Though The Pavilions and attractions of the Future world portion of Epcot are exciting and interesting, the argument can be made that the World Showcase pavilions did more to increase the number of visitors to WDW. After all although the Future World portion of Epcot is a different experience from the Magic Kingdom it relies on technologies Disney had already been using for years the entertain people, for example, all of the opening day Future World pavilions used audio animatronics (though in the land pavilion it was not in the primary attraction so much as in Kitchen Kaberet) . The World Showcase portion of Epcot however does not seem to rely as heavily on it's attractions for its attraction to guests. In fact, I think it is fair to say that World Showcase is an attempt to attract a different type of visitor with an array of experiences geared to a different demographic. People not as interested in rides as experiences and travel, One of the most commonly cited examples of this is the fact that this is the first Disney park where alcoholic beverages were sold. I think a good example of how this has even been extended and improved is the Epcot Food and Wine festival held each fall where you can sample tastes of countries from around the world. In reaching out to guests who may not have been as likely to try the traditional Disney entertainment, Disney probably not only attracted new guests, but made guests who were in mixed parties some of whom did prefer the traditional, and some attracted to this newer form extend their stays long enough to enjoy both, or return to Disney more often than they otherwise would have, either way it is not hard to see how much this would make the Walt Disney World resort quite successful, not only through increased ticket sales, but also many folks who would have only spent one day at the Magic Kingdom as part of their Florida vacation now might want to spend multiple nights at a Hotel as close to the Disney parks as possible and the increased occupancy of the Walt Disney World Hotels is a huge factor in the resorts success.
Canada
United Kingdom
The card above shows not only the UK pallion and some of it's costumed cast members but another feature that graced Epcot for many years, one of the double-decker omnibusses that used to circle the World Showcase lagoon, for many years these busses carried guests around the World Showcase portion of Epcot, at some point in the 1990's they stopped being used for that, and since then a few of them have been used for other special events including carrying characters around to scheduled meet and greets and occasionally ferrying a band around the lagoon as well, and thanks to a couple of the nice folks over at Walt Disney World trivia.com Tiggerfan and Rocketeer (Thanks Brian and Craig!) I also have the names of the busses, as is appropriate for busses circling the Worls Showcase the busses were named for some of the largest cities of the countries represented in the World Showcase Berlin, London, Marrakech, Paris, Peking, and Toronto. As a side note notice that not all of these are Capitol cities, which is waht I alomst wrote instead of largest cities, in particular during the years that these busses ran Berlin was not the capitol of Germany (at least not the portion of Germany that had paid to be represented here at Epcot). And yes the countries of World Showcase all do have paid sponsers, in most cases this is a company, for instance American Express and The Coca-Cola company were joint sponsers for the American Adventure for many years. below is an attempt at a list of these sponsers some are blank (one's where I don't know who sponsers the pavillion), others are in parenthisis are those I suspect may be sponsers but am more unsure of, though I leave open the possibility that I may be wrong about some of the ones that aren't in parenthisis as well since I just can't find good documentation on many of these.
