Cranium Command (2003) | Wonders Of Life Pavilion | Epcot | Walt Disney World

There is a remastered version of this video. It can be found here:    • Crainium Command (2003 - Remastered) | Won...  

Cranium Command was one of the premier attractions at the Wonders Of Life Pavilion. (See below.) They both opened in October 1989, and closed on January 1st, 2007. The premise of this attraction, is you follow a character named "Buzzy", who is the brain of a 12-year old boy.

The opening five minute pre-show is an animated show in a standing theater. You are at a facility that installs the brains of people, hosted by General Knowledge. Incidentally, the directors of the pre-show, would be called on next to direct Disney's 1991 feature, "Beauty And The Beast."

In the main show, the audience is inside of the kid's head, with video screens of the eyes, a video screen above for the left and right brain, and another video screen below for other... bodily functions. An animatronic "Buzzy" is in the control seat, directing the different aspects of the body. (When I first heard the premise for Pixar's "Inside Out", I immediately thought of this attraction.) The different aspects of the body are some very familiar faces, and that was a problem.

Like "Ellen's Energy Adventure", Disney was serious about copyright issues, probably because they used their newly acquired ABC television stars as characters in the attraction. That also means I sorta had to hide the camcorder, so the video is about as good as can be expected, lol.

I actually can't find the original source files, so I can't do anything about the video flicker. It's most likely due to differing frame rates.

And, since it was taped in 2003, it's another NTSC 480i video pretending to be HD...


The Wonders of Life Pavilion

Of all the pavilions/countries in Epcot, The Wonders of Life Pavilion was the last to arrive, and the first to depart. It was first conceptualized to be where the Imagination Pavilion is, but no sponsorship could be found at the time, so Kodak got the space. Once a sponsor was found, it was squeezed into a space between Energy and Horizons.

One of my main complaints about the pavilion, is they had you walk up an incline to get to the entrance, only to then walk down an incline once inside the pavilion. I mean, it's not like you haven't walked all week and your legs are tired... The Land pavilion is the same way, lol.

The pavilion had two major attractions, Cranium Command, a comical representation of what goes on in a 12 year old boy's brain, and a motion simulator, "Body Wars", where you get shrunk down and injected into a body, ala Fantastic Voyage. ("Body Wars" was a ride system similar to "Star Tours", but it was a much rougher experience.)

Typically, Disney doesn't shut down major attractions when they lose their partner, but the corporate sponsorship ended, and Epcot had other thrill rides like Test Track and Mission:Space. Attendance dwindled, and toward the end the pavilion became a seasonal attraction. Wonder Of Life finally closed on January 1, 2007. Since then, it has become festival space for events like the spring "Flower and Garden show" and fall "Food and Wine show".

Part of this may have been because they had to fix some structural issues. There are parts of Epcot that aren't on any sort of structural foundation, but are actually floating on top of what Disney lovingly termed the "Muck", which is actually a bottomless swamp. There were some settling issues that had to be corrected.


I have a terrible video of Body Wars, and I'll post it one day with my terrible video of Star Tours. Hard to take video when the motion simulators want to throw you out of your seat, lol.
Update: Link to Body Wars:    • Body Wars (2000) | Wonders of Life Pavilio...  

Chapters:
00:00 The Wonders Of Life Pavilion
01:12 Cranium Command (Pre-show)
05:47 Cranium Command (Main Show)

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