Minnesota Next Country to be Added to Epcot’s World Showcase

By Dave Shute

April 1, 2012: Word is leaking out of Walt Disney World that the next country to be added to Epcot’s World Showcase is Minnesota.

The Minnesota Pavilion, to feature mosquitoes and a thrill ride built around ice fishing, will be built halfway between Norway and Canada in Epcot’s World Showcase Lagoon, a location that honors Minnesota’s heritage, thousands of lakes, and general inaccessibility.

For those not familiar with Minnesota, the country is located between the U.S. and Canada. Settled largely by hapless Scandinavians who had been misled into thinking it habitable, its charming folkways have been celebrated in Lake Wobegon Days and other important ethnographies.

Minnesota’s economy is dominated by corn and beans, lovingly cared for during the 6 week growing season, and by strip mining for medical devices in the famous Duluth “Defective Lead Range.”

Its major metropolitan area includes the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, which formerly had professional sports, and may someday have them again.

People in Minnesota are famously nice. This makes it difficult to discover what they actually think—a habit of deception engendered by generations of denial about whether its climate is fit for human life.

Floating over this deceptiveness is extensive anxiety.

The one-percenters of Minneapolis desperately hope that they will be mistaken for Manhattanites; the citizens of St. Paul desperately hope to not to be confused for residents of Minneapolis; the farmers of the country are in a constant struggle to ensure that their tractors are bigger than their neighbors’ RVs—an arms race that has no end.

Some controversy has emerged over Disney World’s decision to install Minnesota as Epcot’s next country.

There’s concern among stock analysts that the capital costs of the ice-fishing ride may force Disney to defer its plans for high speed rail at the Animal Kingdom. Brazilians are disappointed, and some are whispering that Minnesota isn’t even a country. Contacted for a comment on this last point, Nancy Pelosi promised to check the Constitution and get back to us.

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