BARBIE in DISNEY WORLD! History of EPCOT's Magical World of Barbie in Pi Minutes

Before she was a movie star, Barbie had a birthday party at Walt Disney World and no one really liked it. This was Epcot's the Magical World of Barbie!

#Barbie #Disney #Epcot #HistoryInPiMinutes #waltdisneyworld

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History in Pi Minutes is a series where I look at some popular topics in Disney or Theme Park History and cover them in a bite size format.

Views are my own and do not represent the Walt Disney Company or its values.

Barbara Millicent Roberts has been one of the biggest names in the entertainment industry since 1959. Better known as “Barbie,” the iconic character has been the face of video games, tv shows, webseries, movies, and of course toy lines.

One of Barbie’s lesser known starring roles was a short lived stage show at Epcot in Walt Disney World.

The Magical World of Barbie premiered in the American Gardens Theater during the Thanksgiving season of 1993. It lasted for a single day before closing down to be reworked. I’m sure they knew it wasn’t ready, but they needed footage of the show for the Disney Christmas Parade tv special and the Barbie’s Birthday party tie in video which I’ll talk about a bit later.

By the time Christmas rolled around, the show reopened with a few tweaks.

It starts with all the dolls on stage. But thanks to the power of the audience’s imagination, they come to life! They dance and sing and wear fun costumes as they travel the world! The sets and props are really pretty neat. Everything is properly bright and colorful. Barbie and her friends head to Australia to save a koala, to Paris for an international fashion show, and to Africa for a safari. Note that they don’t get any more specific than “Africa”. For the Paris fashion show segment they named the specific city they were in. But the Safari is just somewhere in Africa. 20% of the world is Africa. A whole fifth of all land on the earth. And their safari is ya know somewhere in there I guess whatever.

The show doesn’t have much of plot as it really is just a fun poppy spin through the Magical World of Barbie! The music gets stuck in your head, the audience got to play along and bounce beach balls while the performers danced, the costumes were great. It was far from perfect, but it was very fun. Especially for the target demographic of very young girls.

But this isn’t where the Barbie at Epcot fun stops! There was also the Barbie Birthday Party VHS tape tie in!

It stars two best friends Lisa and Stephanie as they tour Epcot and get ready to celebrate Barbie’s birthday! Part of the video advertises the park by showing the girls tour the world showcase. Making Origami, eating pasta, things like that. The other part takes them behind the scenes of the show to learn a bit about the costumes and set design. All culminating in a sneak peek at the Magical World of Barbie.

The stage show wasn’t great and neither was the video. But they were both exactly what they needed to be.

Mattel wanted to keep Barbie as a household name. THE definitive doll. Something a big headline drawing cross promotion with Epcot would help with. Plus, they wanted to keep their very lucrative relationship with Disney going. Disney wanted someone else to pay to renovate the American Gardens Theater, to make EPCOT seem more appealing to families, and something to new for the World Showcase

The problem is that Barbie just felt a little too out of place in Epcot . Meaning it wasn’t really an effective draw to the World Showcase. But other than that Mattel and Disney had both pretty much gotten what they wanted out of it even if the show itself wasn’t anything special, so Disney decided to end it and focus less on one big spectacle and more on a bunch of little pop up shows that better represent the cultures of the countries throughout the World Showcase.

This short lived defunct theme park attraction is nostalgic to many despite being a funny product of the Michael Eisner era of Disney theme parks in the Disney Decade

Want to learn more about the history and go in depth?

Epcot - Magical World of Barbie Show (November 1994) - Restored 8mm Video
Courtesy of RetroWDW
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Courtesy of Rare Disney Treasures
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BARBIE in EPCOT! History of the Magical World of Barbie in Pi Minutes!