Epcot Center

Epcot Center is the theme park Hazel Grace Lancaster visited with her parents as her Make-A-Wish trip before her cancer went into remission, a choice that becomes a source of affectionate mockery from Augustus Waters and a symbol of her youthful, unconsidered approach to her own mortality.

The Wish and Its Aftermath

When Augustus Waters asks Hazel if she has a Wish—referring to the organization The Genie Foundation, which grants wishes to sick children—she admits she used hers before her Miracle. Pressed for details, she reluctantly confesses, "I used my Wish pre-Miracle." Augustus immediately guesses the destination: "You did not go to Disney World." Hazel's silence confirms it, and he erupts, "Hazel GRACE! You did not use your one dying Wish to go to Disney World with your parents." She mumbles an addition, "Also Epcot Center," which only deepens his theatrical dismay. He declares, "I can't believe I have a crush on a girl with such cliché wishes." Hazel defends herself weakly, repeating, "I was thirteen." The exchange establishes a playful dynamic between them, with Augustus's teasing contrasting Hazel's earlier, more naive self.

Narrative Significance

Epcot Center functions as a concrete example of Hazel's pre-Miracle life, a time when she was a younger teenager facing a terminal diagnosis without the benefit of the experimental drug Phalanxifor that would later stabilize her condition. The trip represents a conventional, almost reflexive response to the prospect of death—a choice made hastily, as Augustus later notes in his grand picnic soliloquy at Funky Bones, where he contrasts her "cold and artificial pleasures of the theme park" with the more meaningful Wish he has saved. The memory of Epcot Center thus becomes a benchmark against which Hazel's later, more complex desires—to meet Peter Van Houten and learn the fate of the characters in An Imperial Affliction—are measured. It underscores her growth from a girl who, facing oblivion, reached for the most obvious comfort, to a young woman who understands that some wishes require patience and sacrifice.