Best Disney Infotainment Attractions Ever

Disney executives will never admit it, but we’ve unofficially exited the infotainment era at the parks.

When Walt Disney created Disneyland, he envisioned several attractions that would hint at the future.

Others would teach tourists about the present, including what was a very serious and preachy ride at the time: Jungle Cruise.

After Uncle Walt’s death, Imagineers constructed EPCOT in his image, emphasizing education and learning whenever possible.

Now, those days are over, with franchise-based attractions replacing more educational ones like Ellen’s Energy Adventure.

The conversion of DinoLand USA into an Encanto utopia qualifies as well, even if you think of the area differently.

Imagineers had the best intentions for stories about the age of the dinosaur. It just didn’t quite work out right now. So, Disney is rebooting.

Now that a theme park era has ended, let’s look back at what we’ve lost.

Here are the best Disney infotainment attractions ever.

The American Adventure

As you can already tell, we’ll include some shows on this list, as Disney designed them with the same educational purpose in mind.

Still, I’m leaving some attractions like Jungle Cruise and Kilimanjaro Safaris off the list because they feel like cheating.

Jungle Cruise has no basis in education now, while Kilimanjaro Safaris is more of a, “Hey, look at that cute critter!” experience.

Contrast either of them to The American Adventure, and you’ll quickly recognize the difference.

Really, as much as I hate to say it, the stuff on this list is anything that would make a kid roll their eyes and say, “I’m bored.”

Unless your child is quite unusual, they feel that way about Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain providing a history lesson.

Body Wars

Then, we have a few experiences that Disney tried to seed with fun.

Body Wars is a blueprint example of that behavior, as it provided a similar experience to Star Tours.

This motion simulator ride shrunk people down to a size small enough to fit inside the human body.

In the process, people learned about scale thanks to the teachings of…Tim Matheson, that guy from Animal House.

Look, the 1980s were a weird time, but Body Wars provided one of the two anchor experiences at the Wonders of Life pavilion.

Here’s a video of the ride. Note that you may see some familiar faces, especially if you’re a Karate Kid or Gilmore Girls fan.

This attraction was ahead of its time, but like so many EPCOT attractions, it quickly grew dated.

Cranium Command

Many EPCOT loyalists wince at the unused space of the Wonders of Life pavilion. We remember when it was a popular place to go.

In addition to Body Wars, the pavilion hosted Cranium Command, which had what I considered an unsettling pre-show:

Soon afterward, guests met Buzzy, a body pilot assigned to operate a 12-year-old boy.

The attraction’s purpose was to demonstrate the complexity of the human brain, albeit in a way that would feel patronizing to adults.

Cranium Command had a clear divide in that people outgrew it when they were about 15 and never looked back.

However, people remembered the attraction so fondly that fans expressed outrage when someone stole him a few years ago.

That’s a real thing that happened and ended with a wildly unpredictable conclusion, but it shows the love some have for Buzzy.

Cranium Command was an extremely “of the time” ride in that it was a Wonder Years homage using an SNL joke from the era.

Still, kids invested in this story more than many of the other infotainment rides Disney built over the years.

Ellen’s Energy Adventure

Only two of the attractions we’ll discuss today remain in operation, which tells the story about Disney’s new path.

Anything infotainment-related has probably died in favor of an attraction Disney can brand with a popular intellectual property.

The most recent death was Ellen’s Energy Adventure, which went away in 2017 in favor of Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind.

Before then, the Ellen attraction had brightened up a formerly dull version of the same idea, the Universe of Energy.

Disney added a game show element to the preachy “here’s how fossil fuels were made” message.

Comedian Ellen DeGeneres tried to show up future Academy Award winner Jamie Lee Curtis on a Jeopardy episode.

Alex Trebek couldn’t believe how little DeGeneres knew about energy sources, but then Bill Nye took her back in time to learn more.

Importantly, there were realistic Audio-Animatronic dinosaurs throughout the experience, which enhanced the experience.

I’ve often joked that Ellen’s Energy Adventure provided the best nap at Walt Disney World, but kids loved it due to the dinosaurs.

Yes, they got bored because the show was comically overlong, but it was fun right up until they started yawning and passed out!

The Living Seas

I really like The Seas with Nemo & Friends, but I feel nostalgic when I remember my childlike wonder regarding The Living Seas.

Imagineers created a believable experience wherein guests rode a “hydrolator” that transported them to the ocean’s depths.

While there, a Seacab carried guests through the Caribbean’s coral reef.

The ride elements of the pavilion got drowned out by the rest of it, which felt like school, the last thing any kid wants at Disney.

Still, I have vivid recollections of that “WOW!” factor of riding the hydrolator and the Seacab. They were memorable experiences.

Living with the Land                        

Here’s one of the two survivors, both of which are fittingly at EPCOT, the home to many infotainment attractions.

On Living with the Land, Disney explains the history of agriculture and how it pertains to our everyday lives.

That’s the first half of the attraction, which I admittedly find a bit slow. Then again, I’ve ridden this one 100 times, no joke.

Living with the Land has repeat value because the second half of the attraction takes guests inside an actual greenhouse.

In this part of the pavilion, scientists spend all day trying to solve world hunger and find cheaper substitutes for hard-to-find ingredients.

You can sample the results at the restaurants at The Land pavilion, as well as during EPCOT food festivals.

So, there’s actual produce output happening during this infotainment attraction.

Monsanto House of the Future

I’m including this one even though it’s admittedly a bit silly.

When Disneyland started building infotainment attractions, they were along the lines of Mission to Mars, which is to say a fun ride.

Disney wouldn’t veer hard toward blatant educational offerings until quite a bit later.

However, Walt Disney was obsessed with the future. The Carousel of Progress attraction summarizes his belief in a protopia. 

Disney lived at the start of the space race era, when optimists believed all things would be possible thanks to future tech.

As part of that belief, Disneyland introduced the Monsanto House of the Future, which was this:

For ten years, guests could explore the plastic-heavy home of tomorrow at Tomorrowland.

Remarkably, several of the ideas from this project stood the test of time, which has made this infotainment experience quite popular in some circles.

Iconic Houses features a page dedicated to the Monsanto house.

The article notes that it was so sturdy that regular demolition couldn’t tear down the building.

So, the 20 million people who walked through this house were witnessing a proof of concept for the powers of plastic. 

Spaceship Earth

Here’s the other remaining infotainment attraction, and I love everything about it.

On Spaceship Earth, Disney recounts the entire history of society by encapsulating civilization into a handful of scenes.

In quick bursts, the rider learns about the invention of writing, the benefits of joint hunting, and the start of the communication era.

You’ll find everything from Michelangelo’s painting of the Sistine Chapel to the creation of the printing press.

Along the way, Jesse Owens dominates The Olympics, and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniac start a computer business in their garage.

Frankly, most guests take this experience for granted because Disney throws so much information at people in just a few minutes.

That’s what happens when you throw millennia of knowledge at people that fast.

Thankfully, everyone remembers the smell of the fall of Rome. So, there’s that.

World of Motion

The reason why so many Disney attractions were overly preachy was that they had sponsors.

Since the people paying for the attractions had influence, many of the experiences were let’s just say close in tone to advertisements.

With World of Motion, General Motors asked Disney to build an attraction about the history of transportation.

So, parts of the experience felt like a commercial, yet a brilliant Imagineer saved it.

Ward Kimball, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men, worked on this attraction, which is remarkable due to the timeline.

EPCOT opened in 1982, while Kimball retired in 1973. He returned to work on this EPCOT project, and his skill shined through.

World of Motion was an unexpectedly funny ride at times, and it employed a stylish Omnimover ride cart.

So, guests wanted to learn about transportation from the instant they boarded the vehicle.

From there, Kimball’s deft storytelling skill shined through and turned World of Motion into perhaps the best example of infotainment.

Alas, World of Motion stopped pulling in the crowds after a while. GM asked for a reboot, which is how we got Test Track.

Even as a Test Track fan, I always missed World of Motion.

As a child experiencing EPCOT for the first time, World of Motion made the strongest imprint on me.

That’s what any good infotainment attraction should do. Alas, that era has ended as Disney pivots hard toward franchise-based attractions.

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