelers who enjoy the arduous aspects of a journey, or people who really want get to know a country. But for the large number of people who feel obligated to travel rather than genuinely interested in it, or who lack the time and money to see the world, Epcot is perfect.
Where else can you walk from Norway to Morocco before lunch and still have enough energy to go water sliding in the afternoon? Morocco is clean, the Mexican water drinkable, the British food edible, and even the French are friendly here.
And because Epcot attracts people who might otherwise wreak cultural and environmental havoc with their consumer-crazed presence in the actual countries, Disney’s world tour constitutes true Eco-tourism.
xxxx If you go “Econoguide: Walt Disney World, Universal Studios Florida, Epcot, and Other Major Central Florida Attractions.” 1996 ed. Sandler, Corey. Contemporary Books. “The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World and Epcot.” 1996 ed. Sehlinger, Bob. Macmillan Travel. “Social Aspects: Vinyl Leaves: Walt Disney World and America.” Fjellman, Stephen M. Westview Press 1992.