Canada Far and Wide in Circle-Vision 360
| Canada Far and Wide in Circle-Vision 360 | |
|---|---|
| Park | EPCOT |
| Land / area | World Showcase |
| Type | Circle-Vision 360 film |
| Opened | January 17, 2020 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering
|
| Status | Operating |
Canada Far and Wide in Circle-Vision 360 is a Circle-Vision 360 film in the Canada pavilion in World Showcase at EPCOT in Walt Disney World, Florida. It is the third film to play in the pavilion's circular standing theatre since 1982, and it tours Canada from the Atlantic provinces to the Pacific coast, narrated by two of the country's best-known comic actors. The film mixes newly shot panoramic footage with sequences carried over, in converted form, from its predecessors.
History
A Circle-Vision film has anchored the Canada pavilion since it opened with EPCOT on October 1, 1982. The original O Canada! drew in part on footage from Canada '67, a film made for Expo 67 in Montreal, and ran for twenty-five years before complaints that its portrait of Canada had become a dated collection of stereotypes prompted a campaign, backed by the Canadian Tourism Commission, for an update.[1]
The revised O Canada! opened on September 1, 2007, hosted on screen and in narration by Martin Short, with a new score by Bruce Broughton and a comic opening in which Short argues with the original narrator about whether Canada really is snowbound all year. That version closed on August 1, 2019.[2]
Disney announced its successor during the pavilion's closure, and confirmed the details that December: new narration, a new score, and a new title. Canada Far and Wide opened on January 17, 2020, the first day of that year's EPCOT International Festival of the Arts, as one of three new films debuting across the park on the same day, alongside Awesome Planet and the Beauty and the Beast Sing-Along.[3]
Experience
Guests stand in the round theatre — reached by paths that wind past the pavilion's gardens, waterfall and totem poles — and watch the film across nine screens that surround them completely. The running time is about twelve minutes, and as with EPCOT's other Circle-Vision presentation, Reflections of China, there is no seating, though lean rails are provided.
Narration is shared by Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy, Canadian performers whose partnership runs from SCTV through to Schitt's Creek.[4] O'Hara opens the film with an account of how Canada got its name before the pair divide the commentary between them, in a warmer and less gag-driven register than Martin Short's version, while still playing on the same national jokes about weather and politeness. The music is an original score by Canadian composer Andrew Lockington, and the 2007 film's recording of the song "Canada (You're a Lifetime of Journeys)" is retained within it.[5]
The tour is organised as a coast-to-coast journey. It begins in the east, on the Atlantic, and crosses the country through its major cities — among them Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary — as well as Niagara Falls, the Rocky Mountains, prairie farmland, northern wilderness and Pacific shoreline, finishing in the west. Festivals, winter sports and Indigenous and French-Canadian culture all feature along the way, answering the old criticism of the original film by showing urban, contemporary Canada alongside the mountains-and-Mounties imagery that dominated the 1982 version.
One practical note distinguishes this film from EPCOT's other pavilion films: its theatre has at times been taken out of service during festivals, when the space is used for festival purposes, so the film has not always run continuously through the year. Guests visiting during a festival period should check the day's listings rather than assume it is showing.