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  • 2022-03-15 (xsd:date)
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  • Is a Ukraine Pavilion Coming to EPCOT at Disney World? (en)
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  • In early March 2022, as Russia continued its invasion of Ukraine, Uncle Walt's Insider published an article positing that the Walt Disney World Resort theme park known as EPCOT would soon be adding a Ukraine pavilion to the World Showcase attraction. However, this was satire. The beginning of the article referenced Bob Chapek, who is the chief executive officer for The Walt Disney Company: The story also said that the Ukraine pavilion at EPCOT would feature a brand new ride called Escape from Chernobyl and even took a humorous jab at Chapek's intelligence. As noted above, this article was not a factual recounting of real-life events. It originated from a silly and lighthearted website that aims to write fun and interesting fiction for its loyal readers. Uncle Walt's Insider describes its output as being loving and satirical in nature, as follows: While we all love Disney, the company really likes to control its own image and doesn’t always look kindly on anything that might detract from it — like a satire site that occasionally takes loving jabs at it. The website also showed the following disclaimer on a policies page linked below the story about the Ukraine pavilion coming to EPCOT: All events, persons, and companies depicted herein, including Disney, Walt Disney, and The Disney Company, are fictitious, and any similarity to actual persons, living, dead or otherwise, or to actual firms, is coincidental. Really. The same goes for any similarities to actual facts. While the article from Uncle Walt's Insider was simply just humorous satire, we did find that a handful of social media users had mentioned the idea of having a Ukraine pavilion at EPCOT. One person seemed to hint at wanting a special place for the country to be created inside the theme park: Another tweet conveyed the same sort of message: Others had the idea for something to be set up inside the park for charitable purposes: TheDisneyBlog.com even tweeted the following, saying: It is becoming clear that EPCOT needs to add Ukraine to the World Showcase: We found several past references to the possibility of a Ukraine pavilion being created in EPCOT. In 2003, a forum user on the wdwmagic.com message boards posted: Did You Hear the One About EPCOT's Ukranian Pavilion? The thread on the forum mentioned an old article that came from the Ukrainian Weekly publication. While the story link from 1996 was no longer accessible in 2022, we found that it had been archived by Archive.org: We also stumbled upon the following snippet from The San Francisco Examiner that had been published 30 years before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The writer appeared to joke about the idea of a pavilion for Russia or Ukraine coming to EPCOT: While Russia and Ukraine do not have pavilions in EPCOT, the website for Walt Disney World Resort lists the 11 countries that do. They include Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, the United States, Japan, Morocco, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada: According to the Disney bloggers known as The Mouselets, EPCOT once announced pavilions for Spain, Israel, and Equatorial Africa. However, those plans never came to fruition. On Feb. 25, right after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, Disney's Voices of Liberty appeared to sing a song for Ukraine in EPCOT's America Gardens Theatre. The tune was Let There Be Peace On Earth. The post included the hashtag, #prayforukraine: In sum, the rumor about a Ukraine pavilion coming to EPCOT's World Showcase originated from a satirical website. It's unclear what countries might be added in the future to the Disney World property. (en)
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