The Sarsaparilla Times #2: Spaceship Earth is One of the Most Influential Attractions Built by Imagineers

It’s a giant golf ball!

Millions have said it, even I have referred to Spaceship Earth by this slang term of description.

Disney Parks have spent decades bringing storytelling to life. Since the age of four, I have been fortunate to visit Walt Disney World many times, and one magical place that I always visit at least twice a trip is Spaceship Earth.

A massive geodesic sphere that looks futuristic, no matter how many times one sees it, Spaceship Earth is home to the attraction where human beings can travel in time and follow the journey of human enlightenment. Spaceship Earth is a monument to the brilliance of the human mind and how communication brings everyone together.

An opening day attraction and a natural icon for EPCOT, Spaceship Earth is the first and last attraction guests will see when they spend their day at Walt Disney World’s 2^nd theme park. For over four decades the attraction has been teaching guests about the ingenuity of human beings while guiding guests through a journey in time that shows how language has made the world a better place.

Riding the omni-mover car through a slow journey in time brings park guests face to face with the first moments of when communication changed the path of humanity. From the first scene of cavemen hunters grunting signals to capture a woolly mammoth, to the growth of cave paintings that detailed the exploits of early people, guests witness through film and audio animatronic the birth of human language.

Beyond the cavemen and early wall paintings, time ticks by, humans grow and change, and the attraction brings the guest along in time. We see ancient Egypt where papyrus and hieroglyphs show early abilities at making communication written and mobile. Phoenician traders who were selling goods to everyone saw the drawbacks of multiple communication forms and set out to create a common alphabet and language.

In Ancient Greece, guests will watch as math is discussed and see how this new form of language is developed. When traveling to Ancient Rome, guests learn that the words of Caesar are passed to the citizens of the empire via the interconnected roads. Those roads also brought war, and the loss of knowledge with the burning of the library of Alexandria (where guests get a whiff of how Disney uses scents to enhance the story experience). The world journey takes guests to the Sistine Chapel and Michaelangelo painting his masterpiece, to finally the Unites States and the progress of communication in the country.

Newsboys are on the street hawking the news about the Civil War, and finally to families sitting at home watching Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. High at the top of the building, guests get a view of the world as if they are in space, before the journey back home begins.

Exiting, guests have experienced something that they will get nowhere else, a journey through time. The omni-mover is a time machine that allows a guest to travel through the centuries and watch the birth of the people and see how we became what our society is today. In the era of survival, cavemen grunts fostered communication that eventually led to human beings walking on another celestial body in the solar system.

Spaceship Earth is the signature attraction for a four-decade- old theme park that details the story of how language is developed. This isn’t a ride that goes from 0-60 mph rocketing upside down and through corkscrews on a dueling track. Spaceship Earth is an attraction for everyone.

Walt Disney World has evolved since opening in 1971, and while many attractions have stayed cohesive to their original creation, many more have disappeared or been ‘updated’. Spaceship Earth is one of those few original attractions that has undergone little changes to the show elements and maintained the same consistent story from opening day to now.

So why should Spaceship Earth be considered special?

The fact is, in an age of screen technology where virtual worlds are brought to life with little elements of reality to look at, watch, and interact with, Spaceship Earth is an irregular object surrounded by attractions that are meant to go fast and thrill guests.

On the left side of Spaceship Earth, Horizons, Universe of Energy, and World of Motion are memories that have been built over. On the right, The Seas with Nemo and Friends is a shell of what The Living Seas once was. Figment is more of an attraction than the entire Imagination attraction. The Land is one of the few attractions in this part of the park that kept its original intent of the attraction with an incredible addition in the form of Soarin’ Around the World.

EPCOT opened in 1982 as the second park to the Walt Disney World Resort. It did not match the truth of what Walt Disney wanted in his description of EPCOT, but it stands the test of time as a theme park that educates, entertains, and invites guests to journey around the world. EPCOT’s World Showcase portion of the park was dubbed a permanent world’s fair, but the new sections of World Nature, World Celebration, World Discovery also reinforce the notion that EPCOT is a place to explore and learn about the world.

Spaceship Earth builds on the Walt Disney idea of storytelling by allowing guests to join the story not just as a patron of a theatre, but as a participant. The thrill rides are exhilarating, but attractions like Spaceship Earth will leave an indelible mark on a person’s thinking. Disney often develops rich and entertaining worlds in their attractions, which is something that the local carnival lacks. You feel the agony of Michelangelo lying prone on the scaffold and smell the misery of destruction that blanketed Europe when Rome was sacked and burned. One might even be moved to tears by the sheer astonishment that Walter Cronkite displays at watching humans walk on the moon.

EPCOT started in Walt Disney’s mind as a chance to build a better community. A place where people would be brought together in an experimental prototype community of tomorrow. The theme park of today is very different from what Walt envisioned, but Spaceship Earth captures the community of tomorrow with its approach to storytelling. Guests from around the world will all be united and entertained by this global story of how we learned to communicate.

Spaceship Earth Fun Facts

The geodesic sphere design of the attraction building takes inspiration from the American pavilion from the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal. That building is still standing today.
The term Spaceship Earth was popularized by Buckminster Fuller who used the term for his 1968 book.
Famed science fiction author Ray Bradbury helped write the original storyline for the attraction.
The attraction opened with the park opening day in 1982. It has been updated three times in 1986, 1994, and 2007. A recent planned update in 2020 was scrapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The attraction was originally sponsored by Bell Systems. It was subsequently sponsored by AT&T from 1984-2004. Siemens sponsored the attraction from 2005-2017. Currently the attraction does not have a sponsor.
The attraction has had four narrators since opening. Vic Perrin narrated the attraction from 1982-1986, Walter Cronkite from 1986-1994 (I remember his narration to this day). Jeremy Irons from 1994-2007 (He also narrated the audio tour I took of Westminster Abbey. He has the perfect voice to make a narration compelling and fascinating.). and Judi Dench from 2008 to the present.
Imagineer Robert ‘Bob’ McCarthy invented the ‘smellitzer’ scent distribution system which shoots out puffs of smoke during the Rome is burning scene.
Walter Cronkite not only narrated the attraction for a time, he is also an important character in the show as he reports on Neil Armstrong landing on the moon.
When the attraction takes you through the invention of the personal computer, a bearded fellow is seen in his garage toiling away at the newest technology. While many might think the bearded man is Steve Jobs, and some believe it to be Steve Wozniak, Disney insists that the character is a tribute to everyone who worked at perfecting the personal computer.
You can see John and Patricia from Carousel of Progress on Spaceship Earth. A replica of the two characters is on stage in the Renaissance period. Patricia is the violin player, while John is the lute player standing next to her.