Guests visiting EPCOT will notice that Spaceship Earth is looking a little shinier these days as an exterior refresh is underway. While visiting EPCOT today, we stopped to snap a few photos of the ongoing refurbishment, which has been ongoing for a little while now. As seen in our photos below, the panels that cover the exterior of the building are being refreshed. Here’s a closer look!
Spaceship Earth Exterior Refurbishment
Over the past few decades, the exterior of Spaceship Earth has accumulated a bit of grime weathering, leading to some dirt streaks and general dirtiness. While Walt Disney World has announced an extensive interior refurbishment for the iconic attraction, they are getting a head start on some work to refresh the exterior now. Here’s a look!
We’ll start on the east side of the attraction. In the photos below, we can see that there are old/current panels to the left of the large column, and new/refreshed panels to the right of the column. It’s worth noting that the refreshed columns are not chrome or highly mirror reflective. Instead, they have a sort of matte reflective look, if that makes sense.
On the west side of Spaceship Earth, we can see that only a few panels have been replaced so far, making it pretty easy to tell the difference between the current panels and the refreshed panels. I’m not 100% sure if the panels are just being cleaned or replaced, but I would bet on them being replaced completely.
Hopefully, whatever changes are taking place will allow the exterior to keep this matte reflective look with very little maintenance required in the future.
As far as we can tell, the work is limited to the panels on the side of the structure. It doesn’t look like any work is taking place on the triangular Alucobond tiles on the main sphere.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!