Disney’s cheapskate take on Journey into Your Imagination wasn’t worth the money saved. The ride was outright rejected by guests and fans alike. So much vitriol was shared that Disney saw fit to close the unimaginative replacement shortly after the Millennium Celebration’s finale. Consider just how bad it really must’ve been for Disney to concede and close the despised ride forever after such a short lifetime.
After barely two years, Journey into Your Imagination was gone for good. It closed on October 8, 2001. The Imagination pavilion was short its shortened and short-sighted dark ride. But not for long.
Imagineer David Mumford (author of the highly sought after Disneyland: The Nickel Tour with Bruce Gordon) was brought in and tasked with giving the Imagination ride one final lease on life.
Unsurprisingly, Mumford’s limitations were clear: he needed to work with the rerouted queue, spliced ride circuit, and the existing ride system; with a shoestring budget, he’d need to keep the scenes guests reported liking most (“the train room,” “the gravity room,” and “the butterfly”) and fix the things they hated (the lack of music, the Imagination Scanner, and the dull plot) while reintroducing the most important ingredient: Figment.
1983 – 1998: Journey into Imagination.
1999 – 2001: Journey into Your Imagination.
And now…
Journey into Imagination With Figment
On June 2, 2002 – just six months after the closure of Journey into Your Imagination – the pavilion’s dark ride re-opened as the long-winded Journey into Imagination With Figment. The name change was a white flag – a rare admission of guilt on Disney’s behalf, announcing the triumphant return of the purple dragon that never should have left, idealized by fans as creativity incarnate and held as an icon of Epcot.
It was a signal to guests that the ride inside the glass pyramids was worth taking another look at, and certainly fans readied themselves for a changed ride.
Some things have changed – for example, the random “Experiments” of Journey into Your Imagination have been cleaned up and re-organized into Sensory Labs (a much more logical narrative) as we travel through the Hearing Lab, Smell Lab, and Vision Lab. While its physical track layout remains the slashed version that debuted with the 1999 misstep, an extra show-stop make the ride a smidge longer: six minutes as opposed to Your‘s five (which is still a cough compared to the 12 minute original).
The first major change strikes right away. The Imagination Scanner is gone. That means that those who enjoyed being teased about their lack of creativity are out of luck. Instead, our introduction to the Imagination Institute is via five logos projected on screens, representing the Institute’s five labs: sound, sight, smell, touch, and taste. As the Omnimovers align with the five screens, Dr. Channing appears again. But this time, his plan is a little different. He wants us to “see that the five human senses can help to capture imagination!” Until…
We may have counted down our favorite “…then something goes horribly wrong” ride plots, but this one is something unexpected! Figment arrives via a CGI animation, carrying a packed suitcase as if returning from vacation. “Oh, oh, can I go too?!” He chirps.
“Absolutely not!” Dr. Channing insists, turning back to riders. “This is one of my discoveries, the Figment of Imagination. And Figment, you are not to interfere with the tour!” But Figment doesn’t take no for an answer. After a few gross-out gags (licking Dr. Channing, sniffing his armpit, and hitting a high note to shatter his comical glasses), he commandeers the tour and leads riders onward.
Here’s the thing: Figment is back in the ride as far more than a cameo. But it’s not really the triumphant return fans pled for. Unfortunately, Figment is simply inserted into the uninspired (and dare we say, unimaginative?) Imagination Institute storyline. Working within the existing limitations, the ride is still a “tour” of the sterile institute’s open house alongside Dr. Nigel Channing.
And while the return of Figment does add much-needed life, color, music, and mayhem to the Institute storyline, all is not as it appears. This version of Figment is far from the whimsical, cozy, dreamy dragon of the original ride. In fact, he’s reborn here as a (often CGI) pest, determined to derail our tour… more siblings with the direct-to-video humor and comical cartoon stars of the Declassified Disaster: The Enchanted Tiki Room – Under New Management than with the Dreamfinder’s former sidekick. While putting an end to the Imagination Institute is a noble goal, he goes about it by annoyingly terrorizing riders. It’s for that reason we listed Figment’s strange starring role in Epcot as something first-timers must be totally confused by. “Why is that somewhat-unlikeable dragon in a pretty unenjoyable ride a de facto icon of the park?”
In any case, to prove to Channing that “hearing with your imagination” is more important than “hearing with your ears,” he calls (literally) on a telephone, then invites the “Train of Thought” to show us how our imaginations can come to life. The re-use of the former rides audio test might not be novel, but the return of “One Little Spark” more than makes up for it, as Figment sings our lesson aloud:
For every sound your ears are hearing
A thousand thoughts can start appearing
And each of us, imagines different things
From just a sound, your mind has wings!
In the Sight Lab, Dr. Channing would have us merely test our eyesight. But Figment knows there’s more to life than what meets the eye! He interrupts by dashing the letters off of the eye chart (a not-too-cleverly-disguised flatscreen monitor – hey, budgets are tight!), and reprises his song once more:
One spark of light can light your fancy
Your mind sees more than what your eyes see
Your sense of sight can make your fancy fly
There’s more to sight than meets the eye!
In the Smell Lab, he commandeers a massive odor tank, brings it to life as a slot machine, and lands (unfortunately for us) on triple-skunk, spraying riders with an unpleasant smell (actually burnt coffee).
As the doors to the Touch and Taste Labs loom, Dr. Channing decides that, given the chaos Figment has wrought, we’re best to skip the rest of the tour (perhaps a subtle and heart-wrenching reminder that half of the ride’s track has been severed).
But Figment isn’t done yet – if we really want to “turn this open house upside down,” we’ll need to visit Figment’s home (a disconnected attempt to re-use the old Gravity Lab inverted house, now painted in blacklight neon colors; Figment’s face is painted on the old Packard in the garage, day-glow flowers are painted on the toilet, and static mannequins of Figment are affixed to the ceiling… it’s a little odd).
With just a spark of inspiration
I’ve made my house an innovation
Imagination really clowns around
Mix downside up, and upside down!
Figment’s pranks and the wonders we’ve seen in the three Sensory Labs are enough to win over Dr. Channing. As the Omnimovers align with five more screens, he appears again. “And so, as you can plainly see, imagination works best with it’s set free!”
“You said it, Doc!” Figment flutters in. “Imagination is a blast!“
With a blast of air from behind and a flash of light (a re-use of the Imagination Scanner’s explosive finale), the walls sink away. This time, though, the lights come up to reveal an enlightening diorama of Figment cutouts and mannequins conquering summits, riding flying carpets, and creating rainbows as “One Little Spark” plays all around– the closest this ride gets to the whimsy that made the original so beloved.
Finally believing Figment’s lesson on creativity, even the cold and scientific Dr. Channing joins in on the act – now a smiling moon – reprising the exact words of Dreamfinder in a fanciful finale among the stars:
One little spark, of inspiration
Is at the heart, of all creation!
Right at the start of everything that’s new
One little spark lights up for you!Imagination! Imagination!
A dream can be a dream come true
With just that spark from me and you!
In one of the ride’s more clever moments, the cabs continue through the stars until logos of the Imagination Institute appear ahead, floating in the endlessness of space. Then, in a flash, the Institute appears all around, as if we’d never left! As the looping “One Little Spark” continues, guests exit to the ImageWorks What If? Labs.
Check out the video below to see if you can catch what changed between the 1999 ride and its 2002 reinvention. Better yet, see if you can spot what stayed the same!
To be confusingly clear, Journey into Imagination With Figment is substantially better than Journey into Your Imagination… but it’s still not a great ride or, arguably, even a good one. Especially compared to the cult classic original, the new ride with its pesky Figment and two-decade-old Imagination Institute storyline is as far from a classic as Imagineering can get.
Despite Imagineers’ best attempts to re-use the infrastructure handed to them by the awful and short-lived Journey into Your Imagination, the existing ride feels like a stopgap; a temporary fix meant to prop up the ride with bare minimum investment… Which might be fine except that the “replacement” Journey into Imagination has actually outlasted the classic it replaced! So as rumors of another major reimagining of Epcot’s Future World gained steam through the 2010s, fans began to get serious about wondering…
What’s Next?
So what would happen to Imagination? A long-rumored infusion of Pixar’s Inside Out characters? A grand return of Dreamfinder and Figment? Nothing? For the last two decades… it’s been anyone’s guess.
Then, in 2019, we got one step closer to finding out. At the semi-annual D23 Expo in August 2019, then-Chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products Bob Chapek was on hand to announce something radical. After decades of piecemeal fixes, one-off solutions, and mis-matched strategies for each of Future World’s pavilions, at last, Epcot would finally be afforded the master-planned, identity-based revolution it really needed.
This sweeping redesign would re-introduce pavilion-specific iconography and even return a modernized version of the park’s name and logo.
The reinvented park would predictably involve the once-verboten presence of Disney characters in World Showcase (Ratatouille in France; Mary Poppins in England, and major hints of Coco in Mexo) and a very important, very overdue aesthetic swap in Future World. The northern half of the park will axe the concrete in favor of a forested environment, adding the Journey of Water “outdoor pavilion,” a Celebration pavilion (for EPCOT’s many festivals), the new Play pavilion (replacing the long-closed Wonders of Life), and more.
One of the special features of the announcement was the introduction of the temporary, nostaglic “EPCOT Forever” nighttime spectacular, bridging the gap between the recently-retired “Illuminations” and the upcoming character-focused “Harmonious.” The show highlights attractions of the past, with “One Little Spark” as its most emotional musical moment.
Oh, and as for attempts to keep Future World… well… futuristic? The 2019-announced reinvention solves that, too. EPCOT Center’s two “realms” would be subdivided into four worlds, with the Imagination pavilion absorbed by the central “neighborhood” that also includes Spaceship Earth: World Celebration. Though the philosophical rewriting of Epcot’s purpose will never be entirely understood or approved by many Disney Parks history fans, at least there appears to be intention behind Epcot for the first time in a long time.
And among all the revolutionary announcements and artwork shared, the biggest surprise of all for fans was what was announced for the Imagination pavilion: nothing.
Could it be that, in a park undergoing a multi-billion dollar redesign, the Imagination pavilion will still feature a tired 3D theater showing Pixar shorts, a half-closed ImageWorks of interactive games running Windows 95, and 2002’s Journey into Imagination with a low-quality-CGI Figment? As frustrating as it may be, the answer appears to be that yet again, we just don’t know. But we do have an interesting clue…
After the initial announcements at August’s D23, the “EPCOT Experience” preview center opened with an impressive 360-degree wraparound screen and a highly-stylized, projection-mapped model featuring each of the pavilions with featured announcements… oh, and two others.
Despite no particular announcement being made, the Mexico pavilion is present on the model, even with a large guitar resting against its iconic temple exterior… seemingly a giveaway hint that, as rumored, Coco will eventually overtake the pavilion’s Three Cabelleros river ride and that Disney just wanted to save the official announcement for a future date. Makes sense, right?
So to that same end, what’s the meaning of the inclusion of the Imagination pavilion, too? According to insiders, Imagineers are ready to pull the trigger on a major reinvention of Imagination, too, that may or may not include the return of some familiar faces… Hmm…
“One Little Spark” Left
Even if the short-lived Journey into Your Imagination marked a low-point and a perfect storm in the history of Epcot and Imagineering as a whole, it also marked a turning point… a rare instance of Disney second-guessing its decision, admitting defeat, and restoring what it could to appease guests who deserved better – a trend that’s also saved us from Declassified Disasters: Stitch’s Great Escape, Superstar Limo, and The Enchanted Tiki Room: Under New Management.
Despite fans’ nostalgia and optimism, we may never see Dreamfinder and Figment again. More to the point, though, we’re unlikely to see the Imagination Institute survive whatever comes next to Epcot’s Imagination pavilion.
The bad news is, Journey into Imagination is gone… But the good news is, so is Journey into Your Imagination. They say those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Let’s hope Imagineers learned a valuable lesson from Journey into Your Imagination… and that they don’t forget it.
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The frustrating story of Journey into Your Imagination is just one entry in our Declassified Disasters collection. Make the jump there to pick up with another in-depth tale! Then, share your memories in the comments below. Did you experience the short-lived and Figment-free version of Imagination? Do you love or loathe the dragon’s “new” pesky personality? What other disastrous rides from Disney and beyond should we share next? We’re always excited to hear your thoughts.