Walt Disney loved history. He never forgot his roots and celebrated his heritage whenever possible. Sure, the man conquered Hollywood and claimed a rare level of celebrity, but he was once a boy living on a farm in Marceline, Missouri.
Uncle Walt carried those memories with him and sometimes wistfully recalled the simpler lifestyle of his youth. His favorite attraction tells the story of these days. Let’s go Behind the Ride to learn about Carousel of Progress.
The Experience: Cycling through four different sets without leaving your seat
The Trick: An unprecedented turntable design
Image: DisneyWalt Disney’s Carousel of Progress wasn’t originally a Disney attraction. General Electric (GE) needed something for its pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. They hired Walt Disney and his Imagineering team at WED Enterprises to build something memorable. No one at GE could have predicted just how much Disney would triumph in this endeavor.
The Imagineers faced a challenge in the construction of their attraction. They needed something that would host a ton of people simultaneously, but their plans wouldn’t allow for the new Omnimover style that they were constructing for their other World’s Fair pavilions. Inspiration struck from an unlikely source.
The Disney team recognized that carousels employ the kind of ride structure that they needed for Carousel of Progress. A carousel has seats that are constantly spinning in a circle around a primary structure in the middle. Carousel of Progress is a novel implementation of the same premise.
Image: DisneyYou may think of the underlying architecture of this ride as a turntable, one divided into six sections. Each of these sections serves a purpose. Four of them are sets, places where riders learn the story that Uncle Walt wanted to tell about societal progress. The other two sections are for loading and unloading.
The genius of the structure is its utility. The carousel transfers guests through the entire ride. You may not even notice, but the whole audience circles the center of the turntable. What you’ll see is a pre-show followed by the four segments of American history. Finally, you’ll exit your seat and leave the stadium. Everything feels organic to you, but it’s brilliant for a ride operator.
Image: DisneyThanks to the turntable system, Disney can host six times as many guests. They’ll never even see each other due to the walls in place, ones that also move as part of the spin cycle. From a storytelling perspective, it’s the ideal kind of Disney attraction.
Your “ride,” the turntable, delivers you to four different sets, and your line of sight is certain to look where Imagineers would prefer. Omnimovers like the Doom Buggy achieve the same goal by carrying guests down a set path. Carousel of Progress is even more efficient in its delivery of large groups of guests promptly to the next ride section. For this reason, it has the best throughput strategy of any attraction ever built.
The Experience: Traveling through four eras of American history
The Trick: Telling a story through narration and Audio-Animatronics
Image: DisneyEdison Park is famously a Disneyland themed land that never came to pass. Walt Disney fell in love with the idea of encapsulating a century of American society in a single place. He wanted to tell the story of the start of the 20th century, the time of his youth. Uncle Walt intended to follow it by demonstrating how much the world had improved by the time he was a young man 20 years later. And then he would display modern society along with a prediction for the future of America.
While Disneyland never built Edison Park, the idea morphed into a World’s Fair pitch. When GE contacted Disney about an attraction, Uncle Walt championed this idea of commemorating the past while projecting the brightest of futures. He sold them on the premise by emphasizing the importance of GE technology in all of these moments in American history.
The structure of Carousel of Progress closely follows this pitch. After the pre-show, the turntable carries guests to Act 1. The narration here is done by a father and family man, proudly describing how much innovation has improved the lives of Americans. He cycles through a laundry list of emerging technologies like automobiles, motion pictures, and gas lamps.
Image: DisneyThe beauty of Carousel of Progress is how well it demonstrates that while much has changed over time, some aspects of society are timeless. A happily married person teases their spouse and their children. The family dog happily lounges on the floor beside his human. Everything on display is a detailed Audio-Animatronic capable of simulating human (and canine) movement. The viewer feels as if they are visiting the home of a kind and optimistic man, someone who cannot believe how good he has it.
Act 2 plays out similarly. The setting now is the 1920s, and the same man happily recounts how much the world has improved thanks to technology. Thomas Edison has invented the light bulb, and GE has mass-manufactured it. The trans-Atlantic flight is on the cusp of occurring, although John the narrator is dubious about its chances. Cars start without cranks, and motion pictures now include talkies!
As John interacts with his family, something becomes apparent. Even 20 years later, social interactions haven’t changed. He still bickers lovingly with his wife, Sarah, and goads his daughter, Patricia. It’s a slice of Americana from the days when Walt Disney was inventing Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Mickey Mouse.
The third act is similar, although it does exemplify how much the world improved during a 20-year period. The setting is now the 1940s, and movie theaters are the most popular form of entertainment in society. Television has become an emerging threat, though. And automobiles have gone from a novelty to ubiquitous. There’s even a reference to interstate traffic.
During these 40 years, Carousel of Progress demonstrates the dream that Walt Disney had for Edison Park. It shows how much daily society changed thanks to technology. Washers and dryers replaced outdoor clotheslines, refrigerators reduced the reliance on canning, and indoor plumbing and electricity became a part of everyday life. Since Disney witnessed all of this, it’s easy to understand why he marveled at such revolutionary changes.
Image: DisneyThe huge difference occurs during Act 4. Disney Imagineers have maintained the initial timeline for the first three acts, which means that everything happens from 1900 through the 1940s. There’s an extended gap to modern times in Act 4, as Disney hasn’t wanted to change the stories that Walt Disney established.
This part isn’t the future that we know today. Instead, it’s the one that Imagineers predicted 25 years ago. This scene hasn’t changed since then. During Act 4, a family celebrates Christmas in a household that no one could have predicted in the age of Act 1.
One person types on a computer while others gaze at the Christmas tree. During Act 1, Americans relied on gas lamps to illuminate the darkness. A century later, they decorated a holiday tree using hundreds of miniature lights. References are made to car phones and laser discs. The dated nature of these items is possibly the best indication of how far society has progressed. Those two electronic devices have been outdated for years! The story of Carousel of Progress proves just how far we’ve come.
The Experience: Singing an unforgettable ditty that’s all about positivity
The Trick: Having the Sherman Brothers create another instant, timeless classic
Image: DisneyWalt Disney relied on the Sherman Brothers so much that I wonder whether he was their real father. Whenever he needed a song for a new Disney film or attraction, he’d run straight to Richard and Robert. They wrote many classics like The Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room, It’s a Small World, and One Little Spark, all of which still have a park presence to this day.
When GE commissioned Disney for the World’s Fair pavilion, everyone involved understood that the Sherman Brothers would create the soundtrack. What no one could have imagined is how impacting that the piece would be. There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow is the Disney song most likely to put a smile on the paces of diehard theme park tourists. It encapsulates all of the magic of Disney thanks to its optimistic lyrics.
Image: DisneyThe song succeeds due to what it represents. The Sherman Brothers were understandably grateful to Uncle Walt for their careers. They marveled at their friend’s boundless enthusiasm and unyielding positivity. Their lyrics became an unsubtle anthem about the man himself. Whenever you hear There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, you’re learning how Walt Disney’s peers perceived him.
Please take this opportunity to read them in this light and understand how revered Uncle Walt was:
There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
And tomorrow’s just a dream away
Man has a dream and that’s the start
He follows his dream with mind and heart
And when it becomes a reality
It’s a dream come true for you and me
So there’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Just a dream away
The Experience: Keeping the story current in an ever-changing world
The Trick: Representing the past authentically while predicting the future accurately
Image: DisneyWhat’s the polite way to say that the world was a lot more sexist back in the day? As a product of its era, one that’s frozen in time, Carousel of Progress has had some awkward lines of dialogue over the years. Disney has done the same thing with it that they did with Pirates of Caribbean. They’ve changed some of the scenes to make them more palatable to modern audiences.
Some of the updates weren’t Disney’s choice, though. In fact, the reason why this attraction is housed at Walt Disney World is that GE asked for the move. Their research suggested that the ride had stagnated at Disneyland. They found that the overwhelming majority of guests were Californians who had ridden it many times previously.
Image: DisneyGE aimed for Carousel of Progress to entice its viewers to purchase their products. It’s the equivalent of seeing the same commercial 50 times. The corporation must pay for the advertising no matter how ineffective it is. GE felt they weren’t getting their money’s worth at Disneyland and persuaded park officials that this attraction would be perfect for phase two of Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom.
Carousel of Progress opened at Walt Disney World in 1975. GE’s 10-year sponsorship agreement ended in 1985, and the maintenance of this attraction has been Disney’s responsibility ever since. They no longer require GE’s approval for changes, although attentive audience members have noticed that GE products are still visible on the ride. It was cheaper for Disney to keep what they had in place.
The dialogue is a less comfortable topic. Perspectives have changed over the years as Americans have grown more societally conscientious. Park officials must balance the integrity of the story that Uncle Walt desired with modern sensibilities. After all, it’s the oldest attraction in Orlando that Walt Disney actually touched. Carousel of Progress is several years older than Walt Disney World! So, Disney has mostly left alone the sexist representations of previous generations to protect the integrity of the ride.
Image: DisneyOver the years, the attraction has received five different significant updates. The first one happened when Disney transitioned Carousel of Progress from the World’s Pavilion to the Happiest Place on Earth. The next major change was the transfer of the ride to Walt Disney World. A huge change took place under the hood here. Disney altered the turntable change to rotate counter-clockwise. The World’s Fair and Disneyland versions had turned clockwise.
Disney then made tweaks in 1981 and 1985 before finishing the last major update in 1993. The trick each time is the fourth act, the one that projects the future. The current version of Carousel of Progress seems prescient in that it has virtual reality headsets and references to smart house technology.
The remarkable part is that Disney crafted these scenes before the internet became a ubiquitous part of our lives. While guests feel Act 4 has once again grown a bit stale, Imagineers deserve a great deal of credit for predicting the future so accurately.
One other landmark change didn’t stick, though. When the ride moved from Disneyland to Walt Disney World, park officials commissioned the Sherman Brothers to write a new song. They wanted something more contemporary.
The Best Time of Your Life became the theme song for Carousel of Progress in 1975 and would maintain that honor until 1994. At that point, park officials wisely returned to the roots of the attraction. They restored There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow to its rightful place as the theme song of Carousel of Progress. I would go so far as to say that it’s the soul of the attraction.
