Fact-Checking 5 Epcot Rides That Predicted the Future

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Epcot has always been the most curious of Disney World's parks: a place of slow (and some might say boring) rides that focused more on education than on adrenaline-boosting thrills. This is a park where utopian ideals (the park's name originally stood for "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow") meet multicultural reverence, with a huge section of the park devoted to miniature recreations of various countries. Epcot has always been a place of shameless futurism, where, for the price of admission, visitors can spend the day exploring contrasting and often unrealistic visions of the world to come. In an attempt to keep up with changing technology, these attractions are regularly closed and replaced with more modern fare. But the extinct rides of Epcot's past are all fondly remembered by the generations who grew up with them. We thought it'd be fun to look back at five of the park's past visions of the future. Here is how they held up.



Horizons is all futurism, all the time. The animatronic-filled, slow-moving, dark ride first pays tribute to some of the past's more outlandish visions of the future, with sci-fi dioramas showing off robot butlers, tube-based mass transit and a healthy dose of neon lights. The ride then takes a turn for the serious, replacing cartoonish prognostication with faux-realistic visions. Surprisingly, some elements of this vision of the future have actually come to pass, at least in some form:

-A family is depicted engaging in television-based videoconferencing in their living room. To anybody who has Skype, this is simple and possible. But the glasses-free 3D that the videoconferencing is presented in is a little more difficult to pull off today, even with recent advances that have made home-based 3D TV cheap and easy to use.

-A man is seen playing a keyboard that is controlled by waving his hand over it. Could this futuristic theremin have been forecasting today's DIY laser harp trend?

-Robotic farming: A former desert is shown being farmed by large, fully automated robotic machines. Bot farming is still fairly new, with applications limited to a few specialized, custom-built machines, but it definitely exists.

-Underwater personal subs: Residents of an underwater mineral-mining city (it's never stated what minerals they are extracting) are shown venturing out into the their backyards using personal subs. We aren't living under the sea just yet, but personal submarines are here—if you have the cash.

CLICK FOR MORE 5 Epcot Rides That Predicted the Future
1. Horizons	2. World of Motion	3. Captain Eo	4. Spaceship Earth	5. Carousel of Progress

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