Splashing Through Disney Tour of Sea’s Wonders

“There’s a shark,” 5-year-old Eric Mink shouted to his mother. “Look at the shark,” he repeated, pointing up.

His mother looked past him through the six-inch-thick acrylic window into the depths of the ocean. The shark disappeared in the distance. A coral reef stood silent before them. Tropical fish, a dolphin, even a turtle meandered by.

“It really makes you feel like you’re way under,” she said.

The Mink family was nearly 100 miles from the nearest ocean. They only felt as if they were deep beneath the ocean’s surface, a feat engineered by the “imagineers” of Walt Disney Productions.

Late last month, only a few hours before the Minks arrived, this man-made sea, a 5.7-million-gallon tank, was the site of an unusual underwater ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Mickey Mouse put on scuba gear and joined a similarly clad Frank Wells, president of Walt Disney Productions, 20 feet under water to mark the opening of “The Living Seas,” a fascinating pavilion in Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center near Orlando.

Walt Disney World, as thousands of Americans know, is a playground the size of Manhattan. Filled with lakes, resort hotels, golf courses, campgrounds, an East Coast version of Disneyland and the impressive Epcot Center, it’s a great place for a week of relaxation and entertainment.

Built Around Lake

The Living Seas is an immense amusement park built around a large, shimmering lake at Epcot Center. But “amusement park” is a misnomer for Epcot because it doesn’t have any thrill rides or roller coasters.

It is composed of Future World and World Showcase. The latter houses pavilions devoted to 10 countries, with films, shops, restaurants, shows and museum exhibits displaying the products of those nations.

In Future World are pavilions devoted to such themes as energy, imagination, transportation and land. With the aid of audio-animatronic and laser technology, plus typical Disney ingenuity, you’ll travel in a variety of Disney vehicles to the prehistoric world of dinosaurs, then to outer space and beyond.

The Living Seas, which fits perfectly in Future World, is more than an aquarium or a museum of oceanography. It is a multimedia tour of the wonders of the sea, filled with both educational and entertaining moments.

The displays range from the latest technology used to find the lost Titanic, to cartoon characters who explain to children such complex concepts as the formation of the earth’s crust.

Theme of Pavilion

Sponsored by United Technologies Corp., the theme of the pavilion is “a better understanding of mankind’s reliance on the seas, our past relationship with them and the role they will play in our future.”

That sounds like a high school biology course, but Disney has again managed to make it fun.

The Living Seas is not a ride in the tradition of Disneyland’s Matterhorn, but the pavilion does offer a short ride component.

After watching a powerful seven-minute film about the seas, guests descend in “hydrolators” for a 30-second ride to the “ocean floor.”

Through windows in these simulated elevators, 20 passengers can watch the water rush by the chiseled stone walls of the elevator shaft, as the floor sways from the water pressure.

The descent is amazingly realistic. For a moment I cringed, waiting for my ears to pop, expecting the change in pressure. One visitor commented, “I’ve never been under water like this--it’s scary.”

Once the ocean floor is reached, guests slip into two-seat sea cabs. The vehicles move along a 400-foot underwater tunnel for a three-minute ride between large windows that reveal an undersea world filled with sharks, dolphins, stingrays, 200 specimens of various other fish, plus working scuba divers with sophisticated gear. No mermaids.

The Real Thing

Unlike such Disney attractions as the submarine ride at Disneyland, these fish and divers are real, not audio-animatronic robots. Plans are to add more fish, which are needed. The tank is so large that it sometimes looked almost empty, even though it contains more than 4,000 sea creatures.

The trip ends at Seabase Alpha, a large exhibit and observation center designed to look like a 21st-Century sea base on the ocean floor.

Its seven modules, containing an underwater observation deck, diving robots, films, interactive computer trivia games, a marine mammal research center and other displays, could easily take up the rest of your day.

Disney planners expect each guest to spend about an hour in the pavilion. On the first day, most visitors stayed longer. During my two visits, I spent more than three hours and still missed some exhibits.

One module has a research center where staff scientists will study dolphins. Unlike those at Sea World, the five dolphins will not be trained to put on shows. Instead, the researchers plan to conduct physiological, behavioral and communication experiments with them.

Environmental Control

They hope to set up a computer system that will enable the dolphins, once trained, to manipulate their environment by the sounds they emit. A squeal in one tone will dim the lights; a dolphin squawk will have a diver joining in for a swim.

In the center of the sea base is the “scuba tube” that extends to the ceiling and is how divers enter and exit the 27-foot-deep tank to show off their advanced breathing apparatus. The divers, who go in and out of the tank several times an hour, are hooked up with mikes so visitors can listen to their underwater explanations.

Whatever you do, don’t miss “Atlas,” an animated Rocky-like character in a Roman toga. He’s the star of a 6 1/2-minute cartoon about the 4.5 billion years of Earth history and the formation of the continents. He caught the imagination and concentration of children of all ages and explained difficult scientific concepts in easily understood language.

After journeying “back” to the surface in another set of hydrolators, which are not nearly as realistic as the first set, you can visit the Coral Reef restaurant and continue your underwater tour. The restaurant has a set of acrylic windows facing the undersea tank.

On deck for Epcot Center and Disneyland this spring is a science-fiction 3-D film called “Captain EO” produced by George Lucas, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Michael Jackson. But even that threesome is going to have a tough time equaling the excitement and quality of The Living Seas.