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Man relies on energy for most everything he does now. From electrical power in buildings to fuel for automobiles, energy is very much a part of our life, as well as a concern for the future. The Universe of Energy, one of EPCOT Center's original attractions, fit perfectly with Future World's theme of examining where we have come from and what lies ahead. Here is a look back at the attraction. Upon approaching the building, it is pretty obvious that the theme of this attraction will be energy. The surface of the entry is covered with tiles made of mirrors, which reflect everything from the sun to the people walking by to the water in the small pool in front of the entrance. These reflections almost give the building the appearance that it is moving, by reflecting all the movement and energy around it. Panels on the sides of the building are painted in shades of red and orange, colors often associated with heat and energy. And if that isn't enough, the roof of the building is covered with solar panels; the reflective surface of the panels blends well with the mirror-tiled entrance. Just inside the doors, the tiled walls, in shades of red, purple, and orange, also contain a digital clock, made to resemble the tiles in the walls, which tells how many minutes until the next show.
The first stop inside the building is a room with a large screen, where guests see a pre-show film. But this is no ordinary movie screen. This screen is made up of 100 squares, five rows of twenty. Each square is actually a pyramid shape, and each one can turn independently. One side is white, and one side is black. As the film is shown, the different squares turn to reveal their black side when the image isn't on that square, or some squares turn to reveal their points toward the audience for an interesting effect. The film and screen were created by filmmaker Emile Radok, so that this is often referred to as the Radok screen or the Radok preshow. The film itself tells of the advances in energy from the beginning of time to the present. Included are lightning, fire, windmills, and more. The presentation ends with the song "Energy (You Make the World Go Round)", while several different representations of energy are shown as the screen is in constant motion.
After the film is complete, guests enter the first main theater and sit in unusual looking bench seats. It becomes obvious, if it wasn't already, that this is no ordinary theater as doors at the ends of each row slide shut after everyone is seated. The whole seating area then rotates 180 degrees, which reveals that there are movie screens above the doors everyone entered through. The movie that follows, on a screen that is so wide it is actually made up of three screens, is a unique experience. Created by the Disney animation department using the world famous multiplane camera, this film explains where fossil fuels come from, showing how the remains of plants and animals during the era of the dinosaurs were eventually transformed by pressure from the layers of earth above. As the film ends, the seating area then rotates back to the left, where the transformation from movie theater to ride takes place. The seating area breaks up into six large vehicles, taking the guests through a recreation of the world of dinosaurs. Straight ahead is a apatosaurus family, some of which actually lean out over the vehicles that pass by. Also of note is a stegosaurus battling an allosaurus, as well as an erupting volcano. This trip through the sights, sounds, and smells of the prehistoric era passes by too quickly, as the vehicles reform into a theater seating area in another room.
To one side of this room is the EPCOT Energy Center, where television monitors and a large map show different forms of energy from all over the world. Once all the vehicles arrive, the seating area rotates again, and another movie is shown, again on three large screens that extend from the floor to the ceiling. This film more about fossil fuels, but it also examines some of the other advancements in energy, such as solar energy, wind power, hydroelectric power, and even fission. Following the second film, the vehicles then move again as one unit back into the first room for the grand finale. But this time rotating to face away from the screens over the entrance doors. The walls are revealed to be mirrors that had been covered by large curtains, and a film is shown on the rear screen featuring laser-like animated images about energy, while the song "Universe of Energy" is played. Universe of Energy was one of those attractions that focused on serious learning. It was fun in the sense of learning about the past and future of energy and taking a trip through the world of dinosaurs. But there wasn't much humor to be found in the attraction, except for those who for some reason found humor in the line, "Shale, the rock that burns." Because of its serious tone, the attraction was often passed up by parents with children, at least until the 1990s when dinosaurs once again became popular. Besides just being decorations on the building, the solar cells did provide part of the energy for the attraction. But they also exhibited the limited nature of solar power. All of the 2 acres of solar cells on the roof of the large building provided less than 20 percent of the attraction's power at best. But at that time, as well as today, solar power was only meant to supplement our current coal produced energy supply, not replace it. And that was a point made during the entire show. All the new energy sources were just supplements to fossil fuels. A point well made, considering that Exxon sponsored the attraction. Probably the most unique aspect of the attraction was the new vehicle system developed by the Imagineers, the "Traveling Theater" as they called it. The six large vehicles, which could each carry 97 people, did not travel on a track. Instead, they followed signals from a computer received through an eighth-inch thick wire in the floor. This system allowed for the six vehicles to break formation and follow the same path through the dinosaur scene without the need of several mechanical switches, which most any type of track would require. This same system would be used later in the Great Movie Ride and the Tower of Terror. Some of the dinosaur scenes were quite reminiscent of scenes from the Magic Skyway attraction, which Disney created for Ford at the 1964 New York World's Fair. The dinosaurs from the fair were later moved to Disneyland, where they could be seen in the Primeval World diorama on the Disneyland Railroad. The Audio-Animatronic dinosaurs in the Universe of Energy were some of the largest ever created. As with Spaceship Earth, the narration for the attraction was by Vic Perrin. The song "Energy (You Make the World Go Round)" was written by Bob Moline, and the song "Universe of Energy" was written by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn. Other music heard in the attraction was written by Buddy Baker. Like most of the EPCOT Center attractions, the Universe of Energy was a technological marvel. It took a sometimes dry subject and made people aware of our limited resources of fossil fuels, emphasizing that other forms of energy may be necessary as our consumption of energy grows. - Story by Steve Burns E-mail Steve at steve@startedbyamouse.com, discuss this article in the StartedByAMouse.com Disney Discussion Forums or use the Talkback feature below. |
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