I know this isn’t exactly breaking news, but Epcot no longer sells the Beaver Tails in Canada. These were flat dough deepfried and dipped in cinnamon sugar. Growing up in Portland, OR I knew them as Elephant Ears when we bought them at the Saturday Market. Coming to Walt Disney World for the first time in 1997 I was pleasantly pleased to find them again. I’m fairly sure they were gone in 2004 when I visited in November, although I think I was told they were a seasonal item. However, I’ve been here since March of 2005 and the Beaver Tails appear to be permanently gone.
Returning Beaver Tails to the forlorn looking booth in Canada would be one step that Epcot could make as a birthday gesture when the park turns 25 next year.
I have one more change Disney needs to make to sure guests they’re serious about offering a quality product. Hide the Soarin’ show building. When seen from just about every vantage point across the lagoon from Canada, the Soarin’ show building is a giant eye-sore. Unless the sky is a perfect match to the blue paint, the building absolutely ruins the artificial vista created by the castle and Canadian Rockies.
Giving some imagineers, not the ones who built the show building there in the first place, a decent budget to camoflauge the monstrosity would be the right thing for Disney to do.
Canada gained it’s formal independance from the United Kingdom in 1982, the same year EPCOT Center opened. That’s a great tie-in and if you added in an updated O’Canada film and a new attraction/restaurant on the upper level of the pavillion, then you’d have something worthy of a promotional tie-in to Epcot’s 25th Anniversary Celebrations. But you better get started now.
i worked at the canada pavilion over 2005, along with my sister, as part of disney world’s international program (the program that brings people from all over the world to staff the pavilions and animal kingdom). the beaver tails have, indeed, been gone since about 2004, and besides poor sales, the final nail in the beaver tail coffin, according to my managers, was supply issues.
in order to use the “beaver tails” trademark name, disney had to work with the canadian company to have the dough and other materials shipped down to florida, which, i’m sure you can imagine, was rather pricy. they were also having some practical issues with the shipping… the ingredients were getting less and less fresh, etc. and because of food preparation and health regulations, that little booth wasn’t properly equipped to cook the beaver tails properly. instead of being deep fried like they should have been, they were just being passed through a sort of toaster oven in their final disney days. so they weren’t even truly genuine! in the end, it just wasn’t making any money, though they have had a lot of people asking them to open it back up… and even some alternative suggestions to turn it into a booth selling tim hortons coffee and donuts! this last suggestion might not be feasible however, since disney has an exclusive deal with nestle for hot beverages in all of disney world.
as for the film, my sister also felt that, while entertaining in a campy sort of way, it is indeed painfully outdated. upon returning to canadian soil, she sent a letter to our local member of parliament requesting that heritage canada look into having a new version filmed. about a month ago she burst into my room excited, as she had received news that the film is, indeed, going to be redone soon!
i’d have to double check where she received this news from, as i’m sure you probably can’t post it in a “disney news” blog without a reputable source, but you may want to look into it yourself and see if you can verify it.
love the disney blog, keep up the good work!
To bring back BeaverTails, Disney would need to contact BeaverTails (see http://www.beavertailsinc.com/ for more info) as the name “BeaverTails” is a registered trademark. Trapper Bob’s (the old name of the stand) stopped selling BeaverTails before our trip in December 2003. For a while, BeaverTails’ website still listed the Epcot location as franchise. I contacted the company to inquire why the Epcot location was no longer serving BeaverTails. Someone replied saying that they did not know that Epcot was no longer selling BeaverTails and would look into it. Not so long afterwards, the Epcot location was no longer listed on the website.
I don’t think the Soarin’ showbuilding is an eyesore at all. Its perfect there, especially at the time the photo of the building was shot. I think it was meant to be shown there to create a sense that the artificial Rockies extend fartherinto Epcot. If you look at mountains during the evening, the closer mountains look dark and the farther mountains fade into a bluish color, just like the showbuilding looks like at the pic. I dont think its an eyesore. It look wonderful there and makes me think there are more mountains behinf teh Canada pavilion. Now, i dont know how the building looks like at day, but during the evening, it looks nice.
Thank God they’re going to update the O Canada film, it is so terribly outdated!
As a Canadian, I was, frankly, embarassed by Epcot’s Canada pavillion when I visited in 2004. The movie was bad enough, but the ultimate insult was having a Scottish band playing live music outside. They didn’t even know the majority of Canadian songs requested by the audience. If it’s the Canada pavillion, get a Canadian band.
I loved the rest of Epcot, but I thought the Canadian section needed some major changes.
Just got back from Disney and I have to agree – Canada pavilion is pretty sad. Still playing the same 25 year old movie.
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