(thanks to steve at ukdish)
In a shocking bit of news, we've heard that AT&T is going to be dropping their longtime sponsorship of Spaceship Earth, leaving yet another Epcot pavilion without a sponsor. (I believe The Living Seas and Wonders of Life are also currently without sponsors after their previous ones failed to renew. GE also dropped their sponsorship of Horizons a couple of years before it closed.) Spaceship Earth isn?t going anywhere however, and there are already wild rumors about who might take over, with the popular 'story' pointing to Microsoft.
Elsewhere in management it seems they are thinking up a lot of wild ideas to help bring up attendance at Epcot. One idea is to try and bring more people into World Showcase in the evening by either offering a discount or even free entry into the WS area of the park and the installation of some kind of gate between WS & FW to keep everyone else out. Though I fear that the current trend of just closing down all the Future World attractions (which is just wrong!) hours before the rest of the park closes to funnel everyone into WS will be a cheaper solution to keep any discount or free-guests from getting on any rides. A friend did point out to me that awhile back they did offer a seriously cheap After 4pm Annual Pass into Epcot... so perhaps they could start to offer the same thing for one-day guests. I recall can't see them letting the masses into World Showcase for free however because that would seriously bother the paying guests who spent the day in the park by overcrowding their nighttime experience and viewing of Reflections of Earth.
I've got one item of advice. You want to bring people back into Epcot? Then start building the park up. I had much more fun in Epcot ten years ago than I do now. It?s time to start building up the park and stop replacing thing. Add StormRider in between the Land & Sea pavilions. Replace Innoventions with something really fun and please fix or replace the Sea Cabs with SOMETHING. Maybe the 20,000 Leagues ride from DisneySea? Lets stop this vicious cycle of everything in Epcot being dependent on Sponsorship and start expanding the World Showcase by adding actual rides and attractions to the countries as well as adding some new countries! Put that Sinbad themed ride from DisneySea into Morocco, add something themed to Hercules in Italy, dig out the plans for Mt. Fuji and that River Flume ride for the African area. What ever happened to the Russian Pavilion and the fairy tale dark ride and Olympic Bobsled coaster that you had plans for? Add new counties that could be fun like Egypt and the Pyramids? Sign a deal with Lego to put add Denmark with Lego themed attractions. Some good money in the right direction would fix this park in 5-6 years, but you?ve got to start now. Fortunately, there may be some good things coming down from corporate. Word is going around that some major capital that was once reserved for a future 5th park will be dropped into fixing Epcot.

[ August 29, 2002, 02:56 PM: Message edited by: JohnY ]