It was a clever attraction. ; I liked the idea of representing the different parts of the body as different characters. ; There was a lot of truth in that joke.
Thinking about it makes me miss the life pavilion. ; It was such a bold idea. ; Epcot was supposed to be an edutainment sort of thing, and it still is at least in some ways. ; But I want to argue that the life pavilion had the heaviest loading of educational concepts, at least after the communicores became innoventions.
I'm not saying that the optical illusions were communicating deep biological facts, but they had a point. ; I still think about the trick where they had hot and cold pipes, and then one that mixed hot and cold on the same surface. ; The hot and cold mixed pipe felt extra hot, the instinctive reaction on touching it was the jerk your hand away, even though if you kept it there it wasn't actually painful. ; Another aspect of the same trick was to hold one hand on the hot pipe, one on the cold, and then one pipe that, I think, was room temperature. ; After touching the hot and cold pipes each hand interpreted the center pipe as being the opposite temperature, even if they both touched it together. ; The hot hand reported it as cool, the cool hand reported it as hot. ; That concept really stuck with me, I appreciated what that was saying about how our senses function. ; The shock of feeling the conflicting sensory responses kind of burned the concept into my brain.
I won't take issue with Disney for closing the pavilion, I'm trying to move beyond that sort of defensive fandom. ; I accept that they have a wider audience than just me. ; But I felt it was successful. ; Those exhibits reached people. ; Kids enjoyed the sensory illusions. ; It was an open ended scientific playhouse.
It was kind of a ghost town the last time I visited it, I don't remember the year but it was for the Christmas season, they opened it, I think, to make up for other exhibits being closed. ; But that was probably half because the habitual visitors were used to it being closed, something is closed for long enough and the people stop trying to see it. ; But I know it was probably my last chance to see it and I'm glad I had the opportunity. ; I got to say goodbye to all the illusions and tricks, and to ride Body Wars a few last times.
You know what, though? ; I never saw The Making of Me. ; As a kid I always felt a little weird about the idea of seeing a film on human reproduction in Disney World. ; I guess I never got over it as an adult.
It can be found on youtube though, I just thought to check now. ; I guess I'll get to see it after all.
