‘Wonders of Life’ Pavilion at Epcot Tagged for ‘Selective Demolition’

Yesterday, Walt Disney Imagineering filed a notice of commencement with the Orange County Comptroller’s office to indicate intentions for ‘selective demolition’ to take place at Epcot’s ‘Wonders of Life’ pavilion. The notice comes just a just a few short weeks prior to the theme park’s 30th anniversary.

The pavilion, which initially opened in 1989 under sponsorship of MetLife, who would eventually drop sponsorship in 2001. The pavilion, which celebrated its last hurrah during the holiday season in 2006, has slowly transformed itself into the theme park’s ‘Festival Center,’ with access to ‘Body Wars’ being sealed off and the theaters for ‘Cranium Command’ and ‘The Making of Me’ being repurposed to hold festival-related docs and presentations. The future for the original theming of the pavilion, with its iconic double-helix DNA structure outside, grew ever more bleak, with reports often stating that should the pavilion ever return, it would not be in the familiar form it once was.

This prediction seemingly continues to be the case with the latest filing, which has Tampa-based Kimmins Contracting Group performing the work. Just what the work entails is anyone’s guess at this point as the textbook ‘definition’ of selective demolition is pretty vague and can involve virtually anything short of razing the entire building itself, but usually does involve modifying the physical form of the building in some capacity all the while maintaining the structure’s integrity.

There’s absolutely no reason to believe it based simply on this filing, but could Walt Disney World be preparing to make an announcement regarding the pavilion’s future just in time for Epcot’s 30th on October 1?