How about some lighter content today?
I want to talk to you about the reason
I have this poster in my office.
This poster is for the Universe of Energy, an attraction at EPCOT,
originally EPCOT Center, which,
you know, I would like to talk about
because that attraction is a big reason
why my head understands energy the way it does.
The Universe of Energy, and specifically the the version that replaced it,
Ellen's Energy Adventure is often maligned because it's it's a weird, weird attraction.
I... for those of you
that don't know anything about EPCOT, I'm going to highly,
highly recommend Defunctland’s amazing video -
Video doesn't even describe it well, it is a masterpiece.
Journey to EPCOT Center.
If you want to understand the story of EPCOT
and why it fascinates me so much, just watch that video.
It is so weird that the Disney Corporation was like,
we're going to build a theme park,
and the theme is going to be international cooperation and innovation.
And like, heck yes,
that's so cool.
EPCOT, unfortunately, has lost a lot of that spirit.
World Showcase remains virtually untouched.
So the international cooperation part is still very much alive.
But the Future World is nothing like it used to be.
And that makes me sad, but I understand it.
But anyway, please, I would, if you have some time to spend,
that video is so amazing.
When Kevin released it, I was just like, oh my gosh,
this is such a love letter to EPCOT.
And it's perfect.
So please watch that
if you want to understand why I have such a soft spot for EPCOT.
But anyway, I want to talk about the Universe of Energy.
It is much maligned these days because,
well, okay,
let me start by talking about the weird...
the weird way that EPCOT even happened.
So in back in the day, Disney was -
and when I'm talking about Disney, I do mean Disney parks.
I have never been a huge fan of the Disney Corporation,
but Disney parks back in the day when they were creating a lot....
Well, even going back to Disneyland,
a lot of their attractions operated on the sponsorship model.
Basically, Disney would say, “Hey, Goodyear.
Would you like to put your name on this attraction we’re building called the Peoplemover?
We'll take some money from you and help build that attraction.
And in exchange, you can have your name on it.”
And Disney doesn't really do that anymore.
They... they kind of do.
There's a couple things that hold on.
And in fact, one of the original EPCOT attractions
still has its original sponsor.
But in 1982, when EPCOT opened and we're looking at that, older
photo of Google Maps here, and you'll understand why
it was basically the titans of American industry
that were sponsoring these attractions.
So you had the Seas Pavilion, which was sponsored by United Technologies.
You had the Land Pavilion, which was sponsored by Kraft General Foods, I'm pretty sure when it first opened.
The Imagination Pavilion, which was sponsored by Kodak,
then you had originally World of Motion over here,
which was sponsored by General Motors.
This used to be Horizons (Rest in Peace) which was sponsored by General Electric.
This pavilion here was actually shoehorned in in the late 80s.
It did not open with the park and it is currently shuttered.
Nobody knows what's going on with this.
It was the Wonders of Life Pavilion sponsored by MetLife.
And then this right here is the subject of our video,
The Universe of Energy.
Now, the reason I said it's much maligned
is because there are a lot of people
who know just enough about Disney
and EPCOT to know this attraction was sponsored by Exxon,
and so they view this as a pro-oil attraction.
And like I see posts going around
and I even just saw one in searching for some videos
where people are like, “do you remember that time
that Bill Nye and Ellen DeGeneres made oil industry propaganda for the Disney Corporation?”
And like that is such a dishonest
framing of what the attraction actually was.
One of the reasons I'm looking at this satellite image from 2014
is because you see what's on top of that building there.
Those are photovoltaic solar panels,
and they were put there in 1982.
They were there the whole time.
And in fact, supposedly the energy that these solar panels
collected was used to charge the ride vehicles in this ride.
And calling this a ride is...
like really a large part I want to talk about
this is because this attraction is just fascinating.
The... whoever came up with this idea, it was just a fever dream.
And I'm going to show you some clips of it.
And also,
really, we're just we're just talking
about the original attraction experience.
This is no longer there.
The building is still there.
If we if we zoom ahead to today, the building is still there.
I am not sure if they put new panels on or what's going on,
but this this building is now the queue
and I think the trains actually are loaded and unloaded in here
for the Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind attraction, which is quite amazing.
I will say it's very, very cool.
It bums me out because Guardians of the Galaxy
doesn't fit with the original theme of EPCOT at all,
but they tried to make it work a little bit,
and the original theme of EPCOT is just... Future World especially is just it's kind of barely together at this point.
It's - it saddens me, but anywhere we go back to this picture from 2014, I have pulled up.
Now I'm doing this on my Mac mini because that's where my microphone is.
So forgive me, I'm really not good at using Mac OS,
so we're just going to minimize this window here.
This attraction is what was called a traveling theater.
And Disney used this kind of again with the Great Movie Ride and Hollywood studios - back then, MGM Studios.
But that attraction doesn't exist anymore either.
So this is the only version...
well, I mean, we're just going to talk about this one.
These things here are what they call - I think they call them the traveling theater cars.
I'm not sure if they really had a dedicated name for them,
but these are enormous ride vehicles.
Each one of these probably seats about 100 people.
And when you are waiting to board this attraction, there is a pre-show.
So you would come in through here and there's this pre-show theater which has five screens,
and we're going to look at some of this in a bit.
Part of what I want to show with this video is the scale.
The scale of this attraction was so immense, like it was so -
it's really hard to convey how enormous this building was
and how enormous the theaters were.
And, well, let's just let's just watch some clips here.
This is the exterior of the building and some of the signage that was originally there.
You can see the solar panels up top.
[ambient music plays]
This mural here is,
original to the original EPCOT Center.
So this was not touched at all.
We had this cool display built
into the tile work for minutes to the next show.
And the way that this would work,
there were two concurrent shows happening all the time.
And this clock, if I remember right, was counting down
to when the pre-show started and the pre-show....
Let's see if there's a good clip of it here.
Gosh, there really isn't.
So in - I think this version came out in 1996.
I mean, if I remember right, it wasn't completely ready for some time,
and they ran the old version of the attraction
for a brief period of time,
even though they had already done
a lot of changes to accommodate this new version.
But this is the pre-show area. Again,
just this one room is enormous
and there are five screens.
I got off track here.
So obviously we're looking at Ellen DeGeneres right now
in her very 90s outfit.
There's another one, too,
but the original version of this attraction,
these five screens had these tiles,
these kinetic tiles that could, I think they were five
by five grids, and each
tile was a triangle, and it could spin.
So, so it was either a normal theater surface or, a normal screen surface,
or it could turn and stick out as a triangle
and have this three dimensional shape to it.
Or it could even I think it had a black surface as well.
So the original pre-show, all five of these screens
were doing this really cool undulation,
and I don't know how to describe it.
I'm not focused on the original version of this attraction in this video.
I am too young to have experienced it.
I might have ridden it
as a very little kid, but I have no memory of it.
The only memory of this attraction I have is Ellen's Energy Adventure.
And when they did the reboot for this,
they removed the dynamic screen
and they turned it into this kind of comedic pre-show.
And they were making good use of these five screens.
Let me, just play a little bit here.
Welcome to the Universe of Energy.
How are you?
No need to answer.
You know, you're probably surprised to see me here, aren't you?
But then there's probably a lot of places
you'd be surprised to see me when you think about it.
If you were driving in your car, for instance.
Okay. Close your eyes.
You're in your car-
Don’t close your eyes in the car but right now, think about it.
You're in your car, you’re driving
and then all of a sudden, in the backseat, I just pop up and go
Hey!
You’d just whack me in the head, wouldn’t ya?
So, you know,
they're just doing kind of fun, playful things with jump cuts.
And, if you can't tell from the audio in the video,
the sound is coming from behind each screen.
So depending on where she is, you hear, you hear different places.
So the conceit of this ride, and again,
it's a fever dream.
Ellen ...and literally it is a dream.
Ellen is a huge fan of Jeopardy!
And she's watching Jeopardy!
Big CRT television
in this New York apartment, which is frankly amazing.
But who does...
I mean, it's a movie set, of course, and Bill Nye is her friend for some reason.
And so here's Bill Nye.
I had the best nickname for her, though.
-What was that? -Stupid Judy.
-Ellen, that makes no sense!
She has a. Ph.D..
-I know, but it made me feel better.
So now -
Judy was played by Jamie Lee Curtis, by the way.
And that is, in fact, Alex Trebek.
One of the worst things about this attraction
is that they filmed it in 1996, and then the Jeopardy! set changed dramatically after that.
So the ride was, like, immediately dated.
And they kept... they never updated the films.
So this attraction kept running like this until 2017.
It was hilariously dated by the time it closed.
But anyway, the conceit is she's watching Jeopardy!
Her college roommate is on Jeopardy!
She's jealous of that.
And then she falls asleep while watching Jeopardy!
And so she has a dream sequence.
And then we go later into,
start the dream sequence here.
[Johnny Gilbert announcing] Doctor Judy Peterson, Doctor Albert Einstein.
And finally...
just Ellen.
And now, here is the host of Jeopardy!
Alex Trebek.
-Thank you, Johnny Gilbert.
Hello contestants, welcome to our program.
And good luck to you in the game.
Here are the categories for the first round of play.
Solar energy.
Wind power.
Energy from water.
Fossil fuels.
Fusion.
And finally, gas.
I just want to point out here
the first categories were all renewables, right.
So all the people that are like, “oh, this is oil industry propaganda.”
It's like - a huge amount of this attraction is talking about renewable energy.
We have been talking about this for 30 years.
And I'll play some other clips later where,
when we're talking about fossil sources,
they're even saying, like, we only have enough for 50 years.
Llike this...
Again, I don't want to sound like I'm defending the Disney corporation,
but I am defending reality because I don't really like it
when people are like, oh, remember that time they made oil propaganda?
It's like, yes, the attraction was sponsored by Exxon.
It was not saying oil is fantastic.
There's freaking solar panels on the roof or the attraction - anyway.
Anyway, so she's having a dream
and she's losing to Judy because Judy knows everything about [energy].
And let me just skip forward a little bit here.
What is hydroelectric?
What is helium?
And so as we come to the end of the first round,
ladies and gentlemen,
Judy has a commanding lead.
Ellen has her work cut out for her,
And Doctor Einstein is nowhere (relatively speaking).
Is this a nightmare, or what?
Oh, Ellen, your first correct response!
Wait a minute.
- So, then we kind of get to the end of the pre-show, and again this,
this is the pre-show.
So this attraction was incredibly long,
and that's one of the reasons why it's not fondly remembered.
I thought it was a great excuse to take a break into some air conditioning
from the Florida heat, but it was an incredibly long experience.
This we are, we are...
The pre-show itself is like seven minutes.
And, you know, also, this is the kind of fun thing that Disney would do.
I just want to point out this clip hopefully.
Wait, it's not even over.
It gets really weird from here.
Now some person I don't even know reminds me there's no eating, drinking,
smoking, or flash photography allowed in my dream.
That’s right, there’s no eating, drinking, smoking, or flash photography allowed in Ellen’s dream, thank you.
They did that the whole time it ran.
It was just a charming little thing that they did.
And then they did a quick little recap here
for those that were just walking in
because you could walk into the pre-show at any time.
This attraction had an enormous capacity, as you will soon see.
And then, at the very end,
I'm sure I have used this line at one point in my videos.
You’re late.
And you think about that next time!
And that's how the pre-show ends.
So... oops!
I did not mean to go full screen.
So you can now see when the room lights are back on
there are two doors here that you're about to walk through.
I have to change clips.
This is a this is a pretty good video of the attraction.
You can watch the whole thing if you want, but this
this doesn't really show the ride vehicles.
So let me go over here.
Doopy doopy doo badup badoo.
Okay. So this - this video actually shows
what it's like to walk into the theater.
-allllright, ladies and gentlemen,
in just a moment the doors in front of you will be opening up, so come on up this way.
Just remain behind the yellow line until the doors open
as those doors will be opening towards you.
[Ellen’s Energy Adventure theme plays which is a really cool piece of music]
So we're walking into theater one,
and these are the enormous vehicles I was talking about.
These are called the traveling theater cars.
Each one, I think they had ten rows.
You could easily fit ten people on each bench.
These are just enormous, enormous vehicles.
And one of the things that Disney is really doing here
is they're kind of doing a bit of a fake out, because this room
looks like there's black curtains.
And again, it is going to be impossible to convey...
to convey the scale of how big everything was here.
But we're doing a bit of a fake out
because the vehicles are facing the wrong way.
It looks like you're facing towards
some sort of a presentation and the curtains are going to open up.
But what actually happens is, as soon as the ride starts, the doors close.
[cast member announcing over PA] And now we return to Ellen’s Energy Adventure.
[ride audio, Ellen speaking] -million years so you could show me... nothing?
[Alec] And at this time,
You discover you're sitting on a turntable
and the entire turntable is turning around.
[Ellen] Must’ve been a big delivery room, huh?
So I'm going to go back to the, the blueprint here.
So we walked - here was the pre-show room.
We walked in.
That was this enormous room.
And it looks like we're facing forward.
There's a curtain here.
We're going to be looking at some kind of a show,
but you're actually sitting on a turntable,
and the entire thing turns around
and you discover that behind you,
the whole time were three enormous movie screens.
Each one had a 70 millimeter projector,
and you were watching just a huge, huge widescreen experience.
Now you'll notice this thing here and all that.
Well, so what happens is...
After this show, after this beginning.
[music]
And, uh, all footage of this is very flickery that you can find.
Because these were film projectors,
they never updated it to digital projection, which,
of course, you know, of course they didn't.
So these were all 70mm film projectors.
And this part of the ride is basically
just exploring the Big Bang and the creation of Earth.
And then we skip forward to when the dinosaurs are alive.
[Ellen] I kind of hoping that you'd show me a slideshow.
[Bill] Slideshow?
I guess that would be easier, but this is way more fun!
[Ellen, sarcastically] Yeah, this is fun.
Where's the energy?
[Bill] Oh, it's all around you!
See, these plants and animals
are soaking up energy from the sun.
When they die and get buried, time pressure and heat
will cook them into the fossil fuels we rely on today.
Like, coal, natural gas and oil.
[Alec] So that is the conceit of the
fossil fuel part where we've traveled back in time.
We're looking at ancient plant and animal material,
which turned into fossil fuels.
And we explain that.
But then what happens is at the end of this sequence.
Suddenly the turntable starts moving to the left.
[Ellen] Maybe I’ll go.
What am I so scared of? It's just a dinosaur.
What’s the big deal about dinosaurs, they’re not so tough.
Probably have a brain the size of a pea.
[dinosaur roars]
[Ellen] Ahhhh...
I hope you’re not upset about that pea brain crack.
Because, y’know now that I think of it
I'm sure peas are much larger in this time period.
I happen to love peas, don't you?
[another loud roar]
I'll take that as a maybe.
I should get going because I'm supposed to be dinner.
I mean, have dinner with friends.
So I should go.
Hey, what’s over there?
[very loud roar]
[stomping footsteps]
Right at this moment,
when you hear the footsteps of dinosaurs, the vehicle
you are sitting in starts moving forward.
And so this is the traveling theater concept.
This door, which you had no idea was there
because it was behind curtains, has opened up and we are now
moving into the prehistoric diorama.
[more footsteps and dramatic music]
[various jungle sounds, too]
And I'm going to skip forward
a little bit again, if you want to watch the whole thing,
there's... I'll link these two in the description.
There's several different ride-throughs, but I'm, you know,
some are better than others at conveying the scale.
This, by the way, this is an infrared emitter for the cameras.
That way, the cast members operating the ride can actually keep
track of what people are doing.
But this is an interesting scene where we're sitting here
and this diorama.
I did it again.
This diorama slowly has a sunrise effect.
And so you see the the light get brighter.
You can actually - as you're moving in, these just look like silhouettes.
You don't realize these are actually enormous animatronic figures of dinosaurs.
And I think you'll be able to see...
Yeah. So those cars over there are moving.
Here's the car in front of you, moving away.
And now the car that the person is filming
from is moving forward as well.
So if you go back to that, to this schematic here,
when you boarded all the ride vehicles are facing here,
then that was the first fake out.
So you turn around and then you watch about seven minutes of film
on these enormous screens.
Then you turn and point that direction.
As a group, all six vehicles move into this section and then stop.
And the sunrise scene is happening.
Now, you'll notice there's another theater over here.
We'll get back to that.
But after, after they've stopped here and the door behind you
closes, these two vehicles start moving forward.
Then these two vehicles start moving forward,
and then these two vehicles start moving forward.
So suddenly, we go from a group of six
in a three by two configuration to six individual
theater cars, all following each other through the diorama scene.
And,
if you saw that Ellen DeGeneres had an animatronic
figure made of her, it was about right here.
It was right near the end of this section.
Before you move into theater two.
Now you'll see
the part of what fascinates me about this attraction is that theater -
There were two shows concurrently all of the time.
So when these six vehicles moved into here and stopped
and this door shut,
the six vehicles in theater two
were about to move back into theater one.
And so the turntable
probably needed to turn a little bit to align.
And by the way, you can you can see in the ride
what looks like a track.
It's not really a track.
The vehicles are following a guide wire
and those are just metal plates, so the wheels have better traction.
I read a story that originally I don't know if this is true,
but originally the ride vehicles were moving directly on carpet.
These were trackless ride vehicles in 1982
and the vehicles were moving along carpet,
but they were having problems with static discharge and that was resetting
the computers that actually, you know, drove the ride vehicles.
I don't know if that's true or not, but you'll see these plates,
you can see them right here at
these are really just a dedicated surface
for the wheels of these things to travel on without digging into the,
into the flooring.
But that's what's happening here, is
these ride vehicles are all moving forward,
progressing through the diorama scene,
all of this stuff,
is original from 1982.
It wasn't - I think the colors were updated like the dinosaurs were made more vibrant.
But mostly this is this is original.
Does this does this have the Ellen figure in it?
I'm going to guess no.
They removed that figure towards the end of the attraction’s [life].
The audio of her
voice is playing in this, but I think the figure is gone.
Fun fact when I was, one of the times I went on this attraction,
when I was maybe 12 or 14,
the one of the hands of the Ellen figure had fallen off.
That was a bit disturbing.
But anyway, so as we are approaching the end of the diorama scene,
the vehicles are moving into theater two.
There's some flashing lights here.
We're going underneath a tunnel.
And they are now reassembling themselves.
The turntable is shown the wrong way in this drawing,
but they are now reassembling themselves
in the same original configuration,
although this drawing is a little incorrect, because in theater two,
they did not have the platforms to get on and oops,
over here they did not have the platforms
to get on and off of the ride vehicles
that they do in theater one,
so the ride vehicles are actually closer together in theater two;
a small issue with this drawing.
But anyway, we're moving back into theater two
and we're going back into this original formation.
[Bill Nye’s voice] Let’s get a move on! There’s some way cool stuff just ahead.
Because it takes so much time
for these vehicles to reconfigure, before the film
in theater two starts, there's a cute radio bit
going on from KNRG. And KNRG,
they're doing news reports over the years,
from like 900,000 BC.
This is one of those things where it would depend
on which vehicle you boarded.
When I, when I was little, we would try to be in this vehicle here
because this would be the first one to leave,
and that meant it was the first one to enter theater two.
And you got to hear the entire KNRG radio bit.
If you were this vehicle here,
you would enter theater two last
and you wouldn't hear much of that at all.
[fashion reporter’s voice] Mammals are getting hairier.
That's right.
Woolly is definitely in!
Whether you’re a mammoth or a rhino.
And saber teeth seem to be a growing fad in the cat world.
Also, look for antlers to be very big this year.
As big as 10 feet on creatures like the megaloceros.
Wow!
And that's the latest in the fashion world.
That is the end of the well, it's essentially the end of the radio bit.
Uh, if I remember right,
that is when the last vehicles have stopped and now this turntable starts
moving to reposition you to face the screens,
which are...
Yeah, they're directly in front-
They're here.
So these are where the screens are in theater two,
and that will be obvious at the end of the ride.
[Bill Nye’s voice] Is it ever gonna warm up?
Let's find out with a look at the weather.
Willard?
[weather reporter] You know those giant glaciers -
Oh, and by the way, if, if you, if you're the kind of weird
kind of on the spectrum nerd that I am,
you would notice at this point, after the vehicles stop,
they start humming because they're being charged.
The, uh, AC power is being fed to the vehicles
when they're stopped on the charging paddles to charge them up
because they're big electric vehicles with
probably a ton of lead acid batteries in them.
And at this point, you could actually hear and feel...
more just feel a kind of like click
and then the humming of 60Hz when the vehicles are being charged.
[weather reporter] ...glaciers we've all gotten so used to?
Well, they're going to be receding to the north and south poles.
Conditions are looking very favorable
for a whole new kind of mammal.
KNRG News Time [GONG]
750,000 BC
So again, we're in that we're in the pitch dark.
You can't really tell what's happening, but the turntable is moving.
[Bill Nye] And that's our KNRG up to the minute news report.
Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
[teletype noises fade out]
[jungle noises fade in]
Now we're exactly where we need to be.
Quick note the entire time I have - I remember this attraction,
the audio in theater two was significantly tinnier
and worse than in theater one.
I have no idea why.
I suspect it's because of sound proofing concerns.
‘cause there [stumbles over words]
I'll throw it up.
There's actually a time when I have to find this footage,
but there was a time when, it was in 2007, if I remember right
where we were there, and I had a camcorder
and we were actually in a break down on this ride.
Slash attraction, whatever you call this!
And the turntable in theater one,
after we had come to the end of the ride, did not... uh it broke.
So we were just kind of... it didn't move.
So something happened and the coordination got threw off.
So they turned on the work lights and I could actually see
the door
that separates theater one and two, and it comes out of the floor.
It was very much a surprise to me.
But there's a huge door
that comes out of the floor which separates theater one and two.
It's right.
Presumably there's two of them, but what I'm talking about is right here.
There's an enormous door that moves...
(there was, this is all gone).
But on both sides there were these enormous doors.
And I've always kind of thought that probably
because the, the speakers for this screen
were right behind that door.
Maybe if they had the audio a little too boomy,
you could hear it in theater one.
I, I don't know, but
regardless, theater two the audio was always worse.
And they do a quick rundown of the discovery of fire.
Fun fact, that's Michael Richards. Weird cameo that he has in here.
Very playful.
[Ellen’s Energy Adventure theme plays]
[goat bleats, horse neighs, and chickens cluck]
[horn honks twice]
[Ellen] ...big story.
This is also another fake out they did where
there are actually two screens just as big as this one on either side.
[Ellen] From now on we're dreaming in wide screen.
Wider, wider!
I sound like a dentist, don’t I?
Okay, everybody rinse and spit!
Just kidding, not you, sir.
Thank you.
[music swells with a heavenly choir]
And by the way,
I'm playing this part in its entirety on purpose
because, there's some notable things about this.
[Bill Nye] We'll start with the sun.
It's where most of our energy comes from,
and it's at the heart of some bright ideas for tomorrow.
[Ellen] Like what, Bill Nye the Science Guy?
[Bill] Like solar energy!
Solar mirrors are one way to convert the sun's energy into electricity.
Now, quick note, this is not a photovoltaic array.
These are,
concentrated solar?
Is that what it's called?
Where these mirrors are directing the sun's energy up to a tower.
And then that tower is getting extremely hot.
I think it's usually melting salt.
And then that hot salt is generating electricity via a turbine.
These still exist, they’re in the deserts of California.
It was cheaper to do before photovoltaics,
but now that photovoltaics exists, these aren't really happening anymore.
[Ellen] Cool.
I mean, hot.
I mean, cooly hot. Or hotly cool.
So why don't we just make everything solar?
Not so fast.
Now, a big -
a big thing about this attraction
and a big message that they were saying the whole time was all of these
sources of energy have pros and cons,
but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be using them.
There's a line here which, like,
you know, 30 years in the future is now true.
[Bill Nye] For one thing, it's not sunny enough everywhere.
[thunder clap]
And although the sunshine is free,
solar electricity still isn't that cheap, but it's gettin’ there.
That was the line.
Solar electricity isn't that cheap, but it's getting there.
It got there!
Look at that, progress.
Then we have a diversion into wind.
[Ellen] Well, then why don't we just get a bunch of wind farmers
to harvest a big ol’ crop of wind?
[Bill] We're starting to where it's windy.
But remember, to power a whole city
you need a whole lot of windmills.
[Ellen] And when the wind stops blowing, we'd be left in the dark, wouldn't we?
[Bill] No way!
We just switch to another source of energy.
Then we talk about hydroelectric power
and the consequences of that.
[Alec’s skipping around a bit]
[Ellen] I'm guessing this big red rock isn’t gonna give us energy when we need it.
[Bill] No, but this big grey wall might.
It's clean and efficient.
[Ellen] I know this one!
Come on, quiz me.
[Bill] Okay.
Hydroelectric power plants convert the energy of falling water into electricity and are renewed by this natural resource.
[thunderclap]
What is rain?
Correct.
So it talks about the fact that building a dam is very hard on ecosystems.
We've already had most of the best sites have been built, so
we can't just build dams everywhere.
Like the whole ride is basically teaching everyone
about all the different sources of energy
we use and all their pros and cons.
And here's the thing, right?
[Bill Nye] Now, these renewables provide about 10% of the world's energy,
but we can expect them to be playing an even bigger role in the decades ahead.
So again, that's why I'm like,
was this really just oil industry propaganda?
Because I don't really think it was.
But now we do talk about fossil fuels.
[Ellen] That's great, Bill, but we still need a heck of a lot more energy.
Where's it coming from?
And you have a curling iron?
[Bill] Come on, I'll show you.
Let's hitch a ride with the solid fossil fuel.
[Ellen] Oh, I know this one.
What is coal?
[Bill] Correct!
And we discovered two centuries’ worth.
[Train horn blares, Ellen says woah]
[Ellen] What about global warming?
[Bill] It's a hot topic with lots of questions.
But it’s one of the big reasons scientists are working on ways to burn fuels like coal more efficiently than ever.
That is the worst thing about this ride that aged quite poorly.
That is the only mention of climate change.
And of course, it's called global warming,
because back in 1996 we were calling it global warming.
But then we discovered enough...
far too many people simply cannot understand that it's the average
global temperature which is going up.
And that doesn't mean cold weather doesn't happen.
That's why we started calling it climate change.
But that's the worst thing about this attraction
is that it's like, what about global warming?
It's a hot topic with lots of questions.
That's the only mention of it.
But it is important that they acknowledge
that's one of the reasons we're trying to use
fossil fuels more efficiently.
This is a diversion on natural gas, talks
about how many years of gas we have left.
[Ellen] You mean natural gas?
[Bill] It's clean burning!
And the rate we're going, we're set for about 60 years.
So again, I'm just pointing out that like this attraction
kept saying with all these fossil fuels,
there is a time where they're going to run out.
They were not hiding that.
[Ellen] Oh, oh! What is... black gold?
Texas tea. Swimmin’ pools, movie stars!
What is The Beverly Hillbillies?
I mean what is oil?
[Bill] Right! It's our main source of energy,
And we’ve found enough to last at least 50 years.
[Ellen] That's all?
[Bill] We're far from running on empty.
And we've got some pretty far out ways of finding more.
This is the part of the attraction
I'm like, okay, this is this is the closest,
I'll call it to oil industry propaganda because they basically just like,
“oh, we could use satellites to find more oil!”
So yeah, I'm just gonna skip this part.
It's it's a bit silly.
Then we talk about offshore drilling platforms
and the fact that how big they are.
And then we go to nuclear power.
[Ellen] Where are we now?
[Bill] The world of atomic power!
See, today we take atoms like these and split them apart to release energy.
It's called fission.
[Bill] Hold on!
Nuclear energy is expensive and highly controversial.
[music swells]
[explosion]
[Ellen] So I guess there's never going to be just one answer.
[Bill] But if we keep using our brain power,
we’ll have lots of choices for the future.
Maybe even unlock the power of the stars:
Fusion power!
[Ellen] I'm beginning to see the light!
[Bill] Actually, I think it's Double Jeopardy, Ellen.
Okay, so now we're at basically the finale of the ride,
and this is where we have the last fake out.
So we are,
we are back into Jeopardy!
I’m just gonna move forward here.
All right, players, we’re ready to begin the second round.
And, the operator, the filmer.
Props to whoever filmed this.
There's not many views on this version, but this is probably the best one.
Did a good job of conveying just how enormous this room is.
This is such an enormous room that you're sitting
in, and these screens are filling the entire.
This is such just so impressive anyway.
And, Ellen, would you start us off by making a selection, please?
I sure will, Alex.
I will take Dinosaurs for $800.
[Judy] Uh, Ellen, you do know that the more expensive the question, the harder it is?
Oh, no, I didn’t let me rethink that, then.
Uh, Dinosaurs for $1000, Alex.
[Alex] Okay, the answer is:
This is when scientists believe dinosaurs first appeared on the Earth.
What is 220 million years ago?
Give or take a day.
[Alex] You're absolutely right.
[Jeopardy! clue sound with every flash] What is the sun?
What is hydrogen, Alex?
What are photovoltaics?
I just wanted to call that out.
What are photovoltaics?
You cannot see,
The left screen is the blue classic Jeopardy! with the actual clue.
But this version doesn't show that.
What is fire?
Which, by the way, is what sparked the progress of human civilization.
Alex, I don’t know if you knew that or not.
[Alex] Correct again, Ellen,
and amazingly enough, at the end of this Double Jeopardy round
you have managed to come from way behind to tie Judy for the lead.
Okay, so I'm just going to skip forward to where we move back into theater two.
And what happens is this screen, the bottom of it lifts up.
[Jeopardy Think! theme]
It's actually all the screens.
So now you're moving forward into theater one back where you started.
[this is a very extended version of the Think! theme because of how long it takes for the ride vehicles to move back into theater 1]
[Johnny Gilbert] If you’d like to have your own energy nightmare,
place a self-addressed stamped envelope [under your pillow]
Ooh, that's really flickery.
I'm going to skip forward to...
There is one more fake out here, which is there actually was a screen
where you thought you were going to be starting.
[Alex] Judy, we'll start with you.
You wrote down...
nothing.
That's correct, Alex, because there is no answer.
Well, actually you're wrong.
Let's take a look at your wager.
Oh, that's too bad.
You risked everything you had.
And that means you lose $17,800
and you wind up with nothing.
Let's go down to Ellen now and see what she came up
with as a response to our Final Jeopardy clue. Ellen?
What is brain power? Alex.
You are correct and your wager?
You, too, risked everything, but you double your score to $35,600.
And that makes you, Ellen, our new Jeopardy! champion.
Congratulations.
All right, so that's basically the end of the ride.
I am going to point out the original version of the attraction,
and this is something that I really wish I could have seen.
The final
this section of the ride was
amazing because behind all these curtains were originally mirrors,
and there was this really cool laser...
it wasn't really a laser light show, but they had a very like,
line drawing, very colorful line drawings on black film being shown,
both on the three screens behind you and this screen here.
And because all the walls were mirrors, it was like,
you're moving into this space that's just surrounded by energy.
And it had an amazing song.
I know I cannot play that because of copyright,
but I would really highly recommend
looking for some of the original clips of, you know what?
Here. Hold on.
I'm going to just show you a little bit of it.
Okay, Martin Smith, he does wonderful videos of the
of the different Disney attractions, they’re so-
like basically he's like a documentarian of them.
So I'm going to go ahead and use some clips from him.
This is great if you want to see the original version of the ride.
But none of the quality is very good because it's all,
you know, camcorders from the 90s and earlier.
But this is what was originally in theater two.
You see the space shuttle launch.
as the shuttle launches the bottom of the screen lifts up.
And this is when you would start moving back into theater one.
And this is what it looked like in there.
That's all I play because I don't want to get demonetized.
But like, the whole room was covered in mirrors.
I thought that was gonna...
You can see the curtains coming back down.
All the walls were mirrors.
So you'd come into here.
There's just like you're surrounded by laser light.
It's so cool.
The song’s really catchy.
Ah, man.
You know, as dry as original EPCOT was,
I do wish I had seen this version, because the end is just
frickin amazing.
So. Yeah,
I really just wanted to show you.
Right. Let me go back to the other window.
Geez, I'm such a such a frickin noob for macOS.
Okay, so again, this is so the original building.
You know what I'm trying to say,
Like, it's so hard to get a sense of the scale.
This whole thing was just for that attraction.
Spaceship Earth, which is already enormous, is not.
I mean, it's obviously a lot taller,
but the circumference of Spaceship Earth
has got nothing on this building's footprint.
This building was just gigantic.
And so, this was just such a cool concept.
The traveling theater,
having you be able to see both a show
and actually go through the primeval diorama is.
It's just really cool.
And and I hope you see,
Honestly, a big part of why I make the videos
I do is because of the inspiration from EPCOT,
and that you can make learning
about things entertaining, but you have to,
you know, you kind of just
kind of gotta trick people into learning stuff
and the Universe of Energy,
the later, like,
it really does show when EPCOT was really learning
how to become an edutainment place.
And, you know,
I would say the Wonders of Life is kind of where that started.
The Wonders of Life was the first project
that moved EPCOT away from its very dry beginnings.
And then also Spaceship Earth.
I'm going to put a link to the Martins vids.
I actually have a comment on there,
because the Jeremy Irons version of Spaceship Earth,
which was originally sponsored by, well,
originally by Bell System and then AT&T,
and it tells the story of human communication.
So, anyway, that's that's another great.
It really shows how the how EPCOT
started to move away from its very dry roots
to something a little more playful and fun.
But of course, now,
there's very little of original EPCOT that's left.
There are.
There's Living with the Land,
which is basically exactly the same. Living with the Land,
the only thing that has changed is the very beginning section
got a few tweaks, and the narration on the boats
is now automated where it used to be
a cast member was actually riding the boat with you,
but Living with the Land is still here.
All these all these greenhouses.
Your boat travels through these greenhouses you get to,
you get to see all of them.
And again, this like the Land, it's... the line is...
It's called Living with the Land because it's about environmental stewardship.
So at the end, it's like, “only then will we truly be living with the land”
You know, it's kind of just like EPCOT is basically... (it was)
it was basically like, “what if we made hope into a theme park?
and knowledge into a theme park?”
and it's still there.
It is still a monument to
the original spirit of the park.
But now
so much has changed.
Let's go to the to the newest photos.
So this was originally the Communicore.
This is the dumbest thing Disney ever did.
It was the Communicore originally.
Then it became Innoventions and there was always
Innoventions East and Innoventions West.
And by the way I wanna -
I should have pointed this out if we go back to 2014,
the reason why Innoventions East has this bump out is because this is,
this is the exit to the Universe of Energy.
So when the ride was over,
you would walk behind you
and then rather than go through the doors
you came in which were like, here, there were doors over here.
You'd walk through a hallway and then come out here.
And if you walked directly across,
then there was an energy exhibit inside of the Communicore,
and that's what this was.
So the Communicore East had this weird bump out
specifically for the Universe of Energy.
But now
they decided to tear down Communicore West
and then they realized, oh, that was a mistake.
So they rebuilt half of it.
It's so sad.
And the Fountain of Nations is gone.
That's going back to 2014.
This, this was a, animated fountain,
kind of like the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
And it would do shows every 15 minutes, maybe every half hour.
And one of the really cool things when EPCOT opened, because, again, it
it was open in the spirit of international cooperation,
there were diplomats from all different countries
that brought vials of water
from the rivers of those countries and added them to this fountain.
And it’s such a cool symbolic thing.
And now it's gone.
So it's just like, I don't know what the heck
Disney's been thinking with what they're doing with EPCOT.
It does need to be modernized quite a lot because it
you know, I read something that, really had
I hadn't really thought of it this way, but like the aesthetic of EPCOT
of Future World anyway, was very much like a corporate office
park of the early 80s, like a very modern
looking corporate office park of the early 80s.
And that's an aesthetic that I love a lot!
But it aged quite poorly.
And, the only things
I’m just try to think of like what,
you know, Test Track hasn't aged poorly because literally
the building is just a giant wheel.
But the Land has aged okay.
But so much of EPCOT is just...
It started to get dated really bad.
So the renovations they did on now Communicore
or what are they calling this now?
Because this is the gift shop and the restaurant which is called,
it's got connections in the name, which I find very funny.
What is it called again?
You can tell I'm really keeping up
with what they're doing these days.
What is the name of the cafe?
Connections eatery, I think, is what it's called.
That's in here now.
Same with, the little tiny mini
world of Coke they have, which always get your friends to try the Beverly.
Tell them it's amazing.
But, yeah, it's
it's not even called Future World anymore.
It's World Celebration, World Nature, and World Discovery.
It's broken up into three, and I couldn't even really.
I'm sure this is world nature.
And that kind of makes sense
because they have the Seas Pavilion and Journey...
The Seas, the Land, and the Moana thing, which is kind of cool.
So this is like World Nature.
And then you have World Discovery,
which I think is this side, which is more like the science side
Mission Space, by the way...
terrible ride. It's it's not good.
I don't know why they keep
they - it's technologically interesting because it's a centrifuge.
It's a combination motion simulator and centrifuge, but it's...
Yeah, it's not very good.
I, it's not very good.
They could totally put something else there and they should.
It was sponsored by HP.
This is one of the they actually did get a sponsor for it back in
I think ‘04 is when it opened.
But yeah I just
I'm just kind of rambling but World Showcase
this basically is all original.
So all of the country pavilions are still there.
The only thing that the only weird thing they did was
they've made the Norway boat ride into a Frozen themed thing, which
I mean,
fine, although that was such a weird -
I was working my college program when that opened, or maybe when it...
Oh no, no, it closed.
It closed as Maelstrom.
So I got to ride Maelstrom on my college program before it closed.
And the fact that they turned that ride
into a Frozen ride is so weird because the
the capacity of Maelstrom was terrible.
The boats only hold like 12 people
and they don't get dispatched that frequently.
So they were like, “let's take our most popular property
we've come out with since The Lion King and cram it into a ride
that does not have a meaningful capacity at all.”
So the queues for that were just horrendous and they still are.
It's a fun attraction, but like it's not it's not for me.
It's for little kids mainly.
I really wish they'd build some more attractions in World Showcase
and you can see they still have,
you know, when they opened the park, it only had nine.
And then the Norway Pavilion opened later,
as well as the Morocco Pavilion.
Those were two... Morocco's over here I think.
Yeah, those two were added later
and they still have plots of land to add more pavilions.
There's there could be one here.
There could be one here.
That could be a huge one here.
But you know, they just haven't done it.
The biggest thing they did was they did the Remy's Ratatouille Adventure
expansion behind the France Pavilion.
This is a fun ride.
But, you know,
it's it's a it's a [trackless]
theater, actually...
You know, in some ways, it's
kind of like a spiritual successor to the Universe of Energy.
It's just a lot more fast paced and much more physical sets
combined with screens rather than just two theaters.
And then the and the screens.
But anyway, just wanted to
I just wanted to make this quick video about the Universe of Energy.
And I really hope,
well, I'm going to post this even if it gets demonetized,
because I really want to show that, like,
I'm the way that I am because back in 1996,
Disney, of all people,
(”all people”) of all corporations, put together this amazing attraction,
which was basically just trying to get you to think about energy
and all the different sources of energy
and all the different options we have,
and it was a really cool attraction
and I, I miss it,
but I understand why it's gone. What they really needed to do,
They needed to update the films in like 2007.
I've been rambling for a long time,
but one of the tragedies of EPCOT
is that every single time, every single time
they have decided we're going to put more money
into it, some world calamity happens.
So like the Millennium Celebration is when it was really coming into its own
and I remembered the Millennium Celebration dearly.
It was so, so fun, so hopeful.
Just, it was so nice.
And then 9/11 happened and,
you know, tourism just cratered
and there was no money left to put into EPCOT.
And then, you know, tourism is recovering.
We're going to start putting more money into EPCOT...
And then the Great Recession happens, and then EPCOT
just withers on the vine even more so that,
like Exxon, they only sponsored this pavilion for like ten years.
And then in 2006, something like that, it no longer had a sponsor
and at EPCOT that's basically just like,
well, we'll keep running the ride until it's so old nobody cares.
And that's what they did with Ellen's Energy Adventure. In 2006,
they really should have redone the films.
They could have kept the attraction, but they just they kept running it
exactly like that until 2017.
And then, of course, they announced a whole bunch
of new investment into EPCOT...
right before COVID.
So it's basically just been like... this poor park, this poor misunderstood park
that Disney built because of a promise that Walt Disney himself
made about building the Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow.
And they just never have figured out what they need to do with it.
So it's still a very special place to me.
And, you know, it's always going to have a special place in my heart.
And I still visit from time to time, but it really
it is almost kind of sad at this point
when I visit EPCOT and I see, like
so much of its original spirit is just gone,
it's it's hardly left
World Showcase is still a lot of fun.
And if you want to experience a lot of different international cuisines
without having to travel internationally, it's really it's really fun.
It's going to be expensive because it's Disney.
Everything's expensive, but it's a very cool, curated experience.
And, by the way, you know,
when I mentioned the college program,
there's an international college program,
and most of the cast members that work in these pavilions
are from the countries of those pavilions.
Which is a cool thing they've always been doing since the beginning.
So when you visit the Japan Pavilion,
the people working there are from Japan.
When you visit the Germany Pavilion, they're from Germany.
It's very cool.
I do wonder how they're doing getting recruits these days, but
regardless, I've been talking long enough.
Oh, and I meant to point out, yeah, there aren't any solar panels
on the Universe of Energy anymore,
but they've built a solar farm over here.
And of COURSE it's - of COURSE it's Mickey shaped.
Of course it's Mickey shaped.
There are more, though, where there's a much larger one. Now.
I can't
remember offhand where it is.
I thought it was by Animal Kingdom.
No. Where is it?
Oh, there's a but this isn't what I was talking about.
But there's more photovoltaics over here,
whereas there's another one on Disney property
that's a lot bigger than that Mickey one.
I thought it was.
I thought it was by EPCOT.
Oh, fun fact, this Lake Bryan and Little Lake Bryan?
This is where college program housing used to be.
This Mickey's retreat.
As far as I know, Disney still owns this,
but this Chatham Square,
this is where I lived when I did my college program.
This up here is The Commons,
and that's where most of the international CPs lived. And
Patterson Court is one of these two.
I have the labels off, which was a third one.
And then the original CP housing was Vista Way,
which was right off of I-4.
Yeah. Down here.
This is the original CP housing.
Disney doesn't use any of this anymore.
These are now just rental apartments.
They built new housing
somewhere by Animal Kingdom.
I don't know the details of that, but, yeah.
If any of you were wondering,
CPs used to live over here,
mostly around this Little Lake Bryan.
And then the rest were at Vista Way down here.
And now they're at, like, it's like Flamingo Crossing or something.
It's over here by Animal Kingdom somewhere.
I’m still looking for that solar farm... is it by Magic Kingdom?
Am I just
I'm not I'm not just seen this thing.
I've seen.
I thought I saw a bigger solar farm.
Well, regardless, there's a
there's a lot of land, at, Disney's property
that, like, they will never develop because they need it for,
frankly, they just need it for infrastructure and like, water retention.
But a lot of it is protected as well.
So they're always,
you know, people always talking about will they ever build a fifth park?
And the answer is probably not.
But anywho, hope you enjoyed this little video into the Universe of Energy.
I will always have a soft spot for that attraction and
you know, I'm glad EPCOT still exists.
I'm glad they're still doing something for it.
With it, but man, it could be so much more than it is.
And again, please, please do.
If you don't know anything about EPCOT
and you want to understand why it fascinates me so much,
watch that video from Defunctland.
It's so, so good.
It's so good.
He, ah man, Kevin, if you watch this, just...
Thank you so much for that video.
It's it's tremendous.
Okay. Bye.