How Our Minds Create Creations

Future World has always been filled with iconic structures. Starting from the moment you see Spaceship Earth from the road leading up to the park to the last glint from the polished steel of World of Motion/Test Track, the angles and architecture are as much a part of the story as the attractions themselves. While Spaceship Earth may tower above the rest, there is one building that actually stands above the rest, the Imagination Pavilion.

If you think about it, the hardest pavilion to create in concept and construct had to be the building that would house all things imagination. Disney is built on all things imagination, including the systems in place to ferry guest through attractions all the way back to the company’s formative years and the characters they developed for their animated shorts and feature films. Imagination is a tall order, and not something that is easily defined, which is what makes the Imagination pavilion even more startling to take in.

We have come to revere the way the light of a sunset glints off of the glass pyramids and look on in bemusement at the backwards waterfall and jumping drops of water in the pavilion’s courtyard. The nuts and bolts of the building may comprise a 128,000 square foot building that houses a ride-through attraction, 3D film, and an exhibit of interactive elements, but Imagination is so much more than that. How many of us have gotten the creative juices going or a jolt of inspiration just by sitting and admiring the pavilion?

This construction photo, taken in 1982, looks a bit like a model of the current waterfall sculpture, but is obviously the building blocks of what is to come. You can see the waterfall’s basic outline just beneath the monorail beams, and the blocked out splashing fountains. The tunnel windows that would flow into the Magic Eye Theater are framed out but not complete. Most striking is there is no reflection or shimmer coming from the glass pyramids as the metal framework has been constructed and is awaiting the triangular panels.

I imagine we all have projects, deep in our imaginations, that are at this level of completion, don’t we? What stopping you from completing your figment of Imagination?