ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses almost exclusively on the aesthetic substance of the consumption experience in a themed environment. Aesthetic experiences are central to the social construction of the 'authentic' past in EPCOT's World Showcase. As researchers, they indeed did experience the postmodern pastiche of sensorial content alongside other visitors to the park. They confronted their critical inner voices and reflected upon their reactions, which ran contrary to those that surrounded us. They were hope their thoughts add to the growing discussion of reflexivity in research on consumption, consumers, and culture. As Urry writes when discussing existing research on popular pleasures, they were in a postmodern (post-tourism) age, wholeheartedly and unselfconsciously embrace involvement in a cultural experience. And, it is in the consuming of the aesthetic environment that we, even as researchers, may experience the fantasy narrative of an 'authentic' world of the past that spans the temporal and cultural boundaries of consumer imagination.
