Our 15th-anniversary celebration kicks into high gear with this unique tribute to the park's musical repertoire.

Inspired by the once frequent and highly treasured Official Albums of the parks, The Official ^Instrumental^ Album of EPCOT Center, utilizes the latest AI* audio separation models to present, for the first time ever, these classics in purely instrumental form, accompanied by many once-commercially released medleys and augmented by several that should have been.

*AI with considerable manual (aka human) efforts to remove AI artifacts, remove volume “ducking”, and enhancement to adjust for the loss of EQ.

Whether it’s the eerie-eyed wallpaper in the Haunted Mansion, the tile murals of Cinderella Castle, or the fresco of an unmarred Hollywood Tower Hotel hiding in plain sight in its lower lobby, many attractions feature elements that are art installations in their own right. Epcot Center was no exception, featuring a plethora of masterpieces. Some of these, like Claudio Mazzoli’s Spaceship Earth entrance mural or Doris Hardoon’s wall carpet for The Land’s Harvest Theater, have, almost miraculously, survived, while most, such as Robert McCall’s “Prologue and the Promise” panorama for Horizons or Toshi Muto’s colorful ceiling for Journey into Imagination, have been gone for nearly a generation but not forgotten. Fortunately, the original reference paintings for the vast majority of these are still preserved at Walt Disney Imagineering’s Art Library. However, some of these were nearly lost forever in a nearly catastrophic incident few people know about…

In 2003, WDI’s Art Library experienced a fire. While the flames were extinguished quickly, many canvases suffered varying degrees of water damage from the building’s sprinkler system. Unfortunately, this included Journey into Imagination’s Performing Arts posters.

Painted by Julie Svendsen, these posters were seen as you entered the attraction’s sixth scene, “Performing Arts,” where, across the way, Actor Figment was getting ready for “A Brand New Show!”

These six posters were mounted on three (then) newly developed “Prismavision” displays, each comprised of seven vertical triangular prisms that ingeniously rotated quickly from one image to the next. You can see them in action as part of Martin Smith's Ultimate Tribute (at 39:00) or more clearly on Disney Dave's 4K upscale (at 6:40). 

Meant to evoke theater posters under an abstract marquee and referencing the primary elements of any good performance, they also played off Dreamfinder and Figment’s alternating lyrics:

Some happy songs
Some snappy dances
Costumes and sets
Spoofs and romances
With laughs and tears
And footlights all aglow
The sparks ignite…
A brand new show!

As previously mentioned, Julie’s original paintings were badly damaged by the Art Library’s fire suppression system, but that didn’t stop curators Jeff Kurtti and Bruce Gordon from selecting them for inclusion in 2009’s The Art of Walt Disney World (pages 69 & 70).

While it may be difficult to see at such a small scale in book form, once I acquired scans of the individual poster art, I was horrified by the amount of damage they had endured. From smudges to cracks, stains, chipped paint, and even large “varnish blooms” (permanent water droplets), if there was a type of damage a painting could suffer, they had it!

As with many other pieces of Future World production art, these have been on my (dauntingly long) list of assets to restore. But considering the extent of the damage and how niche the subject matter is—even most die-hard Imagination/Figment fans don’t remember these—they might never have seen the light of day if it were not for some recent technological advancements that did much (but most certainly not all) of the heavy lifting.

So now, for the first time in over 28 years, enjoy Julie Svendsen’s wonderfully whimsical kaleidoscopic compositions!

Each functions as a stylized theatrical poster rather than a literal illustration of its subject. Figures, instruments, faces, and gestures are reduced to bold, interlocking shapes that feel both graphic and fluid, closer to mid-century poster art and kaleidoscopic abstraction than straightforward representation.

The "SONG" poster suffered the most damage, but was fortunately pulled back from the brink. 

A cool, high-saturation palette dominates across the set (deep and mid-tone blues, teals, purples, and magentas, with sharper pink, green, and occasional red accents). The white title lettering is consistently large, clean, and high-contrast, anchoring each composition and reinforcing the “theater poster under an abstract marquee” concept.

The backgrounds are rarely empty; instead, they swirl and fragment around the central motifs, creating a sense of energy and movement appropriate to live performance.

Collectively, the posters succeed because they are immediately legible as a set while remaining richly detailed. They feel playful and theatrical without becoming cartoonish, and their consistent visual language - bold contours, flat-to-modeled color, and a shared cool palette makes them work both as individual images and as a rotating display.

The abstraction also helps them function as stage scenery: they evoke the spirit of performance rather than depicting specific shows, allowing them to support Dreamfinder and Figment’s lyrics without competing with the action across the way.

As I work on various projects coming soon to E82, I’m forcing myself to take a short pause to update you on the Wayback WED event I was invited to attend with my Distory Nite Shift co-host @DisneyCicerone.

While we’ll be discussing the many discoveries from the panel presentations on the show, the highlight of the event for me was the autograph session at the end. I cared less about the signatures and more about meeting some of my personal heroes, including:

PEGGIE FARISS, whom I consider the world’s first “Epcot Evangelist” (and therefore my grandmother in spirit, lol). She helped sell the park to many of its original sponsors and did much of the research for Spaceship Earth!

TONY BAXTER (who needs no introduction). I told him how I’ve spent the last decade and a half preserving and showcasing his work, and how I’ve been listening to his every word since before I was literally a child!

The two Dreamfinders, STEVE TAYLOR & RON SCHNEIDER. Steve and I have been Facebook friends for a little while now, and I’ve been friends with Ron for many years (I even designed some of the artwork for his book). It was great to hug them once again, just as I did when I was young (and they were wearing blue suits with purple dragons). 🥰

BOB WEIS, whom I finally got to tell what I’ve been waiting years to say. I thanked him for creating Disney•MGM Studios, my first “home” when I started with the company in 2000. I told him that of all the places I got to work, the Studios was by far my favorite. Working there at the Great Movie Ride and the Hollywood Tower Hotel, among other places, was such a joy. I called it “the little park with a big heart,” to which he replied, “Well, it took a lot of love to give it that heart.” I also told him that it was because of his (and his team’s) work at the Studios that I developed a passion for Golden Age Hollywood history.

While Kate and I were taking our photo with him, she mentioned that we were both Disney Historians. His eyes lit up and he said (as a relatively new DH himself), “We all have to stick together.”

DON DORSEY, the man responsible for nearly all of the nighttime spectaculars you know and love for a generation. From Fantasmic! to the Main Street Electrical Parade, to Sorcery in the Sky, and every World Showcase lagoon show for 37 years. Although he was at the event to discuss America on Parade, I told him how truly grateful I was for him creating the miraculous Reflections of Earth, and how it has been such an important part of my life for the past quarter century. Don replied, “Reflections is my proudest achievement.” I had also remarked about the Video Globe and how I wished I (or someone else) could convert it from 480p to full HD. He said, “Stay tuned 😉.” I light-heartedly prodded him about it, and he said he couldn’t say any more. I honestly couldn’t be more excited for what that could mean.

Although its torch was extinguished in 2019, perhaps we have not seen the end of the story “as old as time itself, but still being written”!

Finally, there was TIM DELANEY, nicknamed “Mr. Tomorrowland” at Imagineering. I knew that if we ever met in real life, we’d become fast friends, and this meeting did not disappoint! In the short conversation I had with him, we discussed a great many things, including our mutual love of Walt’s Tomorrowland series of specials on the Disneyland TV show, and the many Easter eggs he placed in the recent promotional art for the upcoming return of De la Terre à la Lune to Discoveryland’s Space Mountain. These included hiding Dreamfinder’s face in the nebula, the already-discovered Nine-Eye from Le Visionarium (which, because Tim did that, will now appear in the new version in some way), and a few other obscurities.

I also showed him some of my work preserving his contributions to The Living Seas, including the United Technologies preshow and my soundtrack album. He was very impressed, and it should hopefully be included on his website in the future.

I could have honestly talked with him for hours, but thankfully Kate poked me in the back to remind me there was a line behind me. LOL

In between all this, I had a moment to talk with Tom Corless. It looks like I could help with some of the media for next year’s Epcot 45 event, so (while nothing has been finalized just yet) it seems E82 might be back at Wayback WED next time as less of a guest and more of a collaborator.

Of course, none of this would have been possible for me without my fellow historian @DisneyCicerone adding me as her +1 to the event, or your continued support of all my endeavors.

Thank You

For the official report, including many new revelations and rarely seen concept art, be sure to watch Part 1 of 2 of our Distory Nite Shift coverage. 


Rare Disney History Revealed: Lost Attractions & Imagineering Treasures