Does the “need” for cgi exist if one’s looking at waterfalls, canyons, trees and mountains? Serious question. I was under the impression that the cgi was filling in gaps, as it were?
Altho the case could be made that humans are part of nature. I’m happy to include imagination in “nature”.
In Soarin’ Around the World, you have CGI smattered about filling in things. Fake people walking on the Great Wall, an entirely fake Taj Majal scene, fake animals on the African Savannah, fake polar bears in the Arctic scene (not to mention the fake breaching whale), the fake Eiffel tower (which we fly directly into), the fake airplane we practically collide with in Sydney, and the fake Epcot fireworks that we fly into as well. The best parts of the film are the parts that involve no CGI whatsoever.
It is hard to have a place called Future World when technology is changing so fast that a project that starts construction today can be obsolete by the time it is finished, especially given WDW’s long construction times.
But I think this is unavoidable.
I think Tomorrowland can aim for “Buck Rogers” and “gee, this is how Hollywood thought the future would look like”
But I think EPCOT has to be more of a showcase of actual tech
ETA: thinking it would’ve been awesome if there had been a pavilion in FW where big tech companies demo’ed their newest product and EPCOT was The Place where product launches were announced for Apple, Tesla etc.