United Kingdom Pavilion
| United Kingdom Pavilion | |
|---|---|
| Park | EPCOT |
| Land / area | World Showcase |
| Type | World Showcase pavilion |
| Opened | October 1, 1982 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering
|
| Status | Operating |
United Kingdom Pavilion is a pavilion in World Showcase at EPCOT in the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, located between the France Pavilion and the Canada Pavilion. It opened with the park on October 1, 1982, as one of the nine original World Showcase nations. The pavilion presents Britain as a walk through its architectural history: a sequence of streets and a village square whose buildings step from Tudor and Elizabethan styles through Georgian and Victorian London to a thatched country cottage, centred on a traditional pub. It is one of the World Showcase pavilions with no ride or theatre film, relying instead on its shops, gardens, pub and street entertainment.
Design and layout
The heart of the pavilion is Britannia Square, a town square modelled on British market squares, with a bandstand-style gazebo, a red telephone box and a statue-like centrepiece in the tradition of a market cross. Around it, each building represents a different period: half-timbered Tudor facades give way to the brick terraces of Georgian and Victorian streets, while at the back of the pavilion a quieter lane leads to cottages, a maze-like hedge garden in the English style and an ornamental garden inspired by country-house grounds.
The Rose & Crown, the pavilion's pub and restaurant, is itself a composite: its four sides represent four types of British pub — a Victorian city street pub at the main entrance, a Dickensian pub with a half-timbered terrace, a waterfront river pub facing the lagoon, and a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century country pub. Its sign carries the Latin motto Otium Cum Dignitate, "leisure with dignity", and combines the Tudor rose and the crown, symbols of the Wars of the Roses and the monarchy that ended them. Beside the pub, a recreation of a canal lock recalls Britain's narrow canals.
History
The pavilion opened with one restaurant, the Rose & Crown, and six shops: The Tea Caddy, The Queen's Table, The Biscuit Barrel, His Lordship, Pringle of Scotland and The Toy Soldier. Changes since have mostly been to the shop line-up: The Biscuit Barrel became Country Manor in 1986, and Lords and Ladies was renamed The Crown & Crest in 1995. The largest addition came on October 1, 1999, when the Yorkshire County Fish Shop opened as a counter-service fish and chip shop. A Victorian music-hall comedy show, planned for a building modelled on London's Crystal Palace at the rear of the pavilion, was described in early EPCOT books but never built. In 2019 Disney announced a Mary Poppins-themed expansion, including a recreation of Cherry Tree Lane, but the project was postponed in 2020 and has not proceeded.
Dining
The Rose & Crown operates both as a walk-in pub, serving ales, lagers, ciders and stouts, and as a table-service dining room serving British dishes such as fish and chips, bangers and mash and shepherd's pie, with a terrace overlooking World Showcase Lagoon. The Yorkshire County Fish Shop serves fish and chips to take away from a small terrace nearby.
Shopping and entertainment
The pavilion's shops are arranged along its streets. The Tea Caddy, sponsored by Twinings and housed in a cottage modelled on Anne Hathaway's childhood home in Stratford-upon-Avon, sells teas and teaware. The Crown & Crest sells heraldic gifts and allows guests to research family crests; other shops sell Scottish knitwear and tartan, toys and British food and confectionery. Live entertainment has included the World Showcase Players' improvised comedy and, more recently, British rock tribute acts performing in the gardens behind the square.