What killed Wonders of Life? In part, it must be the same thing that led to the end of most of Epcot’s classics: sponsorship. The very strategy used to bring Future World to life instead ended up being its undoing.
Throughout the ’90s, contract negotiations with Future World sponsors mounted. While Disney had hoped and expected that corporations would sign on to extend their support and agree to obligatory refreshing and redesigning of their pavilions, many instead began to bail. The approaching New Millennium had changed not only the economics of many companies, but Americans’ relationships to them. (Do we really want Exxon dictating the contents of Epcot’s Energy pavilion?)
MetLife was one of the sponsors to bail. The insurance company dropped its stake in 2001. Insiders say that MetLife’s refusal to continue financial support for Wonders of Life might have been tied to an internal dispute over Cast Member insurance rates. We can’t be sure. But in any case, Disney did what we’d expect: they set out to find a new sponsor.
The problem is, they never found one.
Life support
From the moment of MetLife’s exit in 2001, the pavilion was more or less frozen in time. Even routine non-essential maintenance like painting simply stopped. Barely a decade old, Wonders of Life was abandoned, and Body Wars was a walk-on.
The entire Wonders of Life pavilion was switched to seasonal operation in 2004 – a move that usually signals impending closure for Disney attractions. While they waited for the pavilion’s inevitable demise, the attractions within deteriorated, essentially frozen in whatever form they existed in when MetLife cut their support. Especially at the start of the New Millennium, the contents of Wonders of Life – from Cranium Command to The Making of Me and Body Wars – looked, felt, and sounded like something from the 1989. Because, of course, they were. Can you imagine the tube-TV-equipped Wonder Cycles or the Goofy About Health ’90s-inspired show surviving unto today?
Disney pulled the plug forever on January 1, 2007. Wonders of Life was shuttered. The pavilion’s signage and the towering DNA sculpture were removed.
Later that same year, the pavilion re-opened as the Festival Center for Epcot’s International Food & Wine Festival, offering culinary demos, wine tasting, guest speakers, and more. At first, evidence of the pavilion’s former life was very, very evident. For a few years, marquees for Life’s attractions were even prominent – very ’90s-stylized reminders of the space’s former life.
The bad news is, every year less and less of Wonders of Life was visible as the golden pavilion’s identity shifted inextricably to a flex space. On the flip side is the good news: every year, the space looked less like an old, forgotten, closed attraction and more like a purpose-built events pavilion, as documented splendidly in Yesterland’s incredible Then & Now: Erasing Wonders of Life pictoral that’s a must-view.
While fans bemoaned the loss of the Wonders of Life pavilion for something as static and seemingly underutilized as a Festival Center, the truth is a little more complex. After all, between Epcot’s three annual festivals (the International Food and Wine Festival, Flower and Garden Festival, and the latecomer Festival of the Arts), the Festival Center housed in the former pavilion was occupied far more than half of the year… which means the pavilion was populated more often than the seasonal Wonders of Life was!
Rebirth
In any case, Disney surprised everyone when, on February 21, 2019, the Disney Parks Blog officially announced that the former Wonders of Life pavilion would be reborn as part of the ongoing overhaul of Epcot’s former Future World, now subdivided into World Nature (west), World Celebration (central), and World Discovery (east). The park’s golden dome would come alive once more! What area of science would it explore?
Epcot already showcases pavilions based on engineering, space, oceans, agriculture, communication, and imagination… And now, the reborn Wonders of Life space would play host to an entirely unique area of science and learning: Play!
In what looks to be a seismic reimagining of the building’s interior, the new pavilion appears like a neon cityscape born of the Oh My Disney era. “Built on the power of play, it introduces an immersive and interactive ‘city’ where you can explore, create, and interact with some of your favorite Disney characters. This is an experience worthy of our bold vision for Epcot – and another signature element of our transformation,” said Zach Riddley, portfolio executive at Walt Disney Imagineering.
Though there’s still no word on whether this unnamed pavilion will feature any rides, we can feel pretty confident that an ATLAS simulator won’t be among its lineup. Backstage photos have emerged showing the Body Wars pod bays empty – likely because they were scrapped to use as spare parts for Star Tours’ Starspeeders long ago.
Instead, the Play pavilion is expected to infuse 21st century multi-media interactives into one family-friendly, character-filled space in the park… a central hub for meet-and-greets that also offers experiences like the Animation Academy, the interactive Zootopia-themed “Hotel Heist,” and digital fashion-show interactives “hosted” by Edna Mode from The Incredibles. Sounds like a 21st century, in-park rebirth of the Declassified Disaster: DisneyQuest to us!
Don’t worry – EPCOT won’t go without a pavilion to act as the anchor for its rotating seasonal festivals. Though a festival pavilion announced for EPCOT’s grand transformation during the D23 Expo in 2019 was quietly cancelled by cost-cutting during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new flex space – “Communicore Hall” – was announced for the same piece of real estate in May 2022.
Resting in Peace
At the end of the day, Body Wars never earned the acclaim that its interstellar sister did, and it never stood amongst the revered rides that Epcot hosted in its earliest years – Lost Legends like World of Motion, Spaceship Earth, Journey into Imagination, Universe of Energy, or Listen to the Land.
Even if it wasn’t the smash hit Imagineers hoped, it still represents a turning point, shifting Epcot’s lineup from epic, educational dark rides to tech-infused thrills only tangentially related to science and industry. For that reason, it was groundbreaking and ought to be remembered as a landmark in the park’s story.
So even if we can’t be sure whether it counts as a Lost Legend or a Declassified Disaster, we have to remember that Body Wars touched a generation of fans who, as children, might’ve believed they’d truly shrunk down to the size of a cell to explore the wonders of the human body in an unthinkable way. And isn’t that what Disney Parks should be about?
Thank you so much for reading. Now, it’s your turn to join the story. If you enjoy spending time falling down the “rabbit hole” of Park Lore’s in-depth, ad-free, member-supported stories, consider becoming a Member for as little as $2 / month.
Members can unlock rare concept art in every tale, reveal attraction audio streams in select stories, gain access to over a hundred exclusive articles in our quick-read Extra Features and in-depth Special Features collections, gain exclusive podcast extras, and receive an annual member card and merch in the mail! (Plus, y’know, supporting research-based, ad-free, clickbait-free, in-depth theme park writing!)