The latest:

>> 

Walt Disney World's EPCOT Center isn't quite the snazzy permanent world's fair it once was -- years of neglect and mismanagement have forced the park into playing a never-ending game of catch-up. However, with new blood in Disney's Imagineering department -- namely Pixar's John Lasseter -- EPCOT may yet return to its snazzy retro-future glory.

Take a look at the first EPCOT project done on Lasseter's watch: The post-show area to the park's signature attraction Spaceship Earth. (Here, if anything, is a poetic example of how much the world has changed in the 25 years since EPCOT opened its doors: Originally, Spaceship Earth was sponsored by Bell System, pre-bust. Today, it's sponsored by Siemens. The move from one company to another quite literally embodies the death of copper wires and land lines.) Siemens hired students from Carnagie Melon University to create the interactive games you see, but everything else -- the set design, the lighting, the general "wow" of the space -- is the Imagineering division, back from the dead. Bryan often says that we're living in the future, and I agree with him -- but every now and again, it's nice to walk into a space like the one Disney has created here and imagine the tomorrow we can't reach.
posted by Geoff Carter at 9:30 AM