"You are invited to choose your own flight path back to the FuturePort. Please look down at the lighted panels in front of you. Press one of the three ride choices: Space, Desert, or Under Sea. Everyone can choose, majority rules. All passengers, make your selections now."
Among many of Horizons' innovations was that it could be viewed as the first interactive attraction as it allowed guests to select which ending they wanted based on their favorite environment depicted earlier in the ride.
BUT there was one "flight path" that was removed during the construction of the attraction that was sure to be a personal favorite and one I couldn't make sense of until last night...
While researching another project I needed some facts I thought were discussed in Episode 2 of "The Imagineering Story". At 31:11 and lasting only 2 seconds a rather shaky shot down a hallway of the famous Flower St headquarters of WED Enterprises revealed something I and probably only a few people on the planet would notice.
Fun Fact: The statuesque woman on the left is Imagineering legend Peggie Fariss
and the guy walking away in the opposite direction is Tom Fitzgerald.
But before I reveal the significance of this shot, I need to provide some essential context.
As with most Imagineering projects, several iterations were explored before the final appearance was determined. In the case of the "Urban Habitat" for Horizons, it was going to look very different from its final form and strangely enough both forms of "Nova Cite" puzzlingly coexisted in the attraction.
You're sure to notice this famous painting of Horizons' urban habitat that was used in almost every piece of EPCOT Center promotional material during the last couple years of construction and is even featured on several pieces of merchandise. Eventually, this painting was used in the Futureport queue as one of three "Travel Posters" you would see before boarding the attraction.
To keen-eye observers and/or EPCOT Center obsessives (but I repeat myself), you might notice this looks NOTHING like the Nova Cite our hosts live in.
Bob McCall's more angular design survived well into the design process to the point where you can see it backing models made of the various vignettes of the attraction.
In the photo above you can see the distinctively blender-shaped building off to the left that's actually a docking structure for the various hovercraft of the city.
Here's that original painting (and the one we almost got) for the final attraction:
