Epcot was one of the greatest privately financed construction projects in history... And the first and some would argue the only thing of its kind...
Any talk of it purposefully stagnating or being marginalized shows a lack of respect/failure to acknowledge history by the management and the paying public.
In fact... If you want a brutal indictment of current or recent management - frame it as "Disney executives fail to identify the value of history"
I can think of nothing more scathing...cut to the bone.
It may be interesting to look at the history of the Montreal 1967 Expo, which was considered by imagineers to be a kind of prototype for Epcot.
It was a government project, but like Epcot it relied on ticket revenues and corporate/national sponsors. The first year was obviously the biggest year with the most sponsors and participating countries. They tried to keep it running year after year, but it inevitably it started to lose its "tapestry of nations" character as countries lost interest in keeping their pavilions open.
The US pavilion (a geodesic dome almost exactly like Spaceship Earth with static displays inside and bisected by a monorail) eventually became the centerpiece of a "flower and garden festival". I kid you not. A few of the other national pavilions were still open in 1976, for example the China pavilion was selling Mao's "little red book". The Canada pavilion IIRC kept on showing the same 360 circlevision movie for many years. Yes I know, plus ca change!
The equivalent of Innoventions was a set of pavilions called "Man and his World". They were allowed to get stale and were abandoned to become a kind of spooky sci-fi ghost town. (used as a set for the Paul Newman movie "Quintet" and then demolished)
Sports events started to be held on the property, for example a Grand Prix track was laid out and part of the park was excavated for a rowing and canoeing basin for the 1976 Olympics.
Finally of the original Showcase of Nations and Corporate Showcase areas of the park, just about the only thing left is a single pavilion that's been converted to a government casino. The only other thriving area is the amusement park called "La Ronde". It was operated for decades by the municipality but is now a 6 Flags park.
To get to the point ... I can see the same trends happening in Epcot that happened to the Expo 67 park. The drift away from sharing and learning about world culture and technology, and convergence toward (1) special festivals/sports events and (2) mindless amusement on thrill rides. There's no casino yet at Epcot but give it time ... I'm sure it will happen.
This drift away from original purpose may be partly due to the public losing interest in (pseudo) edjamacational amusements, but it's mostly the Disney company's lack of any philosophical vision of the long-term purpose of the park, plus a kind of laziness about understanding and developing its potential. People who visit Epcot are a huge and wealthy segment of the world. Why doesn't Disney try harder to sell the park to national and corporate entities, as the world's largest, wealthiest and most concentrated hive of potential customers?
At a techie convention you see every company in the world setting up spectacular booths and giving awesome presentations of their gear. And that's for maybe 100,000 visitors at most, over 1 week or less. How about a semi-permanent (but frequently updated) show space that has 10s of millions of people visiting every year? Ditto for national, state and provincial tourist agencies. Where are your potential customers, that you're not reaching any more with ads in the back of
National Geographic? ('cause they don't read magazines any more) They're at Epcot. They didn't go to your country because although they're wealthy and adventurous, they're a bit shy about visiting your country because they're not sure what they can see, buy and eat there. So show them already! The more sizzling the presentation (boat rides etc.) and the nicer and cheaper the stuff in the shops and the more tantalizing the food ... the more tourist visits you're going to book.
If Disney execs continue taking the lazy path you'll see nothing but a cluster of fairly shallow, slightly-themed amusement rides, a very light dusting of pseudo-national flavors, and a lot of eating and drinking concentrated into "festivals". But no special glue to hold it together in the long term, namely a strong purpose of bringing people to the world and vice-versa ... just another place to party.
