Disneyland’s Tomorrowland Getting Long-Overdue Update

Disneyland’s Tomorrowland is getting a long overdue update.

The announcement was made at D23 in Anaheim during the Disney Parks presentation. And while no concrete details are available yet (they insist that planning has just begun), the idea is to continue what Walt had envisioned and dreamed about – a vista into wondrous worlds. The team at Walt Disney Imagineering is using this as their starting point, imagining new attractions, new open spaces (think the patches of greenery in the recently re-opened Toon Town across the park) and places where guests can dream about the future with the hope and optimism that Walt saw as the fundamental core of Tomorrowland.

There will be more opportunities for open spaces a play, so that guests can discover for themselves the great big beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day.

According to the team they are already starting to think about the ways in which Disneyland will transformed as the park nears its 75th anniversary and beyond, with its centennial just around the corner. But no timetable has been given to the Tomorrowland redo.

One update coming to Tomorrowland even sooner are the new electrical vehicles that will soon be utilized by Autopia, an opening day attraction at Tomorrowland that has been a mainstay of the park since 1955.

There have been attempts to revitalize Tomorrowland in the past decade or so, usually attached to a film property. First there was Brad Bird’s “Tomorrowland,” which actually did juice up the space for a period, with a presentation in the Tomorrowland Theater and a walkthrough exhibit on the ground floor of the former Starcade. But had the movie been a bigger hit, the entire area would have been transformed by the look and feel of the movie. (The premiere for “Tomorrowland” happened at the former AMC at Downtown Disney and the afterparty was held in Tomorrowland, with guests riding the monorail to the party. It was very cool.)

Other updates were proposed but not implemented, inspired by Pixar’s “Lightyear,” which also disappointed financially, and later by last year’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” which gave the area an elaborate character meet-and-greet with Marvel’s first family and a cool, animatronic version of the family’s robot H.E.R.B.I.E.

The problem with Tomorrowland, of course, has been keeping up with tomorrow. Since the park opened in 1955, it has almost always been playing a game of catch-up. 1967 introduced New Tomorrowland, with Adventures Thru Inner Space, Carousel of Progress and the PeopleMover giving it the “World on the Move” theme. In 1975 Space Mountain opened and in the 1980’s the Tomorrowland stage was enclosed to become a 3D theater, where “Magic Journeys” and “Captain EO” played. Star Tours also opened in the 1980’s, giving the area some additional adrenaline.

But an elaborate redo of the area, planned for the 1990’s, was cut short due to financial woes following the opening of Disneyland Paris and were largely shuttered. (In Florida, a new Tomorrowland was approximated in the mid-1990’s but not really followed through on, adopting some of the timelessness of the Jules Verne-inspired Discoveryland from Paris.)

Since the 1990’s, Tomorrowland in Disneyland has become largely defunct or outright abandoned. After a revival of “Captain EO” following Michael Jackson’s death vacated, the theater has been used to promote a series of Disney or Marvel Studios projects (including “Guardians of the Galaxy”) before sitting empty for years at a time. The Carousel theater, which housed the Carousel of Progress, America Sings and later Innoventions, has been similarly been used as a flex space for things like Marvel and Lucasfilm or for special events in the park. The Starcade’s upper floor became extended queue space for Space Mountain; the ground floor remains unused.

Perhaps most crushing of all is the PeopleMover, which would take you on a scenic tour of Tomorrowland, dipping through Space Mountain and other show buildings, including going right behind the Starspeeder in the queue for Star Tours, and generally being the best. In the late 1990’s, Disney tried to use the track for a high-speed attraction called Rocket Rods. The attraction never worked properly and was shuttered after just a few years. Rumor has it that the intensity of the ride vehicles actually weakened the PeopleMover track and removing the track would be time consuming and costly. So since the turn of the millennium, there has just been track above and all around Tomorrowland that sits, untouched.

Wouldn’t it be something if the PeopleMover returned? Talk about a place to relax and think about the future.