Welcome back to Theme Parks and Entertainments newest series, Epcot Center's Cancelled Attractions. For part 2 of this series, we instead chose to look at a completely separate proposal for something that did end up being built, The Land Pavillion. If you like looking into never built Disney attractions be sure to check out the rest of the series here.
Now, the land pavilion was part of Epcot Center from some of the earliest stages of its design, but early proposals made it look much different than the pavilion that ended up being built. For starters, its original intention was to be mainly based on biomes and feature journeys through several different dioramas of different biomes in a pavilion inspired by a futuristic greenhouse. This would have been the one major attraction of the pavilion, known tentatively as Blueprints of Nature.
This ride was spearheaded by Imagineer Tony Baxter, and it strongly resembles an attraction he would go on to design for another Epcot Center Pavillion later on, Journey Into Imagination.
Originally when the pavilion would have been biome centered it featured only one main attraction, Blueprints of Nature. The ride would have featured an animatronic host, The Landkeeper, who would take you on a journey through the attraction. It would begin with a Carousel of Progress style show, similar to the opening scene of Journey Into Imagination. Instead of being a part of the actual ride however, this would have been a preshow to a hot air balloon ride also led by the Landkeeper.
Beyond the general theme of an ecological look at the world, not much is known about this attraction and what the ride experience would have been.
We can speculate that the Landkeeper would have a personality similar to Dreamfinder as he would later inspire that character, but as for show scenes we don't know anything.
Beyond the general theme of an ecological look at the world, not much is known about this attraction and what the ride experience would have been.
We can speculate that the Landkeeper would have a personality similar to Dreamfinder as he would later inspire that character, but as for show scenes we don't know anything.
The original plans would never come to fruition. The ride for The Land changed dramatically when Kraft became the pavilion's sponsor, changing the theme of the pavilion as a whole to focus more on the products of the sponsor, food.
The biome theme would carry through to one part of Blueprints of Nature's spiritual successor. Listen to the Land/ Living with the Land, would open with The Land as it's main attraction, based on the future of food production. But the dark ride portion of this ride still featured a series of biomes similar to what was proposed in the original plans for Blueprints of Nature. It even featured a carousel theater of sorts but tied instead to a restaurant instead of an attraction. There would even still be an animatronic show in the pavilion with Kitchen Kabaret
But the Landkeeper was nowhere to be found.
But the Landkeeper was nowhere to be found.
To this day there are still several tributes to Blueprints of Nature in The Land Pavillion. Living With the Land, a lightly rethemed version of Listen to the Land still features biome scenes that were holdovers from the original plans for the pavilion (as well as some tributes to the lost Thunder Mesa attraction). The hot air balloons in the lobby of the pavilion are tributes to the original plans for the attraction. The Garden Grill restaurant also used to feature a spinning design, allowing patrons to view the dioramas similar to what the original preshow for the attraction was supposed to be.
The Landkeeper meanwhile would go on to inspire Dreamfinder, and many of the base ideas for Blueprints of Nature ended up as part of the Imagination Pavillion, including the rotating theater, although becoming a part of the attraction itself.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed the article be sure to keep checking back here at TPE for more great articles like it. Also, be sure to come back for Part 3 of this series, The Denmark Pavillion, or check out part one, Meet The World.
This series is just one of several here at TPE discussing never built Disney Parks attractions. Be sure to check them all out on our Attractions From Neverland page. Also don't miss our current series, Disney's Animal Kingdom's Cancelled Attractions, where we discuss rides and shows that never made it to the park we love today.
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