What will tomorrow bring? Since Disneyland’s opening day, Imagineers have been tasked with the impossible feat of creating the future. And more often than not, they’ve gotten it surprisingly right. The trouble is that “tomorrow” never stays that way for long. Throughout American history, our collective ideals of the future have shifted from bright, white, geometric landscapes of the Space Age to gritty, industrial, polluted wastelands and everything in between.
All the while, technologies and culture and imagination were changing, and Disney Imagineers spent most of their time playing catch-up. By the 1990s, designers were tired of the constant chase for tomorrow, and of the perpetual and never-ending updates needed to keep Disney Parks’ Tomorrowlands current. They had an idea: that each and every Disney Parks resort would get a New Tomorrowland. These New Tomorrowlands would be romanticized and built-out and – most importantly – timeless. They’d never need updated again.
How? Well, that’s our story. Read on as we explore one of the most enigmatic and unusual lands that Disney designed and announced, but never built. We’ll explore the boundless possibilities behind the forgotten Tomorrowland 2055 meant to change Disneyland’s Tomorrowland for good, and the abysmal reimagining it got instead… The best way to examine the future is to begin in the past, so let’s take a look at the history of Tomorrowland.
1955 – 1966: The Original Tomorrowland
Location: Disneyland Park
Lifetime: 1955 – 1966
“A vista into a world of wondrous ideas, signifying Man’s achievements… A step into the future, with predictions of constructed things to come. Tomorrow offers new frontiers in science, adventure and ideals. The Atomic Age, the challenge of Outer Space and the hope for a peaceful, unified world.” That’s what Walt called for in the dedication of Tomorrowland when it first opened with Disneyland in 1955.
If you can imagine, Disneyland’s construction timeline from moving the first shovel of dirt to opening the park was one year and one day. Early on in that short construction window, Walt lost a bit of his faith in Tomorrowland, and ordered that construction halt on the eastern side of the park.
His intention was that the shallow financing he had should focus on the rest of the park, and that Tomorrowland would open later, in a second phase of construction.
As the story goes, in January – just six months before the park opened – he allegedly changed his mind and instructed that development of Tomorrowland resume. And Tomorrowland was open for Disneyland’s grand opening. However, it wasn’t the Tomorrowland Walt wanted.
Under financial pressure and on a short timeframe, the Tomorrowland guests stepped into in the park’s first years was essentially a product showcase by corporations willing to rent space in the land – a Kaiser Hall of Aluminum, a Dutch Boy Color Gallery, and the Monsanto House of the Future displaying the unthinkable technology behind a domestic-sized microwave (legitimately the stuff of the future… the household, countertop microwave oven wouldn’t be available for a decade).
Just a few Disney-produced installations were present, including a stunning walk-through of the actual film props and sets of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. One unique attraction was Rocket to the Moon, a theatre-in-the-round style presentation simulating a visual trip from Earth to the moon.
Tomorrowland’s largest expansion came in 1959 – four years after the park’s opening – when Walt got his chance to bring the land in step with what he’d always pictured. A stunning, massive growth-spurt added Matterhorn Bobsleds (the world’s first tubular steel-tracked roller coaster), the Monorail, and the Submarine Voyage – all billed with the brand new E-Ticket designation.
While the three new additions helped add some heft to Tomorrowland, they still weren’t able to create the land Walt had always dreamed of. For that, he would need a clean slate.
1967: New Tomorrowland
Location: Disneyland Park
Lifetime: 1967 – 1998
A decade after Disneyland opened (and inspired by the work they’d been commissioned for for the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair), Walt and his designers were already dreaming of “a great, big, beautiful tomorrow.” Their ideas coalesced into what was triumphantly called New Tomorrowland, a complete from-scratch re-build of the land, firmly rooted in the iconic architecture and attitude of the Space Age.
Even guests who never saw this New Tomorrowland with their own eyes often cite it as the definitive version of the land. Sleek, white, and filled with geometric shapes and bright splashes of color, this Tomorrowland felt like an optimistic, vibrant vision of what the future could bring. Flanked by mirrored showbuildings, the new entry to the land was grand – a Space Race avenue flanked by soaring, geometric pointed spires, with the revolving Rocket Jets vaulted high above the land on a towering pedestal three stories up.
Perhaps the most recognizable and beloved element of this Tomorrowland was the sleek white highways of the Lost Legend: The Peoplemover, which would glide along the land’s second story, zipping in and out of geometric showbuildings. Those showbuildings had magnificent and memorable attractions of their own. In the concept painting up above, the south showbuilding (on the right) housed the Lost Legend: Adventures Thru Inner Space, an abstract, Omnimover-led dark ride that reduced guests down to the size of an atom. The north showbuilding contained an updated Circle-Vision 360 theater, marveling audiences of the ’60s.
This new Tomorrowland had also benefitted from the close of the 1964 – 65 World’s Fair, when the Fair’s hit Modern Marvel: Carousel of Progress was relocated to the park in a new revolving theater at the land’s far end. The innovative attraction contained six stages built on a stationary central “core” of the building. The outer “ring” of the building was thusly divided into six theaters and would rotate, so that guests would enter a theater, and then rotate to the next stage, allowing six simultaneous shows to be occuring at once, each in a different scene. Carousel of Progress, sponsored by General Electric, chronicled the changes of one American family through the years as electricity and innovation shifted society.
Walt’s New Tomorrowland was often called “The World on the Move,” filled with kinetic energy: The Rocket Jets spiraling through the air three stories up; The Peoplemover and Monorail zooming overhead; the rotating Carousel Theater drawing the eyes; the Submarine Voyage chugging away beneath the waves and waterfalls of the land’s central lagoon; the Autopia cars darting along elevated highways beyond; the Matterhorn Bobsleds whizzing by on the mountainside above…
While Frontierland was our nation’s idling, ambling past, Tomorrowland was our vibrant, energized, bright, and kinetic future. And naturally, this now-iconic Space Age vision would influence a second Tomorrowland taking shape across the country…
1971: A Second Tomorrowland
Location: Magic Kingdom
Lifetime: 1971 – 1994
When Magic Kingdom opened in the new Walt Disney World, it had its own Tomorrowland. Built from a similar time period and perspective as Disneyland’s New Tomorrowland, the land was similarly styled around clean, geometric shapes, gleaming white showbuildings, and concrete pylons. Still, the land had its own style. Rather than cloning the curved, elegant showbuildings of Disneyland, Magic Kingdom designed a new entry to Tomorrowland, flanked by massive pointed pylons with cascading waterfalls pouring into the park’s central moat below.
The land’s inhabitants by the mid-1970s included the park’s own Circle-Vision theater, the EPCOT-Center-influencing Lost Legend: If You Had Wings, and the relocated Carousel of Progress (relocated to Florida at GE’s request, to benefit from international audiences).
And then came the iconic centerpiece that would define Tomorrowland from that point on… The Modern Marvel: Space Mountain opened in 1975. The mountain’s sleek, white, Googie-influenced exterior would become the land’s defining feature, establishing the look and feel of “tomorrow” for generations. Naturally, the ride was a massive hit, inspiring a long-gestating, improved version to finally open in Disneyland in 1977.
So far, so good. By the close of the 1970s, both Disneyland and Magic Kingdom offered Tomorrowlands that felt fittingly futuristic, born of the optimism and wonder of the Space Age. Both were packed with the elegant, whimsical, white architecture of an imagined future where plastic space suits, assembly-line houses, and the promise of outer space defined American culture. But tastes change and time passes… And next, we encounter the most dreaded and frightening thing Imagineers encounter: the Tomorrowland Problem. Read on….
The Tomorrowland Problem
Standing at the close of the 1970s, the Tomorrowlands at Disneyland and Magic Kingdom were outstanding examples of forward-thinking design to audiences of their respective times. If you can imagine, Walt and his Imagineers had predicted the look and feel of the Space Age surprisingly well (and in so doing, had likely shaped it, too) and were equally in-touch with futurism in each subsequent remodel.
The trouble is that eventually, “tomorrow” always becomes “today.”
Think about it: The Space Race had seen countries sprint toward the moon throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, but by the ‘80s, the moon had lost its luster in the eyes of the public. The moon was the stuff of yesterday’s headlines, leaving the Flight to the Moon attraction at both Disneyland and Magic Kingdom old news, not staggering futuristic breakthroughs. Both attractions, in turn had to be redesigned as Mission to Mars.
Even the unassuming Autopia – which seems at first glance to be entirely out of place in Tomorrowland – was at one point a sincere display of progressive dreams. In 1955, President Eisenhower had not yet signed the Interstate Highway Act that would see multi-lane highways criss-cross the country. Disney’s complex circuit of overlapping bridges and on-ramps was unimaginable in the ’50s. But by the 1980s… Not so much.
By the 1980s, a public increasingly aware of (and wary of) unrestrained corporate power and the inherent dangers of atomic energy found the Monsanto-sponsored Adventure Thru Inner Space to be a hokey remnant of the 1960s, not a futuristic, cutting-edge exploration. Time had caught up to tomorrow.
What’s worse, the very concept of “tomorrow” had been redefined in the decades since the Tomorrowlands’ respective redesigns. While Disney had designed from the point-of-view of an optimistic world shaped by pop culture images of glowing white rockets and plastic utopian cities of the future, things were changing fast.
Entirely counter to the optimism and ambition of the Space Age, pop culture had something new in mind. Films like Blade Runner, Terminator, Alien, and even Star Wars charted a new course for humanity’s future: dystopian cities awash in steaming pollution and overpopulation; hulking, hissing spacecrafts of labyrinth-like corridors; sinister governments and evil corporations using technology to terrorize the frightened inhabitants of wasteland worlds.
To children growing up in the 1980s, Disney’s so-called Tomorrowland was a remnant of the past, operating retro attractions filled with decades-old style and in a setting contrary to their own imaginations. That meant that yet another floor-to-ceiling facelift would be needed… and if the past were any indicator, it wouldn’t be the last.
Put another way, Tomorrowland was inherently broken. Disney would either need to commit to continuous, perpetual periodic upgrades to keep the lands aligned with science and pop culture… or would need to find a way to make Tomorrowland timeless.
Everything old is new again
Though it may not seem important, our road to tomorrow needs to make a quick detour to the past.
Way back in the 1970s, a young Imagineer named Tony Baxter had been envisioning a monumental project for Disneyland: an entirely new land to be built along the park’s Rivers of America. That Possibilityland: Discovery Bay would’ve been something new: a steampunk-stylized land borrowing from the lore of Jules Verne’s romantic adventure novels of the late 1800s. A retro-futuristic port of inventors, eccentrics, and immigrants, one of the land’s highlights was reportedly meant to be a ride aboard Captain Nemo’s famed Nautilus.
But unlike the Lost Legend: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea that Baxter had helped designed for Magic Kingdom, this journey through the ocean wouldn’t be a sincere submarine ride (after all, Disneyland’s Submarine Voyage already ticked that box). Instead, it would be something unprecedented: a simulator, with riders moving along to a film like pilots in flight training used.
Suffice it to say that Discovery Bay never came to be. In the 1970s, Disney was in the midst of immense pressure thanks to a never-ending stream of box office bombs (including The Island at the Top of the World – a film that would play into Discovery Bay’s narrative), leaving investment in the parks stagnant. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, since the technology to power the land’s simulator just wasn’t readily available in the mid-’70s.
Reportedly, Tony Baxter and then-CEO Ron Miller did begin talks with George Lucas (creator of Star Wars) about how his properties might fit into Disneyland, including as a good fit for Baxter’s simulator concept. But talks stalled as Disney’s decline continued, and as the company underwent a massive takeover…
Here’s where we reach a definitive turning point in the development of Disney Parks. In 1984, Walt’s nephew Roy rallied Disney’s board to oust its ’70s leadership and take a risk on new blood. Frank Wells (left) and Michael Eisner (right) became the president and chairman of Walt Disney Productions, respectively. The duo inherited a Disney in disarray, and needed to right the sinking ship… quickly.
With extensive histories in the film industry, both Wells and Eisner had all the ingredients needed to reverse Disney’s sinking studios… and to bring pop culture relevance back to the parks. Forging an unprecedented agreement with George Lucas, Disney’s new leadership did the unthinkable: they brought non-Disney characters into Disney Parks.
Tony Baxter finally got his simulator. But that’s not all; the introduction of Star Wars into Tomorrowland literally changed everything at Disney Parks. That’s why the Lost Legend: STAR TOURS is remembered as simultaneously kicking off the “Ride the Movies” era, the Age of the Simulator, and the idea that Tomorrowland didn’t necessary have to feature actual, intentional, scientific predictions.
So while STAR TOURS opened a path to the future that did not rely on literal “scientific predictions of things to come,” Baxter’s plans for Discovery Bay weren’t entirely lost, either. After all, when it came time to build a brand new Disneyland-style park near Paris, Baxter was chosen as the lead designer… and given that the Tomorrowlands back home still reeked of mid-century Americana and hints of the Space Race (which would be of zero relevance to Europeans), Baxter’s team revisited those retro-futuristic plans once again… See how we got back on track?
1992: Discoveryland
Location: Disneyland Paris
Forget sleek, white, geometric cities of tomorrow. Forget the style and science and innovation and optimism of the Space Age. This is not Tomorrowland. This is Discoveryland.
Discoveryland is a land of the future rooted in the past. Imagine how the future would’ve been envisioned by great European thinkers and literary dreamers like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.
Through their stories of time machines and hot air balloons; submarines and scientists emerged a land of bubbling lava lagoons, organic windsail towers, iron-rich red rocks jutting from the ground, sprawling gardens, fantastic zephyrs, and wild, steam-powered inventions.
More than just style, the land had substance, too. Its attractions were literary and romantic and thoughtfully integrated into this retro-futuristic realm. Take the Lost Legend: Le Visionarium, a time-traveling journey through the story of European visionaries (and the first use of Disney’s Circle-Vision cinema for a story-based attraction), or Les Mystères du Nautilus – a walkthrough of Nemo’s submarine complete with giant squid attack.
Rather than the NASA-inspired Rocket Jets that revolve high over Tomorrowland, Discoveryland features the Orbitron: Machines Volantes. Like the rest of this gleaming literary world, it looks like something drawn from a fantasy novel; a swirling kinetic sculpture of bronze orbs aligning like an ancient astrolabe plucked from Da Vinci’s sketchbook.
It’s not lofted above the land, but dug down into an earthen berm of astrological symbols, surrounded in geometric red rocks having burst supernaturally forth from the earth around it. It’s grounded – literally – within this harmonious, naturalistic, literary future.
Finally, there was the pièce de résistance – the Lost Legend: Space Mountain – De la Terre à la Lune. Here, the attraction was not anchored in the scientific adventure through the stars like Disneyland’s, but based on the Jules Verne novel in which scientists are blasted from the towering bronze Columbiad Cannon into the fanciful stars for a trip to the moon.
Fittingly, Discoveryland’s mountain is not a sleek, white, Googie peak. Instead, it’s made of bronze and copper rivets and panels anchored by cogs and screws, and with the elegant bronze cannon resting along the mountain’s slope, launching trains up the side of the mountain and into the dark core. Like the rest of the land, it was beautiful, unique, literary, and smart.
But far more importantly, it was timeless. It’s a fantasy future, inherently avoiding any actual predictions of science or technology. It’s a vision of the future rooted in the past; thus, one that could never come true and would never need updating. And it would be the model for every Tomorrowland on Earth to follow.
Back to the Drawing Board
Spurred on by the possibility of creating a timeless Tomorrowland that would never need updating, Imagineers set to work to design equally everlasting styles for the Tomorrowlands in California and Florida.
With Tony Baxter on board to design it, it was announced that Disneyland would become home to another new version of Tomorrowland; a third redesign in the park’s 40 year life. Construction would begin in 1993 on a grand, new vision of the future to be opened in 1995. Tomorrowland 2055 would defy expectations and – most importantly – give Disneyland a timeless Tomorrowland that would last forever.
So what would guests have found in this new vision of tomorrow? We’ve got all the information you can find on the next page. Let’s step into Tomorrowland 2055.
Welcome back to Disneyland! The last time you were here, you probably spent some time in Tomorrowland. If you did, you probably remember it the way that it was when Walt Disney was still alive, three decades ago: a simplistic, geometric realm of simple shapes, oblong planters, and pops of color.
Back in the 1960s when it was designed, that Tomorrowland probably looked like a model for utopian cities of the Space Age.
But this is the 1990s. So welcome to TOMORROWLAND 2055.
The concept is simple: the year is 2055 (Disneyland’s 100th birthday) and things have changed. Once, Tomorrowland was a conceptual place – geometric exteriors to big, flat showbuildings. But now, Tomorrowland is an intergalactic alien spaceport – a stop over for extraterrestrial visitors on their journey through hyperspace. In this new New Tomorrowland, a trip to Mars is as simple as a trip to San Diego.
Along the land’s main entry, you’ll see odd formations: crystals and rocks jutting up from the ground with crystal clear water pouring from them, undulating with light. Whatever these new, strange formations are, they seem to pulse with energy, creating an otherworldly, fantasy landscape. The story here is that these supernatural crystals – uncovered during the construction of this New Tomororwland – were ancient, buried beacons left by sentient beings. Now uncovered and exposed to Earth’s sun, the glowing crystals are transmitting messages deep into space, drawing aliens who had long forgotten about Earth.
Now with a re-established relationship, Tomorrowland has turned out to be the perfect place for those aliens to rebuild their Earth port. This new, thriving metropolis isn’t just conceptual place, it’s a habitable one. People – and aliens – live, work, and play in this urban landscape. There are landed spacecrafts, shops and restaurants run by alien immigrants, and launch ports for you to travel into the wild reaches of outer space.
That old New Tomorrowland from the 1960s was based around kinetics, as Peoplemovers, Rocket Jets, and Monorails zoomed overhead. Make no mistake: that’s still the case. But Tomorrowland now is more alive than ever. Bridges, catwalks, and escalators have created an entire navigable second floor, creating a vast urban area that can be explored and viewed from many vantage points with shops and restaurants overhead, people passing over metallic bridges.
The land is alight with neon shimmering off of metal and crystals glowing and pulsing.
Of course, classics like Space Mountain continue to rocket guests to the distant reaches of space (though the attraction now would be themed more consistently with the rest of the land’s continuity as an Earth base for a space station). And along the land’s main entry, Star Tours continues to offer non-stop interstellar service to the forest moon of Endor. Across the way in the land’s northern showbuilding, the Circle-Vision theatre is playing host to a new animatronic show: The Timekeeper. There, a wild mechanical scientist (played by Robin Williams) sends his robotic assistant 9-Eye back in time to collect the story of civilization.
The real goodies come deeper with the land. First, the Carousel Theatre. It had hosted the Carousel of Progress from 1967 through 1973, at which time it was relocated to Florida for the new Magic Kingdom. Without Carousel of Progress, Disney had created a new revolving theater show called America Sings which opened in 1974. It closed in 1988 so that its animal animatronics cast could be moved to the under-construction Splash Mountain on the other side of the park leaving the Carousel Theater empty. Tomorrowland 2055 would fix that.
The circular theater would be extensively redesigned to resemble a landed alien spacecraft belonging to none other than P.T. Quantum. By walking up its gangplank and into the craft, you’d be welcome into Plectu’s Intergalactic Revue, serenaded by a hundred animatronic aliens, exemplified by the rare concept art below. Like Carousel of Progress, this rotating theater should would’ve introduced a lovable cast of intergalactic creatures.
Quite the opposite was true next door.
Since the early 1990s, Disney’s Imagineers had been working on a plan to bring 20th Century Fox’s horrifying, grisly film Alien to life inside of Disney Parks. The terrifying true story behind Disney’s scariest ride ever was chronicled in one of our earlier in-depth features, but suffice it to say: Imagineers were excited that their new, horrifying Lost Legend: ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter would debut in Disneyland’s Tomorrowland 2055. The ride – a simple and budget-friendly re-design of the park’s theater-in-the-round Rocket to the Moon / Mission to Mars building would equip each seat with special effects harnasses and place a teleportation tube in the room’s center.
The idea was simple: one of the alien races drawn to Tomorrowland were the genius scientists from the planet X-S. The engineers of X-S Tech had brought something with them… a new technological breakthrough they hoped to share with the citizens of Earth. X-S Tech had set up shop in Tomorrowland to show off their groundbreaking teleportation tube.
You know the rest: bloodthirsty, horrifying alien gets teleported into the chamber instead, breaks loose, lights go out, and sensory special effects take over. Shattering glass, gnashing fangs, blood splatters, tongues, warm drool, screams…
But don’t say they didn’t warn you. Disney knows that Alien Encounter is intense. The queue is littered with signs warning that the experience is too intense for children, and if that isn’t evidence enough, the building that X-S Tech has constructed to show off their teleportation tube appears to be carved with humans holding up the crippling weight of Greek gods…
After Alien Encounter debuts here at Disneyland, it’s expected to make its way to every other Tomorrowland, too. But Disney executives and Imagineers purposefully want to bring it to California, first. After all, Disneyland already had a few “PG-13” attractions (like Indiana Jones Adventure and Star Tours) that will make Alien Encounter feel right at home. If it had to debut at a park like Magic Kingdom (with a much more fairytale oriented ride line-up and far less in the way of dark and sinister rides), it would probably not land so smoothly. Good thing it won’t… right?
That’s a pretty strong ride line-up, and a pretty interesting concept. But it doesn’t stop there. One more piece of Disneyland adds the final touch to this new spaceport. The beloved Main Street Electrical Parade is ending its storied, 24 year run in 1996 – about the time that Tomorrowland is opening. The Main Street Electrical Parade will be a hard act to follow no matter what, but Disney’s got a pretty good idea.
Now, when it was time for Disneyland’s nighttime parade, an announcement throughout the park would suggest that a strange flying object had been spotted flying toward Disneyland. Then, fireworks, projection, and sound effects would signal that a spacecraft was indeed hovering above the park. As light and sound coalesced, the “spacecraft” would appear to be landing just outside of Main Street, U.S.A.
After a few moments of anticipation, the gates to that backstage area would swing open as brilliant white light flooded out. This nighttime parade, called Lightkeepers, would feature a tall, elegant, ethereal alien race – presumably the ones who had left their glowing crystals in Tomorrowland all those aeons ago. The graceful interstellar humanoids would then walk the parade route with brilliant lights and projections and designs on their wild, gliding floats, making their way through the park.
According to Jim Hill, design and development of this unique tie-in parade was more than two years into creation when it was cancelled. Why? Well, because all of Tomorrowland 2055 was called off. You may wonder how such a unique and compelling concept could fall away, and what happened to pull Disneyland’s Tomorrowland out of the 1960s instead. Read on…
How could a grand and thoughtful plan like Tomorrowland 2055 fall apart? The same way so many Walt Disney Company projects in the 1990s did: Disneyland Paris.
Meant to be Michael Eisner’s magnum opus and legacy-defining expansion, immense funding was flooded into the Parisian park. That’s precisely why ambitious, ultra-detailed reimaginings like Discoveryland could exist. In fact, Disneyland Paris is still often recognized today as the most beautiful Disneyland-style park on Earth, somehow managing to retain the charm and storybook coziness of Disneyland with the scale and grandeur of Magic Kingdom.
But from the start, cultural conflicts made Disneyland Paris a monumental stumble. The resort opened to resounding financial losses so vast, Michael Eisner famously swore off any more large scale projects. That’s why the decades after Disneyland Paris are marked by cancellations, cop-outs, and closures across the company, producing low-budget projects and pulsing cartoon characters into the parks wherever possible.
On the chopping block were the two new Tomorrowlands designated for Orlando and California.
But because capital expenditures for Orlando’s land had already been approved and allotted, Imagineers got word that the attractions they were developing for Disneyland would instead be installed in Florida. Construction pressed forward in Orlando, yielding at least one ambitious land to arise as the finale of Eisner’s big budget “Ride the Movies” era.
1994: New Tomorrowland
Location: Magic Kingdom
Lifetime: 1994 – Present
Magic Kingdom’s New Tomorrowland opened more or less on schedule, in 1994. The radical design was indeed a smart and timeless one. The sleek, simple, geometric 1970s look had been entirely replaced by a bustling and detailed metropolis of the future. However, rather than being a glimpse into the potential scientific wonders of tomorrow, this Tomorrowland is all science-fiction: a world of landed spacecrafts, pink and blue neon signs written in extraterrestrial languages, metallic fins, and intermingling alien cultures.
If Paris’ Discoveryland is the future as envisioned by 1800s literary figures like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, then Orlando’s Tomorrowland is the future as envisioned by early 20th century pulp comic books like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers – a neon intergalactic alien spaceport.
Most brilliantly, Orlando’s Tomorrowland (originally) operated in one seamless continuity. New attractions (and repurposed old ones) were all written as interconnected elements of a functioning galactic spaceport, with each attraction taking place logically within the city.
For example, the Tomorrowland Transit Authority “acted” as the city’s public mass transit (with riders on the “Blue Line,” but overhead announcements and false track extensions building out the universe by referred to a “Red Line” and “Green Line” that didn’t actually exist.)
Aboard that “real” public transportation system for residents, tourists, and commuters in town, an on-board narrator would point out the Tomorrowland Interplanetary Convention Center, currently hosting a Martian company called X-S Tech as it displays its new teleportation technology (that’s Alien Encounter), the Tomorrowland Metropolitan Science Center (The Timekeeper), the city’s Intergalactic Space Port 77 (Space Mountain), a Light & Power Company (a cleverly disguised arcade)…
There’s even a quick service restaurant cast as an intergalactic nightclub with an otherworldly alien playing at the piano for diners to enjoy. All of these pieces and parts united Tomorrowland’s attractions, restaurants, and even shops into one single, overarching story and style… Just like Frontierland or Adventureland or Fantasyland, Tomorrowland was not just a conceptual place, but a habitable one… a very smart idea indeed.
Elsewhere…
Florida’s New Tomorrowland had narrowly avoided getting the budgetary axe since it was already well into construction when Eisner put the stop-order on new projects. That meant that Magic Kingdom still got a New Tomorrowland, and it wasn’t half bad, either.
As for what happened to Disneyland’s Tomorrowland? Well, post-Disneyland Paris, Eisner’s orders that large scale projects disappear stayed true. Disneyland still needed a new Tomorrowland, but now designers were tasked with spending as little money as possible to reinvigorate the land and give it a timeless makeover. Tony Baxter was again put in charge, but this time with none of the Blue Sky benefits. With practically no money, Disneyland got exactly what executives asked for: a disaster. See what they created on the next page…
1998: New Tomorrowland ’98
Location: Disneyland Park
Timeline: 1998 – 2003
With practically no money, Baxter and Imagineers borrowed from their own catalogue to minimize cost. When Tomorrowland re-opened in 1998, it was clearly based on Paris’ thoughtful Discoveryland. But without the benefit of building it from scratch, that wasn’t saying much. The sum total seemed to be that the land was repainted from the bright whites and clean lines of the 1967 New Tomorrowland and covered instead with dark brown and copper paint, nonsensically splashed against obviously Space Age architecture.
The land’s entry fins flanking the mirror showbuildings were still carved with the geometric look of the 1960s, now just … brown. The beloved Rocket Jets that had revolved over the land for decades were decommissioned and a new spinner called the Astro Orbitor – an exact clone of Paris’ – was placed right at the entrance to the land, complete with the red rocks jutting from the earth around it. While beautiful, the contraption only served to further narrow the infamously tight paths of the itty-bitty Disneyland, congesting traffic.
If you can believe it, even the beloved and iconic Space Mountain was repainted in bronze and oxidized copper – a nonsensical color scheme to apply to the obviously Space Age building. While Paris’ “steampunk” Jules Verne inspired mountain was a sight to behold, it was simply stupid to apply the same colors to Googie architecture… It just made no sense. What’s worse is that upon going inside of the new, brown-and-copper Space Mountain, guests saw… well… exactly what they had since 1977 – cool grays, a 1970s style spaceship, and sci-fi computers from the era.
As for the land’s additions, there weren’t many. The rotating Carousel Theater (emptied in 1988 for Splash Mountain and intended to become Plectu’s Intergalactic Revue) finally got a new inhabitant after a decade empty: Innoventions, a tired rehash of the tired Epcot exhibit.
The old Mission to Mars building was closed in 1992 and preperations were underway to turn it into the debut of Alien Encounter. Eisner’s stop-order on Tomorrowland 2055 simply meant that the building remained empty and dark, just waiting for the go-ahead. Instead, Tomorrowland 1998 turned the building into Red Rockett’s Pizza Port quick service restaurant after Magic Kingdom’s Lost Legend: Alien Encounter proved far too terrifying for Disney World’s guests.
Nearby was the Magic Eye Theater, originally constructed to show Michael Jackson’s Captain EO. But by the late 1990s, that was a relic. So New Tomorrowland “debuted” a replacement: Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, which had actually premiered at Epcot four years earlier and was itself based on a movie from 1989.
The final (and only substantial) new addition was the a ride so disastrous, it earned its own in-depth feature in our series – Declassified Disaster: Rocket Rods. Disneyland’s venerated Peoplemover had closed in 1995 with promises that the track would be re-used for a stunning thrill ride as part of the New Tomorrowland. And indeed, the Rocket Rods were a thrill – the high speed, five-person cars (using a version of Test Track technology) took over the aerial highway, zooming along the elevated tracks of Tomorrowland. The Rocket Rods completed in three minutes a course that took the leisurely Peoplemovers 16 minutes.
The trouble is that with practically no budget, the Peoplemover track was not adequately prepared for the high-speed, high-energy Rocket Rods. The turns and twists in the convoluted track remained flat, and were not banked. The result was that at every turn, the Rocket Rods had to slow to a crawl before speeding up for every straightaway. The constant start-stop wore out tires daily and frazzled computer systems, E-stopping the ride constantly. Over its short lifetime, it was closed more than it was open. Ultimately closing after barely two years of on-and-off operation, the Rocket Rods today are remembered as one of the biggest flops in theme park history.
Image: Chippycheeky, Flickr (license)
In Paris, the golden, bronze Discoveryland aesthetic was beautiful and substantial and a compliment to the European style of its attractions… At Disneyland, things were different. To apply dark, grimy brown paint to Space Age stories was just wrong. Even those who appreciate the golden look of this New Tomorrowland would admit that the “European” style spinner and bronze exterior to Star Tours simply made no sense. It was style over substance. A fantasy exterior to sci-fi attractions.
If you asked Disneyland fans, the abysmal New Tomorrowland in 1998 had been a plight. As if it wasn’t bad enough that the land had half-heartedly and nonsensically been painted in dark brown, New Tomorrowland saw the closure of the Peoplemover and the Submarine Voyage (and the failure of Rocket Rods) effectively making the “redesigned” land amount to brown paint, a new 3D film, and Innoventions.
As a reminder of all that the land doesn’t have, the skeleton of the former Rocket Jets still sit atop the pedestal at the center of the land. The passenger rockets were replaced with satellite dishes to create what Disney called “the Observatron.” In initial explanations, the old skeleton would kick to life every 15 minutes to the elegant sounds of Discoveryland’s orchestral score. Today, it doesn’t move at all.
Worse, the tracks of the Peoplemover / Rocket Rods remain to this day as a sad testament to the loss of one of the park’s most thoughtful attractions. Last year we published a must-read feature detailing the history of that elegant and much-missed fan favorite, and how its removal signaled the fall of Walt’s Tomorrowland.
All in all, this New Tomorrowland was nothing to write home about.
Apologies
In 2003, Matt Ouimet (now CEO of Cedar Fair) became the president of the Disneyland Resort. With the open wound of California Adventure still fresh and the park’s highly-anticipated 50th anniversary approaching, Ouimet had one goal: to reverse the cost-cutting of his predecessors and give Disneyland a new lease on life. He had his work cut out for him, but one of his top priorities was the restoration of Tomorrowland.
Just five years after the copper paint, Ouimet and company began to transition Tomorrowland back toward its roots. Space Mountain closed for an in-depth, two year rebuild that gave the ride completely new track, new trains with synchronized on-board audio, a renewal of its ‘70s retro style, and – of course – its return to white.
The rest of the land followed in a publicized and intentional repaint as part of the 50th Anniversary celebration, returning not to its original white, but to blues and silvers and purples that brought it more in line with Magic Kingdom’s, just without the ornamentation.
Image: HarshLight, Flickr (license)
The long-vacant north showbuilding that had been a Circle-Vision theater and then the queue for Rocket Rods became Buzz Lightyear AstroBlasters, an interactive laser-shooting dark ride, in 2005 as well.
By 2007, even the Submarine Voyage – empty for a decade – re-opened as the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage and the legendary Monorail received all new trains.
Essentially, there’s no evidence today that Tomorrowland’s 1998 renovation ever happened, except for the golden, ground-level Astro Orbitor (though half-painted silver, with the rest left as the only gold in the land) and the empty Peoplemover tracks. But that brings up the essential question…
What’s Next?
In 2019, Disney announced movement in Tomorrowland… in a strange bit of concept art, they revealed a “new” entrance to the land, excising the path-clogging “Discoveryland” rockwork in favor of mid-century-stylized planters, painted gleaming white. But with the grounded, golden Astro Orbitor still snuggled between silver Space Age turrets and mish-mashed cartoon IPs as its stars, the reimagining of the land’s entry doesn’t really feel like an improvement.
Instead, it seems like yet another piecemeal placemaking project that only further entrenches the land in a muddled mess of contradictory designs; the “can being kicked down the road” yet again instead of the proper, fundamental redesign the land needs.
Every once in a while, Disney fans get ahold of new concept art like the set by Imagineer Scot Drake shown above and below (found around 2008) that at least indicate that Disney is aware of the problem and has top minds working on a fix for Tomorrowland. And just look at the art shown here: a vibrant, sleek Tomorrowland of color and light, floating fountains of mist, pulsing searchlights and glowing arches that highlight the 1967 fins rather than trying to hide them beneath brown paint or planters.
Golden ribbons streaming with light wrap throughout the white and silver land, encircling stepped fountains with statues and spires celebrating humanity’s reach for the stars… The apparent removal of the Magic Eye Theater, providing up-close access to Space Mountain and a return of its grand escalator entry. And perhaps best of all, the artwork below imagines that a beautiful, kinetic (and silver) jet-pack-based Astro Orbitor be incorporated into this new Tomorrowland, too, but painted silver and placed back atop the land’s central pedestal where it belongs, with rockets circling above the new KUKA Peoplemover.
(Given the spectacular vision he exhibited in reimagining Disneyland’s Tomorrowland in these theoretical drawings, it’s no surprise that Scot actually was put in charge of designing an entirely new generation of Tomorrowlands for Shanghai Disneyland, centered around the iconic Modern Marvel: TRON Lightcycle Power Run. In fact, that signature thrill ride is now “rezzing” in Magic Kingdom, kicking off yet another facelift of the land [this time removing the alien ornamentation and returning it to the ’70s-style retro-future]. Insiders have reported that a true facelift planned for Disneyland might be centered around the TRON attraction, too…)
Is it all too much to ask for? Maybe. But one thing is certain: a New New Tomorrowland needs to happen. As it is, Tomorrowland is an odd mix of the architectural elements of the 1967 New Tomorrowland, golden embellishments from 1998, Pixar movies, Star Wars, abandoned tracks, empty buildings, and underused space. Like every other land at Disneyland, Tomorrowland should be a thoughtful, detailed, cohesive, and smart land that’s inviting and bright, with well-themed attractions telling the stories we want to hear. It should not be a catch-all for Pixar (Monsters Inc., Stitch, Buzz Lightyear, and Nemo?), a Marvel hero headquarters, or as a secondary place to stash Star Wars outside of Galaxy’s Edge.
While the “new” entrance taking shape at Tomorrowland’s entry in 2020 looks like a signal of a return to retro soon-to-come, so far Tomorrowland remains a mess. And to think, it’s all because budget officially axed the incredible Tomorrowland 2055 that could’ve been.
But we wonder, would Tomorrowland 2055 really have been any more timeless than Magic Kingdom’s sci-fi version of the land (which, again, is being stripped of its story as we speak)? Is an alien spaceport really as evergreen as Imagineers hoped? Does any version of Tomorrowland – be it scientific, sci-fi, or fantasy – ever have a chance at remaining relevant? Is cramming the land with Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and TRON the answer? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
