D23 is around the corner. If Lin-Manual Miranda has his way with Bob Chapek, Imagineering's next addition to World Showcase at Epcot will be a Columbia pavilion to play home to the animated hit Encanto. Will it get further along in concept than the once planned Spain addition?
As seen in the last pages of the Open Day Booklet for EPCOT Center in 1982, Spain was announced and clearly on the horizon. A few of the future expansions came to be (Horizons, The Living Seas, Morocco). You could say that an Equatorial Africa of sorts was realized in Disney's Animal Kingdom, but a full blown Israel was never realized.
On that note- Will Disney defile the Morocco pavilion
and transform it into something else, thereby dishonoring our friends
and neighbors in North Africa? Good Lord, I hope not!
Take a look at this terrific piece of concept art. How rich in detail, how ambitious! Could Chapek's Epcot ever offer something that feels so authentic when the recent France addition is cute but more themed to an imaginary animated Paris rather than something that feels more like the original buildings around it? No, I don't think so either.
(Art copyright The Walt Disney Company.)
It'd certainly be nice to see the South American continent represented in World Showcase. I have mixed feelings about the intrusion of so much IP over focusing on the actual countries, but at this point I don't think there's much chance of putting that particular genie back in the lamp.
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