Seabase Alpha

As my wife and friends will attest, I'm a huge science fiction fan. I think one of the seeds that was planted inside of me that caused this fascination to grow was The Living Seas at EPCOT Center. To a young adolescent boy this pavilion was right up my alley. The pavilion's appeal started off right away to me. As you approach the outside of the building, a huge rock formation with the words LIVING SEAS stood. Every few seconds a huge wave of water came crashing against this formation. I loved that "effect" of the water slapping against the rock.

Once inside the show building the queue was decorated with artifacts of the history of sea exploration and many items that looked like they came straight from one of my favorite Disney movies, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In fact there was a film poster in the queue.

A short preshow film about the formation of the Earth's oceans (which I loved, and never understood why people chose not to view it when given the option) was followed by a trip aboard the SeaCabs. While a short ride the voyage on the SeaCabs was one that gave a small introduction of what was to come at the center of The Living Seas, Seabase Alpha.

Like everything at Disney, Seabase Alpha has a backstory. Seabase Alpha was supposed to be a sort of underwater research colony that was a real working community. I absolutely love the Seabase Alpha logo that is included in this post and am sorry to see it slowly fade away. I was a huge fan of the show SeaQuest DSV and the reason for my love of this show was probably directly thanks to my love of Seabase Alpha. If the show wasn't a Universal project I might have thought that the Disney company had used this show as an offshoot of Seabase Alpha. Even though this wasn't the case, I'm sure in some part, small or large, The Living Seas had an influence on the creators of the show. One has to do no more than look at the dolphin in the logo and then look at Darwin the talking dolphin.

While I still love the Nemo-ization of the pavilion today, the lack of that scientific (some say scientific fiction) element of the pavilion is now gone for the most part.