I have a dare for you. Try to find any article, blog, or YouTube video from the last 30 years that lists the top things to do at Walt Disney World and see if you can find even one that lists Journey into Your Imagination with Figment as a must-do ride. I’m sure you will find it on plenty of lists of the worst rides or ones that need to be refurbished the most but few if any recommend it, but it ended up being one of the more memorable things I did on my last trip.
I must admit that when planning the trip, I didn’t even think about the attraction. I had ridden it once as a teenager back in its prime and once back in 2019 just to kill some time before a dinner reservation on a couple’s trip.
For this trip, Sarah and I were taking our 8-year-old son William, who is not a thrill seeker so I thought maybe if he didn’t want to ride anything else, we might go on it but as it turned out, he wanted to go on the ride, which is something I had not expected.
It all started when Sarah got up at 7:00 AM on our Epcot day so she could get in a virtual queue for the figment popcorn bucket while I got one for the newest ride, the Guardians of the Galaxy and luckily, we both got reservations. I thought it was a little strange that Sarah wanted a Figment Bucket since I thought she didn’t even like Figment, so I had to ask why we were spending money on it, but she assured me it was all part of the thrill of the hunt.
Later that day, after riding Ratatouille, Frozen Ever After, and Test Track, it was time to go get our popcorn bucket. I figured it would just end up in a basement bin that we would forget about and rediscover in 5 years, but after a short wait, it was all ours. After asking William, we decided he could have it in his room so I was glad we would at least do something with it, but I figured that would be the last I would hear about Figment.
After lunch, we finally got to go on Guardians of the Galaxy and William wanted to sit next to Sarah, as he did on every ride so it wasn’t until we were off and I could ask him how he liked it, I discovered he didn’t like it since it was too scary, and Sarah pretty much agreed with him on that since she didn’t like all of the spinning and was happy when it had concluded.
It was later that day when Sarah told me William wanted to go on the Figment ride. I wasn’t too excited to go on it but being able to walk on a ride without a wait isn’t the end of the world, so soon we were on the way to the imagination pavilion to get on the ride.
For those of you who have not been on the ride, it’s been around for 40 years, and this is the third version. It was a popular ride at first and Figment was about the only character in the park when Epcot opened. Ten years later it was updated and became probably the most hated ride in Disney history. The current version has been around for 20 years and while figment is popular (like waiting in a 6-hour line for a popcorn bucket in 2022), the ride is just an afterthought.