The Disney Parks fandom is no stranger to controversy. When you pit a rabid hardcore fanbase who never wants anything changed against a corporation more than happy to scrap anything that isn’t really resonating with the casual visitor, tensions are sure to run high. This isn’t just a bunch of old fogeys determined to prove the parks were better when they were kids on Twitter, either. Fans have been railing against Disney Parks management since the internet was in its infancy, as seen by the protests in the Magic Kingdom when it was discovered plans were made to replace Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride with a Winnie the Pooh attraction (spoiler alert: the fans lost this one). These days it seems anywhere you turn someone’s found something to complain about, whether it’s the upcoming retheme of Splash Mountain or something dumb an executive said.

But even considering that, the story of Journey into Imagination is a particularly infamous and bonkers one. This isn’t just a case of “ride gets changed, fans get pissed, Disney doesn’t care”, dear reader. The story of Journey into Imagination is one that spans multiple decades from 1983 to present day, involves several different revisions and bizarre happenings, and is all wrapped around a theme park that proved too niche for its own good, the decline of the film-based camera industry, a CEO in the midst of a high-profile disaster, one very annoyed British comedian, and above all a fanbase loud and proud about their love for a small purple dragon and his bearded buddy that have never once lost hope about their future. This is the Imagination Pavilion.

A Brief Primer on EPCOT Center

Before we get to the grand battle of Imagination vs Murphy’s Law, I should probably take you through a quick history of Epcot for context. If you’re not interested or already know the story I left a tl;dr for you at the end.

Walt Disney’s original idea for buying a ton of land in Florida was a lot bigger than just “build Disneyland 2”. Ever the futurist, Walt had grand plans to build his very own city. It would be known as the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or EPCOT, and would be the perfect place for Walt to experiment with new technologies outside of the realm of theme park attractions.

After Walt’s death in 1966, his brother Roy oversaw the completion of the Magic Kingdom in Florida, before he himself passed shortly after the park opened in 1971. With both their leaders gone, the Disney company was stuck wondering what to do next. The plans for EPCOT were brought back up, and were quickly determined to be impossible without the guidance of the Disney brothers. However, the Parks team took some of the ideas presented in the plans, and decided to build a sister park to the Magic Kingdom. Instead of being designed around classic Disney films and ideas like their previous two parks would be, the park would be themed to edutainment and futurism, featuring rides that presented topics such as communication, energy, agriculture, health and the potential of the future in fun, Disney-esque ways that the whole family could enjoy. If Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom were all about fantasy and story, EPCOT Center as it came to be known would be entrenched in real-world technology and culture.

EPCOT Center opened in 1982 to mixed reviews. Some instantly fell in love with the park’s positive vision of the future and educational content, others found it sterile and lacking Disney magic, while still others didn’t care and just wanted to get a beer in every country walking around the World Showcase. Even to this day after numerous reworks, revisions and renames, Epcot has always struggled the most out of the four Disney World parks to establish an identity that would please both hardcore opening-day purists while still making it accessible and exciting to average guest Joe who just wants to ride rollercoasters without feeling like he’s studying for a test.

TL;DR - EPCOT Center was designed based on an old city plan created by Walt Disney and turned into a park based around edutainment. While to this day it has hundreds of fans and purists, at the time it failed to resonate with the average guests.

One Little Spark

Enter Tony Baxter, a lifelong fan of Disneyland who had gone from scooping ice cream on Main Street to a full-blown Imagineer. Baxter had recently made a name for himself as an up-and-comer at the company by creating the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster, the first major ride to be fully designed and opened without any input from Walt or Roy Disney. Big Thunder was an instant hit and brought a ton of traffic into the at-the-time mostly unutilized Frontierland section of both Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom. To many, Tony symbolized the future of the Disney Parks in the post-Walt era, and all eyes were on him for what he’d do next.

Tony was then assigned to the EPCOT project, initially working on The Land pavilion before his ambitious plans for that fell through due to a last-minute sponsorship swap. He was then assigned to the pavilion next door to The Land, which didn’t have a theme or even a design yet. Kodak had signed on to be the pavilion’s sponsor, and didn’t have any requests for a theme beyond “something imaginative”. Tony responded by dusting off an old idea of his about a magical scientist and his pet dragon, and decided the pavilion would be themed to the wonders of imagination. The scientist was turned into the Dreamfinder, a whimsical inventor who studied imagination, and the dragon was turned into Figment, Dreamfinder’s creation with a childlike innocence who we would follow through the ride. The Sherman Brothers, frequent Disney collaborators behind songs such as The Bare Necessities, It’s a Small World and the entire soundtrack of Mary Poppins were brought in to record the theme song for the attraction, coming up with this: One Little Spark. The ride’s exterior was also designed to be two glass pyramids, inspired by an old design Tony came up with for The Land and quickly becoming one of EPCOT’s most recognizable structures.

While Journey into Imagination missed EPCOT’s opening, it opened a year later in 1983. The ride was an instant hit, being one of the longest Disney dark rides of all time and featuring state-of-the-art technology that put it above and beyond similar attractions. Dreamfinder and Figment became fan-favourites overnight, and injected some of that classic lovable Disney charm and personality into the park.

You can watch a video of the original ride here.

So…what went wrong?

Now That’s a Kodak Moment

A lot happens in the interim between Imagination’s opening and closing that’s important, so I’ll try to run through it real fast. The Disney company wound up listless in the late 70s and early 80s. EPCOT was their last major park investment, with the construction and operation of Tokyo Disneyland being outsourced. They were rescued from a hostile takeover by new CEO Michael Eisner, who quickly identified where the company was going wrong and set out to fix it. He brought the animation studio back from the brink, and modernized the Parks by installing new experiences based on what kids enjoyed today, including the films of George Lucas (and our pal Tony Baxter was responsible for the creation of both Lucasfilm-themed rides, Star Tours and the Indiana Jones Adventure). Things were looking up.

Until, of course, they didn’t. EuroDisney (now Disneyland Paris), Eisner’s big fancy new park he invested a ton of time and money in, was a resounding failure upon opening, seeing the company become a laughingstock in headlines everywhere and had the company see a loss. Shortly after, Frank Wells, the money manager that kept Eisner’s creative spirit in check, was tragically killed in a helicopter crash. With a huge financial failure on his hands and his partner in crime gone, Eisner knew cuts had to be made somewhere.

His gaze turned to EPCOT. We’re in 1998 now, and the park was struggling to maintain an audience, with many people tired of the repetitive presentations on now-outdated technology, and many of the rides, Imagination included, were beginning to fall into disrepair. Sponsors, who had proved integral to keeping EPCOT’s rides running, were leaving, forcing Disney to pony up their own cash to keep the rides looking shiny and new. In most cases, the rides that lost their sponsorships were simply closed. Kodak was willing to stick with Imagination, however they were in the middle of their own crisis, seeing losses in film sales due to the beginning of the digital camera revolution. Both strapped for cash, Disney and Kodak agreed it would be cheaper to completely retheme the ride rather than go in and fix everything that was broken, and Journey into Imagination closed on October 10, 1998.

And with most cases, that’s where the story would end. The ride closes, the fans get upset, but eventually life moves on. Not this time, though.

Your Imagination Sucks

One year later in 1999, Journey into YOUR Imagination opened, something of a pseudo-successor to the original ride. The Dreamfinder had vanished, Figment was present only in brief cameos, and One Little Spark was nowhere to be heard. Instead, the ride was hosted by a new character, Dr. Nigel Channing, played by Monty Python member Eric Idle. Idle had previously played the character in a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids-themed 4D movie next door, and was brought in to narrate the ride from a video screen to save money on expensive animatronics. The ride time was halved from 12 minutes to 6, and most of it involved trekking through pitch-black rooms as loud noises blared in your ears. Perhaps most bizarre of all, the ride actively insulted guests upon boarding the ride, as Idle’s imagination scanner declared the imaginations of all the riders to be completely empty.

Video of the black screen updated ride can be found here.

Reaction to the update from fans was…less than positive. In fact, Journey into YOUR Imagination was nearly unanimously considered the single worst ride to ever come out of Disney Imagineering. Fans despised the loss of Dreamfinder and Figment in favour of the bland Nigel Channing character, and negatively compared it to a wacky funhouse you’d find at a county fair. Complaints came flowing in by the hundred.

Journey into YOUR Imagination lasted just two years before being closed in 2001 for yet another rework.

Okay, Fine, He’s Back

The negative reaction to Journey into YOUR Imagination had been reported on by the press, and Kodak was feeling embarrassed that they sacrificed valuable money and this was the best thing Disney could come up with. Disney decided to foot the bill themselves and try to restore the ride to its former glory.

And then 9/11 happened and tourism took a complete nosedive.

The budget for the Imagination repairs was slashed from an already low amount, and the ride reopened just six months later in June 2002 as Journey into Imagination with Figment. While Dreamfinder was still absent, Figment made his long awaited return. Unfortunately, the slashed budget meant that the new ride was more or less an updated version of Journey into YOUR Imagination, complete with Eric Idle returning to film new scenes as Nigel Channing. The ride was now inexplicably about the five senses (although only three are explored), and Figment had been turned from a childlike being excited about imagination to a pest determined to screw with Dr. Channing at every turn. Riders were assaulted by sudden blasts of air and bad smells, and it all culminates with a group of Figments singing One Little Spark, along with the terrifying image of Eric Idle’s face superimposed on the moon.

Here’s a full video of the current experience.

Fans considered the ride an upgrade from Journey into YOUR Imagination, but in the way that a room at a shitty motel is an upgrade from sleeping on the streets. They decried Figment’s new, more hyperactive personality, the return of Eric Idle and the similarities to Journey into YOUR Imagination, as well as the continued lack of Dreamfinder, but were at least content that it was better than the previous iteration.

And…that was it. To this day Journey into Imagination with Figment is running at Epcot. It’s considered by many to be the worst attraction currently available in the resort, but that hasn’t stopped it from outlasting the original classic in terms of how long each was open.

But of course, that’s not where our story ends.

The Aftermath

Eventually it sank in that Journey into Imagination with Figment was here to stay, and Epcot purists just kinda gave up. The Imagination pavilion now just kinda sits in a forgotten corner of Epcot, with the ride rarely getting wait times above 15 minutes, the 4D movie replaced by a glorified Pixar shorts DVD, and with many of its interactive games and exhibits long since gone out of order. Figment would later have a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in Pixar’s Inside Out (according to rumours director Pete Docter is a huge fan of the original ride and put the kibosh on a supposed retheme that would feature the Inside Out characters), and the Dreamfinder returned alongside Figment in a well-received comic series that reimagined the world of Imagination as a steampunk city and gave the pair an origin story.

As for the people involved, Tony Baxter retired some time ago as one of Disney’s most legendary Imagineers, although he recently made a return to the company to consult on the retheme of Splash Mountain, another one of his creations. He has stated multiple times that he'd be happy to come out of retirement again for Journey into Imagination. Michael Eisner was ousted from Disney in 2006 after he became increasingly budget-conscious, to the point that it was beginning to harm the Disney brand. Kodak finally ended its sponsorship of the ride in 2010.

Figment himself would experience something of a renaissance in merchandise, frequently being used as the mascot character of Epcot and its many festivals. It’s now easier than ever to pick up something with Figment’s face on it. In 2019 a large retheme of Epcot was announced, and hints and rumours began to swirl that Imagination would be involved, but as is tradition if there was something in the works, something went wrong to get in the way, as the arrival of COVID forced Disney to slam on the brakes for most of the new experiences. With the next D23 coming up in September, many fans are hoping something gets announced for the little purple dragon.

Oh, and starting in 2020, Figment got to wear a Christmas sweater in December.

That’s a nice ending, right? Sure, the ride’s sucked for nearly 20 years now, but Figment’s more popular than ever and the fans still have hope for a return to form. There’s nothing else to the story, is there?

And Then It Got Strange

And by strange, I don’t mean Figment’s cameo in Stranger Things 4.

In January 2021, someone on Twitter sent Eric Idle an image of Figment, asking if there were any plans to work with him again in the future. Idle responded that he enjoyed working with Don Rickles, seemingly confusing Figment with the dragon he voiced in the 1998 animated film Quest for Camelot. When reminded of Figment, he explained that he had forgotten about him and that he’d never ridden the finished ride.

He then had this to say.

To say fans lost their minds in the best way was an understatement. Memes upon memes of animated little fucker were everywhere in the Disney Parks fandom, as Idle realized he had a good bit here and continued to double down on the Figment hate, concluding it with this message for Disney fans.

But it wasn’t enough to quench the thirst for more Figment. Roughly a year later in January 2022, Disney debuted an adorable Figment popcorn bucket, and fans once again lost their minds. Everyone had to have one. Everyone had to post about how they had one. Lines stretched for well over six hours, as the Figments were only available at one specific stand in the entire park. Even CNN picked up the story.

And then, as they do, the scalpers hit the park. Figments were going for well over their asking price on eBay. People on both sides got pretty heated, so one fan took it upon themselves to make it fun. This drawing of Figment (plus a bag of microwave popcorn) went live on eBay, with all proceeds going to Habitat for Humanity. It kept going up and reached about $600 in bids until some scammers messed with the listing with fraud bids and forced it to be taken down, but some photocopies as well as the original were sent out to the original bidders.

Of course, Mr. Idle took notice of his old pal being in the news again, and the artists of the internet did what they do best.