A Farewell to Epcot's Norway Ride: How Fake Experiences Shaped My Life

I've never been to Norway. I guess it's supposed to be like Minnesota, but with more fjords and trolls or something. But you know where I have been? Epcot. Which is kind of the same thing. Right?

Yesterday, the Epcot attraction officially known as Maelstrom (more commonly just called "the Norway ride") carried its last visitors. The ride is getting replaced with a new attraction based on the smash hit Disney movie Frozen. I guess because snow. Oh, and vertical integration.

The Norway ride took you through some bizarre version of Norwegian history and mythology. You'd float past audio-animatronic vikings, scary three-headed trolls, and enormous oil rigs. Eventually you'd be dumped into "modern Norway" and an auditorium where you could watch a movie made in the 1980s about how great Norway is.

Epcot nerds all have different opinions on the closing of the Norway ride. Many, like myself, are a bit upset to see a beloved ride from our childhoods close down. Others invoke Walt Disney's famous words about Disneyland (the one in California, since he didn't survive to see the one in Florida built): "Disneyland will never be finished." The implication being that we should never feel bad when a Disney attraction gets a reboot that's what Uncle Walt would've wanted.

Outsiders, if they care at all, are no doubt just happy the Disney-fication of some strange experience is dead. Because Disney's version of Norway was about as representative of the country and its culture as anything else Disney does. Which is to say, not very accurate at all. But does that matter?

The three-headed troll of Maelstrom (circa 1991)

The closing of this ride is causing me to confront a strange aspect of my childhood, and I guess the way that I view the world overall: most of my experiences in life have been hyper-real imitations of the authentic thing. Which isn't so much an existential crisis as the logical conclusion of 20th century consumer capitalism.

As I said, I've never been to Norway, but a quick exploration of 1970s and 80s futurism will show you that this wasn't supposed to matter by now. The past is littered with predictions that the future would be filled with simulated experiences that make geography and history itself irrelevant. You don't need to look much further than the pages of The Futurist magazine or the 1973 film Westworld.

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A Farewell to Epcot's Norway Ride: How Fake Experiences Shaped My Life