EPCOT Center's Missing World Showcase Pavilion

When EPCOT Center opened in 1982 (now just called Epcot) the World Showcase consisted of nine nations. In addition to The United States of America, World Showcase featured Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Mexico. Since then two more nations have been added: Morocco and Norway. However, Epcot Center was supposed to open with ten World Showcase pavilions. So what happened to the missing World Showcase pavilion, Equatorial Africa?

Original EPCOT Center press materials, models, and other pre-opening day publications showed the Equatorial Africa pavilion as part of World Showcase. Located where today the African themed Refreshment Outpost sits (between China and Germany), Equatorial Africa was meant to represent the heritage and culture of several nations in Africa rather than just one country.

The centerpiece was to be a 60 foot tall tree house from which visitors would overlook a safari watering hole. Additionally, the pavilion was to feature two shows. Africa Rediscovered, a 15 minute film presentation, would have been hosted by Alex Haley and explored African History.The other show, Heartbeat of Africa, would have been a multimedia show featuring drums meant to represent the musical heritage of Africa. Additionally, a museum of African art was planned to display items on loan from African nations.

There are several reasons behind why this pavilion was never actually built. One reason is that countries in Africa that were going to fund the pavilion couldn't actually come up with the money (Disney asked countries represented in World Showcase to foot the bill for the pavilions with the intention that the pavilion would increase tourism for the host country). And due to political unrest in Africa at the time it was difficult to work with governments to secure the funding. There were, however, corporations from South Africa that offered the funding. But in the early 1980's South Africa's apartheid government made dealing with South African companies a less than ideal prospect for Disney.

In the end, and at the final hour, the decision was made to not include Equatorial Africa in EPCOT Center's World Showcase. The location where the grand pavilion would have been is now just as African themed refreshment stand and recently an African arts and crafts stall was added. But many ideas that were conceived for Equatorial Africa were later dusted off and made their way into Disney's Animal Kingdom.

Since then, Disney has announced other countries as coming to World Showcase such as Spain, Israel, and Denmark, but were never actually built for various reasons. But no other pavilion was in the final stages of planning, or came so close to being built as Equatorial Africa, EPCOT Center's missing World Showcase pavilion.