When Epcot Center opened in 1982, it was unique.
While it wasn’t Walt Disney’s city of the future, it did manage to avoid becoming
a second Magic Kingdom.
It blended theme park and World’s Fair into one, all with a Disney touch.
As it would turn out, the novelty of that unique park didn’t last nearly as long as
the other Disney parks at the time.
Like a World’s Fair and more importantly unlike the Magic Kingdom, it was something
many people were visiting just once or twice.
There was no drive to keep coming back to the park and it didn’t help that half the
park was dedicated to a future that very quickly started to feel dated.
Combine that with an overall decline in tourism at the end of the decade due to both domestic
and international economic woes, and by the end of the 1980’s Disney was faced with a problem.
Fewer and fewer people were visiting Epcot Center, and that had to change.
When it comes to breathing new life into a theme park, it usually means new attractions,
new shows, and new parades.
They’re the kind of marketable additions that can win over the public’s attention.
However those kinds of changes take time.
Disney would eventually settle on long-term changes, but in the interim they had to act
quickly to try and increase attendance, or at the very least slow down its decline.
A quick and easy way to do that is to lower prices and advertise more, which is exactly
what Disney did into the early 1990’s.
Various deals and promotions, including one that involved $15 half-day tickets to Epcot
from 4pm to close, helped slow the decline in attendance to a steady 10 million guests a year.
Disney also offered resident tickets to the park for $25, which was $10 less than the
normal one-day tickets at the time.
But beyond that, Disney had an idea.
Why not use a focus on education as a means of helping with attendance and overall promotion
of the park?
After all, Epcot was not your typical theme park.
It was a place that aimed to blend education and entertainment.
It was the perfect place to support education.
And in fairness, it wasn’t out of character for Disney either.
Back in 1990 Disney would hold the Walt Disney World Teacher Merit Awards, which celebrated
and awarded local Floridian teachers who used innovative classroom techniques.
Later that same year Disney would also kick off the first American Teacher Awards, which
similarly celebrated standout teachers during a televised ceremony on The Disney Channel.
It was an awards event that would continue on until 2006.
So in 1993 Disney took a step that would both further their focus on education and hopefully
improve their Epcot situation, and it was a big one.
Disney announced that year that local Florida schools could bring their students to Epcot
on field trips for free.
For context, a single day ticket to the park for one child in 1993 normally cost $28.
According to reports from the National Center for Education Statistics, the average class
size in Florida back then was 26 students.
That means for every class that took up Disney’s offer for a free trip, it was an average of
$728 in admission saved.
That would prove to be a benefit for schools who were facing ever tightening budgets, and
it was a good look for Disney.
Not only was the deal itself reported across the news when it was announced, but as the
trips occurred some local papers would report on them, keeping Epcot Center’s name in the press.
But that wasn’t all.
Later that year Disney announced that students who had attended those free field trips could
return to Epcot for another free day that fall outside of school hours.
And the brilliance in the promotion is that while that child’s second ticket was still
free, their parent’s tickets were not.
It wasn’t as ideal of a situation as attendance just generally rising, but as far as promotions
go, it was a pretty smart one.
Later Disney would disclose that around 350,000 students visited the park that year on field trips.
Even if a fraction of those students took advantage of the free return ticket, it would
still mean tens of thousands of adult tickets sold, not to mention any additional food and
merchandise sold inside the park after they got there.
And once more, the simple announcement of the program itself was enough to earn Epcot
some press attention.
The following year Disney scaled things back and tried a different approach.
Rather than free field trips for classes, they announced that certified teachers could
get into Epcot for free as much as they’d like.
The idea was that rather than bringing the class to the park to learn, the teachers would
hopefully learn at the park and bring the lessons back to the class.
It was less of a direct attempt at helping attendance numbers, but it was still a beneficial
PR move for the company that aligned with their focus on education.
With the opening of Innoventions that year, one of the many longer-term attempts at livening
up the park, a special exhibit called The Discovery Center was made that focused on education.
There, the visiting teachers could pick up complementary lesson plans on various subjects
as well as experience an educator’s idea exchange and a class-to-class pen pal program.
But not to snub the students entirely, Disney also kicked off a program called the Epcot Honor Roll.
Students from five local counties who received all A’s or S’s on their report cards that
fall could bring it to Epcot Center for one free ticket to the park.
Similar to the return promotion the previous year, this didn’t cover the parent’s ticket,
meaning for every free ticket claimed there was at least one paid ticket along with it.
These educational promotions helped the park at a time in which it needed to try and get
more people there.
It didn’t go as far as rebounding the attendance numbers, but it played its part in keeping things level.
However it was also a tactic that was facing increased scrutiny as it grew in popularity.
The early 1990’s saw many companies similarly run educational based promotions.
Newspapers offered discounts and free subscriptions to teachers.
Restaurants like Pizza Hut gave away free pizzas to kids who read books.
Many of these were fairly benign and mutually beneficial.
Students were awarded and companies got good press.
However some lines were starting to be crossed.
Mobil Oil, for instance, was accused of sending lesson plans to teachers that advocated for
the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The idea of these private companies getting input into what was taught to students unsettled
many people, and for good reason.
Mobil argued that they were simply sending educators their op-eds on NAFTA as “food
for thought” and didn’t expect their opinions to be shared by educators or students.
Yeah... if you believe that, I’ve got an oil rig in Brooklyn to sell ya.
Ultimately the educational promotions didn’t make their way into 1995.
Disney never formally announced why.
It could have been the cost to run them.
It could have been the increased scrutiny towards other corporate educational programs.
It could have just been less necessary in 1995.
It could have been all three.
After all, by that point many of the longer-term attempts at revitalizing Epcot were starting
to take effect, with others planned for the years following.
Innoventions opened to the public.
Food Rocks replaced Kitchen Kabaret.
Spaceship Earth saw a refurbishment.
Honey I Shrunk the Audience replaced Captain EO.
Plans were in motion to refresh the Universe of Energy as Ellen’s Energy Adventure and
even longer term plans were made to replace the fan favorite Horizons as well as World
of Motion with newer more exciting ride mechanics.
Epcot was finally getting the shot in the arm it needed, and so these smaller attempts
at maintaining attendance weren’t that important anymore.
The educational promotions at Epcot were just one of the many steps Disney took during that
era to help the park find its identity.
It joins the ranks along with Barbie stage shows, Sci-Fi water operas, and presidential parades.
It is just one more example of how Epcot truly is unique.