Spaceship Earth (Epcot) - Ride Scenes

Ride Scenes

The ride begins with the time-machine vehicles ascending into a dark tunnel with twinkling stars all around. Midway, guests have their picture taken to be used later in the ride and in the postshow. Guests then see prehistoric man fighting for survival; later on cavemen are depicted, who developed the first spoken languages. Then guests see the Egyptians, who invented a system of hieroglyphs and made papyrus on which to record them; Phoenician merchants, who developed a written alphabet (the Phoenician alphabet); Ancient Greece, where the theater was a popular form of entertainment; and Ancient Rome, whose leaders built a vast system of roads all over Europe.

After the sacking of Rome by invaders, guests see scenes of the Middle Ages, when Jewish and Islamic scholars continued to progress in science, and when monks copied Bibles by hand. The attraction then moves on to the European Renaissance, the development of the movable-type printing press, and the 20th century communications revolution—newspapers, telegraphs, radio, telephones, movies, television, as well as the computer.

The remainder of the ride consists of a depiction of Earth from space, traveling through an infinite number of stars and into a realm of glowing triangles. The guests can then use the touch-screens in their Omnimover vehicle to fill out a questionnaire to create a possible depiction of their future, which uses the pictures taken at the beginning of the ride.