Horizons

Extinct Attraction

Location:
Future World,
EPCOT Center

Opened: October 1, 1983
Closed: January 9, 1999

Contributors:
Corinne Cook,
Tom Fitzgerald,
Robert McCall,
George McGinnis

Narrators:
Dena Dietrich,
Bob Holt

Bibliography:
WDW Eyes & Ears
September 29, 1983
Orlando-Land Magazine, November 1983

Descendant of:
Carousel of Progress
(1964-present),
General Motors' Futurama
(1964-1965),
RCA's Home of Future Living
(1975-1985)

Location Later Became:
Mission Space

All images copyright
The Walt Disney Company.
Text 2012 by Mike Lee

I'd like to acknowledge
Ed Barlow,
Todd Becker,
Howard Bowers
Mike Cozart,
Alastair Dallas,
Rhodes Davis,
Dave Ensign,
"Miami Mike" Hiscano,
Marc Macuse,
Ross Plesset
and
Martin Smith
as contributors to WYW's
Horizons knowledge bank 

Last Update to this page: January 28, 2012 (page first posted)

PART I - Horizons Overview
PART II -  Horizons Images, Audio and Video
PART III -  Links to Other Horizons Resources & Sites

Part I - Horizons Overview

As a fourteen-year-old in 1983, two visions of the future heavily shaded my ideas as to how the 21st century could turn out. The first, which was actually from 1982 but only got to me through HBO the next year, was Ridley Scott's replicantastic Blade Runner. Dystopia, the term others have applied to the dark, grimy and dangerously alluring physical film world Scott built for Philip K. Dick's 1968 book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? , wasn't hard for me to accept as a likely outcome for humanity ... corporate dominance, rampant crime and moral ambiguity continuing along a societal trajectory that already felt pretty well established 30 years ago.  The second vision was EPCOT Center's Horizons pavilion, which projected a bright, clean and uplifting destiny for both those of us on earth and the ones moving "off-world." Its depiction of mankind working past lines of class, race and historically irreconcilable cultural differences toward sustainable, technologically advanced communities in space, in the deserts and under the seas may have appeared improbable to me even as a teenager, yet it was the future I wanted to believe in. 

That's not to say Horizons lacked for corporate influence, because its original sponsor General Electric made its mark on the pavilion quite plain, as it had with the attraction's theoretical predecessor, Carousel of Progress.  But that ran a distant second to Horizons' masterful summarizing of every EPCOT Center theme and subject matter into a thoroughly entertaining crystal ball experience with epic scope and warm personality.

It would be difficult to overstate the impact Horizons had on an entire generation of WDW visitors.  So many of us were still in the process of exploring EPCOT Center's original (1982) attractions when this amazing new pavilion showed up a year later and blew our minds.  The internet attests to a vast swath of ardent admirers, some of whom have been sufficiently moved to erect awesome digital shrines to Horizons and carry its ambitious messages forward even if the current Future World does not.  WED Enterprises got the art of attraction design so right with Horizons - a combination of dramatic exterior elevations, a high-capacity ride system, imaginative set designs, superb music, the smell of citrus, natural humor, redheads, robotic weather forecasting, jumpsuits and kelp* - that it almost made you wonder why the team behind it couldn't go on to invest other attractions in the park with some extra Horizonsness.  EPCOT Center could not possibly have had too much of that aura about it.

In the end, however, Horizons was a singular entity that lasted a too-short sixteen years before joining the pantheon of WDW's magnificent and regrettably deceased.  The structure in which it had resided was demolished in plain sight of park guests over an extended period of time - an unfortunate end for a great attraction, a conclusion that felt like the future we were fortunate enough to glimpse through Horizons' prism was slipping away along with EPCOT Center's original identity and sense of purpose.  Symbolic or not, its loss will resonate in perpetuity for both the fans who enjoyed it in person and those who know they missed something special.      

*seaweed

As referenced elsewhere on this site and in more reputable places, EPCOT Center as it was finally built (after a dozen years of conceptual stasis and fitful evolutions) was in essence Disney's version of a World's Fair.  More grand in many ways, certainly more polished in most respects and surely less diverse in some regards ... by virtue of a more narrow set of guiding hands under the auspieces of a family entertainment company ... but a World's Fair nonetheless, in spite of whatever titles and premises were ascribed to it.  A theme park version of a World's Fair, to be more precise, as envisioned by the undisputed masters of the form.  EPCOT Center was the direct output of the men and women who had helped Walt and Roy Disney erect the two most amazing parks in the world up to that point.  The impact that World's Fairs had on Walt Disney himself is well-documented.  EPCOT Center was sufficient evidence that his fascination had been passed on to the first and second generation of WED designers.  Horizons was the proof that those WED veterans could take everything they had learned about theme park design and World's Fairs* and blend them into a modern classic ... an attraction rooted firmly in the company's traditions yet reaching beyond those foundations to assure those of us in an often-troubled world that the future could be an exciting and fun place for everyone.

As my associates over at Mesa Verde Times have already posited at various points in time, Horizons was therefore an amalgam not just of General Electric's Carousel of Progress and General Motors' Futurama (both from the 1964-1965 World's Fair), but also of RCA's Home of Future Living (1975).  The Home of Future Living, the original post-show exhibit for WDW's Space Mountain, was the first case of Disney using audio-animatronics to depict a family unit several decades ahead of the present enjoying man's technological advances in their home.  Horizons simply applied a much broader scope to that idea and with greater interconnectivity between the family members.

Which is not to say that it was easy to combine all those influences and come up with a hit.   In a 1983 Interview with Orlando-Land magazine reporter Pam Parks, WED's Tom Fitzgerald and Marty Sklar spoke about some of the challenges inherent to the design process and, in particular, forecasting the future.  "One of the problems we face is getting people to make predictions, particularly companies who don't want to show a product they'll have in ten years, for competitive reasons," said Sklar.  "If we go too far, people will say it's just fantasy ... a balancing has to take place when you're talking about the future." 

* Much as they had done with all their filmed entertainment experience when creating 1964's Mary Poppins . 

WYW's Horizons essay will eventually spill into this space, I'd bet.

Attention Horizons passengers: Your missing paragraphs have yet to be located

You know what I liked about Horizons?  A lot of stuff.

WYW's Horizons page chose its own path back to the Futureport.  

Part II - Horizons Images, Audio & Video

IMAGES - click on any of the thumbnails below for larger images

Horizons Early Audio Segments (live) courtesy of Martin Smith
1983, mp3 file, 3.6mb, 1:57, Martin has compiled a live cross-section of ride narration and character dialogue segments that changed shortly after Horizons opened.


Horizons Scene Music - Urban Habitat
1983, mp3 file, 2.4mb, 1:41

Progress City USA's Horizons Story

Horizons 1

Horizons Resurrected