Universe of Energy
— — the pavilion that ran on its own roof.
Not only on a wall.
“A long, mirrored pyramid on the east side of Future World at Epcot. From 1982 until 2017 it housed the Universe of Energy — a ride-through that moved its theatre cars through primeval swamps and dinosaurs on a track powered, in part, by the photovoltaic array on its roof. Two shows lived there: the original Exxon-sponsored film and, from 1996, Ellen's Energy Adventure. The building is now Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, but the silhouette is the same.
Universe of Energy, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Universe of Energy opened with Epcot Center on October 1, 1982, on the east side of Future World at Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida. It occupied a wedge-shaped pavilion clad in mirrored glass, sponsored by Exxon from opening through 2004. The forty-five-minute attraction inside used a fleet of large traveling theatre cars that rotated, joined, and split as guests passed between film segments and an animatronic primeval-Earth diorama. The pavilion closed in August 2017 and was rebuilt as Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, which opened in 2022.
Two distinct shows ran in the pavilion across its thirty-five years. The original 1982 film, narrated and presented as a survey of energy sources, ran until 1996. That September, the attraction reopened as Ellen's Energy Adventure, starring Ellen DeGeneres, Bill Nye, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Alex Trebek, in which Ellen dreams herself onto Jeopardy! against a know-it-all rival. The dinosaur diorama between the film segments was retained from the original ride. The show was beloved by Epcot regulars and ran for twenty-one years before the August 2017 closure.
The pavilion's roof carried eighty thousand photovoltaic cells across about two acres of mirrored surface, designed to contribute to the ride system's electrical load — a public statement, in 1982, about the future of energy. The traveling theatre cars rode a wire-guided floor system that allowed them to break formation and reform, a piece of ride engineering that has not been used elsewhere at the Disney parks. The east-facing pyramid silhouette was retained when the building was rebuilt for Cosmic Rewind, so the exterior shape on the Future World skyline is essentially unchanged.