The Lost Story of Tomorrowland

Some of my favorite science fiction uses futuristic technology, alien races, and fantastical settings to tell compelling stories about the human condition. And Tomorrowland should have been one of those stories. Sure, it’s got a worthy message (Optimism is good! Morbid fascination with dystopias and apocalyptic fiction is bad!) but there’s a much more complex and interesting message there hiding just beneath the surface.

In the movie this message was totally obscured, mostly because Damon Lindelof couldn’t write a good story even if he were bitten by a radioactive copy of the complete works of Shakespeare. But let’s take a look.

The backstory for Tomorrowland (most of which is conveyed in YouTube videos hidden throughout the movie’s official site) is that a secretive organization called Plus Ultra discovered a pristine alternate dimension and built the futuristic megalopolis of Tomorrowland there so all the inventors and dreamers of the world would have a place free from politics, corruption, bureaucracy, and presumably nationalism to pursue their passions and realize the full potential of the human race.

Maybe this idea sounds familiar:

Yes, it’s basically a more fantastical version of Walt Disney’s original EPCOT concept. Walt’s idea was that existing cities were too messed up to fix, so instead he’d build his city of tomorrow from the ground up on a pristine piece of Florida swampland.

In-universe you could argue that Walt got the idea from his Plus Ultra brethren, maybe after plans to open Tomorrowland up to everyone were mysteriously scrapped. But even in reality the ideas clearly share the same basic principle: that all the messed-up stuff in the world is the fault of non-inventor/dreamer types, and if only the inventor/dreamers could remove themselves from those peoples’ influence, they could do awesome things.

This principle is something that everyone in the movie accepts without question. But when we finally arrive in Tomorrowland near the end of the film, something has gone horribly wrong. Like the NASA launch platform at the beginning of the movie, Tomorrowland’s spaceport is dilapidated and empty. In fact, the whole place seems empty except for Nix and a handful of his armed Animatronic goons. The similarity between Tomorrowland and the real world is staggering. Even though it’s been closed off from the outside world more tightly than North Korea, it’s clearly infected by the same pessimism and lack of drive to do anything extraordinary that Nix accuses the outside world of.

What does this mean? That the Sphere O’ Bad Vibes that’s supposedly the cause of all the outside world’s problems is affecting Tomorrowland, too? Or that all this happened because Nix was a bad egg? Only a bad writer would take such an obviously easy way out.

No, the story should have forced our protagonists to confront the fact that Plus Ultra’s founding principle is utterly wrong, their grand experiment a failure. Corruption, politics, violence, and cynicism aren’t the symptoms of a disease that a certain special segment of humanity is somehow immune to. They’re a trap that everyone can fall into, even inventors and dreamers. Isolating yourself from the rest of the planet isn’t enough to inoculate you; it may even accelerate the problem. Everyone has to work to keep the forces of cynicism at bay in themselves. But if cynicism is contagious, then optimism can be, too.

The lesson our characters should have learned is that Tomorrowland isn’t a place you escape to, it’s something you make wherever you happen to be. The movie shouldn’t have ended with a bunch of robot children setting out to bring people to Tomorrowland, but with them setting out to bring Tomorrowland to the people.

 

Thoughts on Tomorrowland

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for the movie Tomorrowland. If you’re trying to avoid them, pull the handle and bail out now.

Okay, now that the people who throw Internet tantrums over spoilers are gone, we can talk about the movie.

Like everything, Tomorrowland is a product. But who’s it for? I mean, there’s a reason why the toy aisle at Wal-Mart has lots of Iron Man action figures but no Antonin Scalias: the demographic of “kids who thrill to the exploits of Supreme Court justices” is small enough to be nonexistent. So who makes a movie for people who are are nostalgic for 1960s Space Age retro-futurism? How does a company like Disney (whose Parks & Resorts division pinches pennies by refusing to crank up the AC in Walt Disney World’s show buildings during Florida’s hot and humid summers) decide to spend millions of dollars on something like that?

Don’t tell me it’s to create some kind of brand synergy with their theme parks; for well over a decade the Tomorrowlands at Disneyland and Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom have been neglected, thematically incoherent dumping grounds for mismatched attractions based on films like Lilo & Stitch, Monsters Inc., and Toy Story and there’s no indication that’ll change in the near or distant future. And it’s a well-known fact that studios are reluctant to spend big summer blockbuster bucks on anything that’s not a sequel, remake, or adaptation of a comic book or a YA dystopia novel.

So it’s a minor miracle this movie even exists. And I wanted so badly to love it. The trailers for Tomorrowland promised an optimistic romp through a Syd Mead-designed future world that’s irresistibly appealing to nostalgic retro-futurists like me. Unfortunately, the film was scripted by Damon Lindelof, the patron saint of overly complicated mystery-box plots that never fully deliver on all the cool things they promise.

Don’t get me wrong; there’s a lot to like about this movie. I think it’s great that the main protagonist, Casey, is female but no big deal is ever made of this, as if a girl who’s into science and technology is an abnormal thing. No one remarks that she should ditch her interest in science and technology to try out for the cheerleading squad and try to attract boys. She’s just a young person who dreams of a better future, and her gender is completely irrelevant to the story. That’s something we could stand to see more of in our summer blockbusters. And I loved, loved, loved the Syd Mead-designed futuristic metropolis.

But there are problems. The viral marketing spins an elaborate tale of a secretive organization called Plus Ultra who built the film’s Tomorrowland in a idyllic alternate dimension. But the movie only takes the time to give us a tiny, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Cliff Notes version of this elaborate backstory, so if you didn’t do your homework by visiting takemetotomorrowland.com and watching the explanatory YouTube videos hidden around the site you have no hope of fully understanding what’s going on.

And what is going on? Basically a young “chosen one” has to save everybody from a spherical world-destroying machine.

^{I can’t remember where I’ve seen that before}

But that’s not my real problem with this movie. My problem is that it sets up this amazing possibility-rich premise and almost totally wastes it. The film’s titular Tomorrowland is a gleaming futuristic city in an alternate dimension, allegedly founded so that the best and brightest of Earth’s inventors and dreamers will have a place where they can pursue their passions free of the politics, corruption, and bad vibes of the outside world. In our early glimpses of Tomorrowland, both in 1964 when young Frank Walker stumbles onto it and again during Casey’s pin-induced vision, it certainly seems to live up to its promise. But later in the film when our protagonists find their way back to Tomorrowland something has obviously gone horribly wrong. The once-bustling spaceport is now vacant and dilapidated. (You know, like Epcot’s Future World) And except for Hugh Laurie’s Nix and his handful of armed enforcers, the place is eerily empty. It’s like Pyongyang. What happened? It seems obvious that removing themselves from the outside world was not enough to insulate this dreamers’ utopia from politics and corruption after all, but was that through a failure of Tomorrowland’s founding vision, or was there some kind of hostile takeover? Never addressed.

Another sticking point is the whole purpose of Tomorrowland. Near the middle of the film George Clooney’s character, Frank, tells us that at one point Tomorrowland was supposed to open its doors to the outside world, ostensibly to share its technological wonders. But then Nix went into Full Supervillain Mode and put the kibosh on those plans. So after Nix is defeated and Frank and Casey are in charge, what do they do? Open up Tomorrowland so the whole world can have jetpacks, hover-trains, and chocolate milkshakes that give you eternal youth? Nope! They create a mini-army of robot children with adorable British accents and send them out into the world to find “dreamers” and lead them to Tomorrowland. That’s great for them, but what about the rest of the world? Casey spends the whole movie wanting to make the world a better place; don’t you think that removing all the optimistic dreamers to an alternate dimension would have kind of the opposite effect? It’s an ending that seems cute and inspiring, but when you think about it for five seconds it’s obviously full of holes.

In other words, a typical Damon Lindelof story. You’d think that a professional writer would actually try to learn from his mistakes and hone his skills, but Lindelof seems content to go the Michael Bay route and do the same dumb things on every single movie.

The premise behind Tomorrowland would make an excellent science fiction novel. Probably even a great movie if someone other than Damon Lindelof, Roberto Orci, or Alex Kurtzman wrote the script. Leonard Kinsey’s Habst and the Disney Saboteurs actually had a similar premise, and even though it devoted an entire subplot to its title character’s constipation that story’s virtual Progress City was much better thought-out. Even if it did inadvertently make the uploaded consciousness of Walt Disney into the lord of the afterlife.

Bottom line: see Tomorrowland for the fantastic visuals and about 10 minutes of the soaring hopeful retro-futurism you crave. Just don’t think about it too hard.

Disney in Space Part 3: Robotic Jar-Jar

You thought this post was going to be about EPCOT, didn’t you? Well, in a perfect world where EPCOT Center’s Space pavilion got built, it would be, but as it is we won’t be getting to EPCOT until the next post.

The crowd-pleasing, utterly unrealistic thrills of Space Mountain nicely foreshadowed the success of Star Wars in 1977. Much like Space Mountain, Star Wars made no effort to realistically depict space travel, its sole aim was to tell a fun, exciting story. Nevertheless, because of the dented, “lived-in” look of its environments, Star Wars felt more realistic to the general public than the sterile, scientifically accurate 2001: A Space Odyssey. And because of the success of the original Star Wars trilogy and its tie-in merchandise, it captured the imagination of a whole generation of children.

However, by 1986 it looked as though Star Wars was running out of steam. The last installment in the trilogy was three years in the past, and there were no firm plans for future films. Star Wars merchandise was almost impossible to find in stores, and George Lucas looked like this:

^{There is no chin under George Lucas’ beard. Just more of his neck.}

Yes, the mid-to-late 1980s were a strange time for the Star Wars franchise. But in 1986 the spirits of young Star Wars fans everywhere (including an 8-year-old me) were lifted by the news of a Star Wars attraction by Disney that used revolutionary simulator technology to take you on a trip into hyperspace and down the infamous Death Star trench! Unlike Disney’s previous space rides, in which the opportunity to experience the thrills felt by real-life astronauts was the primary draw, here the main attraction was prospect of being immersed in a popular fictional universe-one, it should be noted, that was not a Disney creation. In many ways, the decision to insert Star Wars into Disneyland mirrors the recent decision by Disney’s leadership to bring James Cameron’s Avatar franchise to Animal Kingdom. If today’s Internet had existed in the mid-1980s, might the online reaction to Star Tours have mirrored this year’s Avatar announcement? It’s interesting to consider.

You’d expect that any marketing campaign for Star Tours would focus heavily on the popularity of Star Wars and its familiar characters, and you’d mostly be correct. But there’s also this amazing gem unearthed by Progress City USA’s Michael Crawford that aired during the Disney Sunday Movie on December 28, 1986. It starts with a C-3PO rapping, and then it really gets weird. Just watch:

After watching that, you probably have a lot of questions, which I will do my best to answer in a handy Q&A format:

Q: Why was C-3PO rapping?
A: it was kind of a fad back then for people who had no business rapping to publicly humiliate themselves attempting to do so. Remember this?

Q: I thought Sidekicks starred Chuck Norris and that kid from SeaQuest, not Buck Rogers and the kid from Surf Ninjas?
A: Ah, you're thinking of the better-known 1993 film of the same name. Sidekicks was also a short-lived TV show starring Gil Gerard and Ernie Reyes, Jr.

Q: Was it about an asthmatic Ernie Reyes, Jr. having daydreams about Buck Rogers?
A: Thankfully, no.

But the C-3PO rap number and the awkward presence of the mismatched Gil Gerard/Ernie Reyes team is the least of my problems with this sequence. You know how it was when you were a kid, and a a cheerful, well-meaning adult would clumsily try to relate to you despite the fact that they obviously didn't know anything about the stuff you liked? "Hey, you like Star Wars?" they'd say. "Is that the one where Dark Vadar and Dr. Spock beam down to the Planet of the Apes?"

Well, Disney obviously found one of those people to write the script for this weird little adventure. Not only was this person clueless enough to think Star Wars is an aspirational, scientifically accurate tale about the future and the wonder of human achievement like Star Trek, but they even thought TRON was a space movie. A space movie! Because it takes place in a computer, and spaceships have computers, and therefore any movie about computers must automatically take place in space, right?

Fortunately, the people who worked on Star Tours were not so out-of-touch. During the "dark period" where there were no new Star Wars productions on the horizon, Star Tours offered the only "new" content we'd see until 1999. I can't emphasize enough how cool it was to walk through the queue for the first time and see C-3PO and R2-D2 for real, in three dimensions. Unfortunately, the Rex character's "comical" incompetence and panicked flailing was an unfortunate precursor to the Jar-Jar antics that would soil the long-awaited Episode I, but Star Tours was such an enjoyable ride that it was easy to look past that.

The Star Tours ride system was adapted for only one other Disney attraction: EPCOT Center's Body Wars, which opened with the Wonders of Life pavilion in 1989. Until the mid-90s, it was promoted as EPCOT's headlining attraction, much like Soarin' is today. Unfortunately, the Wonders of Life pavilion was shut down as a cost-cutting move after it lost its corporate sponsorship, and the Body Wars simulators were scavenged for spare parts for Star Tours.

This wasn't the end of simulators at EPCOT, though. EPCOT Center would finally get its Space pavilion in 2003. In the concluding post in my Disney in Space series, we'll talk a bit about the Space pavilion that never was, and then take a look at the only attraction on Disney property to feature Lt. Dan and in-ride barf bags.

Disney in Space, Part 2: Here’s to the Future and You!

In 1964, with Disneyland in its ninth year of operation, Walt Disney approached Imagineer John Hench with an idea for a brand-new space ride that would anchor an overhauled Tomorrowland. What was the new ride’s inspiration? Dr. Werhner Von Braun’s newest theories on the future of spaceflight? NASA’s drive to put a man on the moon by decade’s end? Actually, it was something much closer to Earth: the Matterhorn.

It may be hard to imagine today, but in Disneyland’s early years the park had no thrill rides. That changed in 1959, with the opening of the Matterhorn Bobsleds. The world’s first tubular steel continuous track roller coaster, the Matterhorn proved to be hugely popular. Walt’s idea was for a similar, space-themed version of the ride, called “Space Port”. It would have multiple tracks like the Matterhorn, but it would take visitors on a fast-paced trip in the dark with special effects to create the illusion of racing through the stars. John Hench’s initial concept sketches pictured a towering edifice that resembled a fanciful futuristic circus tent.

The project was shelved for a number of reasons, one of them being Disneyland’s lack of space. The new Walt Disney World in Florida, however, would have plenty of room, and the new attraction, now called Space Mountain, was the most visible part of Tomorrowland’s Phase 2 that opened with much fanfare in 1975.

There was a lot more to the Space Mountain experience than just the roller coaster, however. The large indoor queue area was home to one of Disney’s great immersive themed queues. And after the ride was over, visitors exited onto a long speedramp that took them past a series of dioramas that made up RCA’s Home of Future Living. Even if they were unable or unwilling to ride the coaster, guests were still encouraged to come into Space Mountain to experience the queue and the Home of Future Living. I wish I could say I did this during my childhood visits to Walt Disney World, but I never got to. And it’s a real shame, too, because the Home of Future Living perfectly predicted the world of the 21st century:

Yep, after a long day at the office, there’s nothing I’d rather do than slip on my multicolored jumpsuit, sit down in my living room that’s tastefully decorated in the avocado-and-gold color scheme that’s so popular here in 2011, and watch a movie on my RCA VideoDisc player. I know all of you do the same thing.

Aside from the 1970s cheesiness, I think my favorite thing about early Space Mountain was the marketing that surrounded it. Obviously, slogans like “Space Mountain-Just Like The Matterhorn, But In The Dark” would not have been very catchy. Instead, Disney World’s new thrill ride was promoted as a realistic space adventure. Just check out some of this promotional prose from the January 1975 edition of Walt Disney World news, which was highlighted on the excellent Passport To Dreams Old and New a few months back:

. . . in Space Mountain, presented by RCA, you, without any previous aeronautical acquaintance, can experience the incredible adventure of outer space!
You'll board the eight passenger space capsule, buckle your seat belt and be whisked away into the most enthralling, free-falling flight through brilliant stars, whirling spheres and unearthly forces ever imagineered!

Obviously, a ride on Space Mountain simulates real spaceflight about as accurately as the Michael Bay film Armageddon. However, this entertainment value-over-realism approach  proved to be very popular, and nicely prefaced the entertainment phenomenon that would take the world by storm just two years after Space Mountain’s grand opening: Star Wars.

In the next post in this series, we’ll talk about Disney’s next space ride, Star Tours. Best of all, we’ll tackle the eternal question of what Buck Rogers and that kid from the 1993 schlockfest Surf Ninjas have to do with a galaxy far, far away.

In the meantime, check out Widen Your World’s fantastic Space Mountain page for more information about the original version of this landmark attraction.

Disney in Space, Part 1: To The Moon

Note: The next few posts will be devoted to the history of space rides at Disney parks. The guys at WEDWay Radio are also tackling this subject, and I encourage you to check out the first installment of their Disney In Space series, devoted to the forgotten Disneyland attraction Space Station X-1.

Among Walt Disney’s many interests was space travel. And although human spaceflight was still in the future when plans for Disneyland were made, it seemed logical that it might become a routine fact of life by the end of the 20th century. After all, the Wright Brothers made their first flight in 1903 and by the end of the Second World War airplanes were commonplace.

In March 1955, about four months before Disneyland opened, the Disneyland TV series debuted the episode Man In Space, which used a mixture of lighthearted animation and staid academic sequences to educate audiences about the possibilities of human spaceflight. The opening of the original Magic Kingdom in 1955 gave the public a new prospect: a simulated trip to the Moon.

Early Tomorrowland’s attraction lineup wasn’t all that impressive, and things like the Aluminum Hall of Fame and the Monsanto Hall of Chemistry are just footnotes in Disney history. Rocket To The Moon, though, was destined to become one of Disneyland’s great shows. One of the park’s iconic structures, the gleaming white-and-red TWA Moonliner (which inspired the visual design of this very blog, among other things) served as a beacon to draw visitors to the futuristic-looking twin-domed show building, where audiences were seated in one of two circular theaters meant to mimic the cylindrical interior of a rocket ship. The “flight” into space played out on two screens on the floor and ceiling of the theater. Although it seems crude to us, Rocket to the Moon really was an excellent “mass-market” simulator by 1950s standards. More rigorous simulators might be fine for the test pilots that would become America’s first astronauts, but Walt Disney was not about to strap his customers into some kind of a spinning centrifuge that would make them lose their lunch.

Despite the fact that it was among the first Disney attractions, Rocket to the Moon survived more or less intact into the 1990s. It gained an Animatronic preshow and a new name, Flight To The Moon, during the 1967 New Tomorrowland upgrade. That upgraded show was cloned for Walt Disney World in Florida, but in 1975 both the East and West coast shows were refurbished once again into Mission To Mars. The destination of your rocket trip had changed, and the sci-fi convention of hyperspace travel was used to explain how you could cross the vast distance from Earth to Mars and back during the course of a five-minute show, but underneath all that it was virtually the same experience that greeted Disneyland’s first crowds in 1955. Even the takeoff and landing animations remained unchanged from the 1955 version of the show.

Much like the Man In Space episode of the Disneyland TV series, and its follow-up installments Man and the Moon and Mars and Beyond, Flight to the Moon’s purpose was not to provide thrills, but to simulate as realistically as possible what an actual trip into space might be like in the future. Much like the more whimsical animated sequences in those television shows, though, Disney’s next big space ride would eschew realism in favor of entertainment value. Check back soon for the next installment of my Disney In Space series where I’ll dive into one of Disney’s landmark attractions: Space Mountain. In the meantime, check out Daveland’s excellent photo page devoted to the Moonliner and the Rocket to the Moon attraction.

Revitalizing the Carousel(s) of Progress

 

^{Picture from WDWMemories.com}

If I’m at the Magic Kingdom and I overhear someone say they’re going to skip the Carousel of Progress because they think it’s old or boring or whatever, I immediately decide that person is a Grade-A Nimrod. I might even jump on Twitter to let everyone know what a big stupid idiot I just encountered. Within minutes, my Twitter friends will most likely chime in to agree that this guy is indeed the world’s biggest moron, and if he’s incapable of appreciating a Classic Disney Attraction that was worked on by Walt Disney Himself, then maybe he’d be happier at Six Flags.

We WEDHeads have a fiercely protective love for the Carousel. Why? Well, after Disney bulldozed, gutted, or dumbed down almost every Future World pavilion at EPCOT, the Carousel is one of the last bastions of the optimistic futurism that Walt Disney always embraced. And given the company’s track record, we’re terrified that they’ll close down the Carousel one day and replace it with something inane like “Stitch and Duffy’s DVC Adventure Starring Tow Mater”. Sometimes, though, I think that our emotional attachment to the show keeps us from viewing it as it really is.

Unlike other “classic” attractions such as the Tiki Room or Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln, the Carousel of Progress is not a timeless show. It was designed for an audience that no longer exists today. The typical audience at a showing of the Carousel show at the 1964 World’s Fair was composed of people who actually remembered living in each of the time periods depicted. That made the show resonate with them in a way that’s impossible in this second decade of the 21st century. In an earlier post, I said that the Carousel should either be updated to restore the twenty-year gap between scenes or simply reverted to the 1964 version and left that way. I’ve done some more thinking on the subject, though, and I’ve changed my mind a little bit.

First, I believe that Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress needs to make a return to Disneyland. None of the shows that have occupied Anaheim’s Carousel Theater since the original show left in 1975 have measured up to it, in my opinion. Yeah, I know a lot of people have fond memories of America Sings, but I don’t think singing animals belong in Tomorrowland any more than Nemo and friends belong in Future World. Disneyland visitors have a love for classic attractions that most Florida visitors do not. Therefore, I think that a 1964-flavored version of the Carousel (minus some of the more sexist dialogue) should return to California, complete with a brand-new Progress City post-show on the second level.

Florida, I think, should get a new Carousel show that focuses on the innovation that’s had the biggest impact on today’s generation: computers and the Internet. The show would begin sometime in the late-1970s to early 1980s, where our Carousel family is excited about the possibilities of their first “home computer”, and end perhaps twenty years in the future, showcasing the advancement we expect to have by then. As long as the final scene isn’t too overly specific about the technology and doesn’t make the mistake of putting everyone in “space clothes” that look cool now but will look stupid in five years, it could seem futuristic for a decade or more.

More than just the advances in computing technology, this new Carousel of Progress would be about how the availability of personal computers and the Internet have changed the way we listen to music, watch TV and movies, play games and even socialize. If done well, it would resonate with 21st century audiences much as the original Carousel did with audiences in the 20th century.

Well, that concludes my not-quite-a-series of posts on Tomorrowland. I hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for reading!

The Real Problem With Tomorrowland

^{Picture from WDWmemories.com}

The Walt Disney World fan community is more or less united in the belief that there’s something wrong with Florida’s Tomorrowland. The most common complaint, aside from the existence of Stitch’s Great Escape, is that Tomorrowland has turned its back on a realistic future in favor of a fantastical “future that never was”. I don’t really see that as a problem, and here’s why:

The original intention at the first Magic Kingdom park, Disneyland, was that the overt fantasy be restricted to Fantasyland. The other lands were more or less based on reality, or at least reality as we perceived it in 1955. Main Street was supposed to simulate a real turn-of-the-20th-century American town, something that was an actual childhood memory for some of Disneyland’s early guests. Adventureland’s sole attraction, the Jungle Cruise, had not yet acquired the comical edge it has today but was presented as a “real” trip into the jungle. Westerns were still hugely popular, and Frontierland was presented as an actual tribute to America’s past and the “frontier spirit” of the people who settled the West (as was customary back then, very little attention was paid to the fact that there were already people in the West when the white settlers got there). It’s worth noting that, since the days of the Old West were only 70-90 years in the past in 1955, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that an elderly visitor to 1950s Disneyland might have childhood memories of that time. Finally, Tomorrowland-with an attraction lineup that included the Monsanto Hall of Chemistry and the Kaiser Aluminum Hall of Fame-was devoted to real science and technology.

Let’s compare that to today. I’d argue that the areas of the Magic Kingdom that once allegedly represented aspects of the “real world” no longer do. The American Main Street of the 1900s is too far in the past to serve as a nostalgic touchstone to anyone. The idealized, sanitized Old West of Frontierland never really existed, and the same can be said of Adventureland’s Afro-Poly-Caribo-Asiatic tropical pastiche. Really, adjusting Tomorrowland to represent a fantastical “future that never was” caused it to be more consistent with what the rest of the park has become.

Secondly, the opening of EPCOT Center in 1982, with its detailed Future World, made Florida’s Tomorrowland kind of redundant. Future World was Tomorrowland on a much grander scale. Perhaps this is best illustrated by Delta Dreamflight, the aviation-themed attraction that made its home in the southeastern sector of Tomorrowland from 1989 to 1996. It followed the same template as several Future World attractions-a ride through the past, present, and future of something accompanied by a soaring 1980s-flavored melody. Dreamflight would have been a good fit in California’s Tomorrowland. But in Florida, located a short monorail trip away from EPCOT Center, it looked like a pared-down Future World attraction. Converting Tomorrowland into something more fantasy-based served to differentiate it from EPCOT.

Still, I believe that the 1994 Flash Gordon overhaul created a problem that didn’t exist before. You see, this was one of the few times where Michael Eisner’s edict that everything had to have some kind of a backstory actually worked. The storytelling details that peppered the land-from the drone of the pre-2010 TTA announcer to the posters advertising the Tomorrowland Towers Hover-Hotel and the Leonard Burnedstar concert-really helped to create a sense that the Tomorrowland you could see was a tiny sliver of a much bigger retro-futuristic metropolis. They also whetted your appetite for some kind of an immersive family attraction that would take you on a tour of the “invisible” Tomorrowland that was implied but not seen. Sadly, no such attraction exists. The result-at least in my experience-is that walking through Tomorrowland creates a kind of indefinable frustration. The storytelling details are telling you that there should be something more there, but none of the land’s attractions adequately scratch the itch that those storytelling details create. It’s a real shame, too, because I really think that the presence of a satisfying family attraction that immersed you in Tomorrowland’s retro-futuristic theme would serve to lessen the antipathy a lot of us feel towards the land as it currently exists.

I certainly don’t have enough of a knowledge base to do any armchair Imagineering, so I don’t have a detailed idea of how such an attraction would work or where it would go. I just know it’s something that I keenly feel the absence of.

We’re not through with Tomorrowland yet. I’ve got a post in the works about the land’s Holy Grail, the Carousel of Progress, and farther into the future you’ll see an article about the history of space rides at Disneyland and Disney World. Thanks for reading!

Tomorrowland: Nostalgia vs. Reality

On my last few trips to Florida’s Magic Kingdom, I’ve often found myself longing for the pure, unspoiled pre-Flash Gordon Tomorrowland of my childhood:

The funny thing is, the last time I was there I didn’t feel that way at all.

It was 1992. I was 14 years old, and my family was on a day trip to the Magic Kingdom. Even though park maintenance had not yet begun to slip the way it would later in the decade, Tomorrowland felt like an abandoned corner of the park that the Imagineers had forgotten about. More than anything else, it reminded me of Marineland.

Marineland was Florida’s first theme park, a kind of proto-Sea World. Located just south of St. Augustine on A1A, it opened in 1938 and remained popular with tourists well into the 1970s. I made frequent visits on school field trips and family outings during the ‘80s, but by then Marineland had entered into a sustained period of decline thanks to the opening of Sea World. I didn’t notice it when I was in elementary school, but the last trip we made to Marineland was in 1990, and by then even my dense twelve-year-old self could tell that the park had seen better days. Marineland in 1990 was quaint, creaky, and obviously old. Just like Tomorrowland in 1992.

Unfair, you say? Let’s take a look at Tomorrowland’s 1992 attraction lineup. Guests entering the land from the hub were greeted by two attractions that anchored Anaheim’s Tomorrowland when it opened in 1955: Mission To Mars (which was really just Flight To The Moon with a different film) and a CircleVision theater. Pushing farther into the land you had Delta Dreamflight, a ride that was charming, but looked a whole lot like a scaled-down, cheaper version of EPCOT Center’s more elaborate Omnimover attractions. The final scene of the Carousel of Progress was showing audiences of the 1990s what people in the late 1970s imagined life would be like in the late 1980s, and the Grand Prix Raceway was another Disneyland original that was no more futuristic in 1992 than it is today. Compared to EPCOT Center’s sleek, modern Future World, Tomorrowland looked about as pathetic as Marineland did when compared to Orlando’s sleek, modern Sea World.

It’s tempting to look at today’s Tomorrowland with its visual clutter and its crass Licensed Character-infused attractions and think that everything would be perfect if we woke up one morning to find it magically restored to its pre-1994 iteration. That might satisfy a tiny minority of the Disney fan community, but it wouldn’t play well with the general public, that’s for sure. And if we take an objective view, I think even hardcore WEDHeads like me would admit that the old Tomorrowland is best left in the past.

Another New Look-And More To Come

Welcome to yet another visual overhaul here at futureprobe! Much like some of my online friends who love EPCOT Center even though they're too young to have experienced its 1980s heyday, I've always had a fondness for the old "analog" vision of the future that was epitomized by shows like the original Star Trek, movies like 2001, and of course Disneyland's grand "re-imagined" Tomorrowland that opened in 1967.

That Tomorrowland was home to one of the most imaginative dark rides ever: Adventures In Inner-Space. It was a trippy, wholly unique experience that might not wow modern audiences, but still left an impression on those who saw it. And just like the people today who wish they'd gotten the chance to ride Horizons, I often wish I'd have been there to take a ride through the Mighty Microscope:

It's not just my fondness for old-school Tomorrowland that prompted the new TWA Moonliner-inspired look, though. This is the first step of an exciting new project I've recently become part of, a project that will bring futureprobe into a new medium.

I hope you'll stick around.

futureprobe reviews TRON:Legacy

UPDATE: For the funniest TRON:Legacy review on the Internet, click here.  You can see a lot more of Doug Walker’s amazing work on ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com. Now, on to the review:

By now you’ve read the reviews by people who are Experts In These Things. They’re all pretty much the same: TRON:Legacy is visually impressive but light on story. And I suppose they’re right. But why is that a bad thing? If all we wanted was to watch a story being performed on a screen, we could stay home and watch television. Or even YouTube. But we go to the movies to have an experience we can’t get at home, and TRON delivers that. In spades.

So why isn’t that going to be enough to make this movie the giant commercial success that would have had Disney considering a TRON makeover of Tomorrowland? After all, Transformers 2 had a putrid story and impressive visuals, and it made $400 million bucks. True, Transfomers commands greater nostalgic affection, overall, than the original TRON ever did. But the Transformers films had something else that the mass market loves: stupid comic relief. Oh, TRON:Legacy has a tiny bit of it, in the End of Line nightclub scene. But the makers of the film cared too much about staying true to the story they were trying to tell to cram in obnoxious characters that serve no purpose other than to entertain the people who find Larry the Cable Guy intellectually stimulating, and for that the box office returns will suffer.

Oh, one more thing. Very early in the film, before we go down the computerized rabbit hole, ENCOM’s board of directors are congratulating themselves on the release of their flagship operating system which costs more than the previous version, but whose only new features revolve around making it impossible to distribute for free. A suggestion by Bruce Boxleitner’s character that perhaps the company should treat their customers better and become a better corporate citizen, the way it was when Kevin Flynn was running things, is quickly dismissed by the greedy executives. I know that this wasn’t the filmmakers’ intention, but it really felt to me like a very on-the-nose commentary on the way Disney runs its theme park business these days.

More than anything, TRON:Legacy’s impressive visuals made me wish Disney would rip out Tomorrowland’s busy Flash Gordon jangles and replace them with the sleek electroluminescent look we saw in the film. It’ll never happen, of course, but wouldn’t it be something?

Why Stitch’s Supersonic Celebration Really Failed

Most hardcore WED-heads (myself included) are not huge fans of Stitch.

It’s not so much the character himself we dislike, it’s the way that Disney has tried to force him upon us. For the past few years, the company has been shoving him in our faces at every opportunity, as if to say “THIS IS STITCH! HE IS VERY POPULAR! YOU WILL LOVE HIM AND ADORE HIM AND TAKE OUT A SECOND MORTGAGE TO BUY ALL HIS MERCHANDISE!” So naturally we threw back our heads and gave a hearty laugh last year when Tomorrowland’s new show “Stitch’s Supersonic Celebration” was taken out and shot after less than two months. Some fans saw it as proof that Disney’s slow-witted management had finally realized that Stitch is not as popular as they thought he was. However, I think that that there was another, more basic reason for the show’s failure.

Stitch’s Supersonic Celebration premiered on May 9, 2009. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Floridian weather patterns, that’s the time of year when temperatures began to creep up from Merely Warm to Unbearably Hot And Humid. Now, through the magic of Google Maps, let’s take a look at the prime location that Disney selected for Stitch’s twenty-five minute show:

Image borrowed from Google Maps

Notice the abundance of concrete and the lack of any shade or seating. I’d argue that Stitch’s Supersonic Celebration was no more insipid than any other stage show in the parks (confession: that syrupy wishy-dreamy show at the foot of the Castle makes me retch) but it failed because people had to stand in the hot sun for a half hour to watch it. Never mind that it’s hard to see a video screen in the bright sunlight.

Of course, this means that the Team Disney Orlando executives are even more clueless than we thought they were. It’s bad enough that they they prefer to ignore common sense and make decisions based solely on spreadsheets and focus group data. Every large corporation does that. But the simple truth that nobody wants to stand for thirty minutes on a large unshaded concrete slab in the middle of summer is an inescapable fact of life in Florida, and the idea that Disney could spend maybe thousands or millions of dollars to develop a show that ignores that makes me think that the group of executives we call Team Disney Orlando is, in fact, a group of trained seals that communicate by clapping their flippers together and barking.

And that gets me thinking. You know how people are always starting silly irrelevant Internet petitions to get corporate executives to resurrect a TV program that no one was watching or something like that? Well, I have a much better idea: let’s just send buckets of fish to the Team Disney Orlando office building with a note that says “Fix Journey Into Imagination and there’s more where that came from”, or “Want more? Fix the Carousel of Progress.” I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.*

 

*Note: That suggestion was made purely for satirical purposes. Under no circumstances does futureprobe endorse the sending of buckets full of aquatic or other life forms to the Team Disney Orlando offices. I can’t believe I actually had to say that.

The Carousel of Progress: Should It Move Forward or Stand Still?

One of the main criticisms leveled at Walt Disney World management by people like me is that they’re too quick to discard much-loved older attractions in favor of things that are more “thrilling”, cheaper to operate, or that tie in better to whatever licensed characters the Company is currently trying to market. In light of this climate, it’s truly amazing that the Carousel of Progress is still operating.

The Carousel premiered at the 1964 World’s Fair, and by all accounts it was one of Walt Disney’s favorite shows. Its four scenes showed the impact of electricity and electrical devices on the American family in twenty-year increments, starting in the 1900s and ending in an idealized version of the 1960s, with the family enjoying technologies that were supposed to be right around the corner. In 1975, the show made its home on the southeast corner of Walt Disney World’s Tomorrowland in Florida, featuring a new theme song “Now is the Time” and a slightly updated closing scene depicting an idealized home of the 1970s. The Carousel was updated a few more times over the years (most notably in 1985 to remove all references to GE after that company ended its sponsorship) but it received its biggest overhaul in 1993, as part of the “New Tomorrowland” rehab. The original theme song, “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” was restored, the show was renamed “Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress”, and an introductory video was added to the queue area to emphasize the show’s connection to Walt and the 1964 World’s Fair. Also, the final scene was tweaked yet again to show the family enjoying virtual reality video games and accidentally burning their Christmas turkey in a voice-controlled oven. None of the featured technology looked to hit the mainstream for another decade at least. The scene could easily remain in place for six to eight years without looking dated. Or so it seemed.

Experience 1999 in 2010 the way we imagined it in 1993 

Unfortunately, as early as 1995 the “present-day” Carousel family was beginning their slide toward obsolescence. Why? Because the creators of the ‘93 show failed to account for the Internet revolution. To be fair, in 1993 the Internet was not much of a blip on anyone’s radar. According to technology pundits at the time, virtual reality and CD-ROM were the Next Big Things. And since the show had received at least one update during each decade of its operation, it was reasonable to assume that by 2003 or so, the Carousel would be tweaked again to keep up with the times.

Seventeen years later, we’re still waiting. And each time the “modern-day” daughter character remarks to the grandfather that people of his day “didn’t even have car phones”, you can be sure that at least one kid will tug on his mom’s sleeve and whisper “Mommy, what’s a car phone?”

Also, how crazy is it that the son and the grandmother are playing their video game with Power Gloves?

Sorry, but I just had to work the Power Glove joke in there.

Seriously, though, something needs to happen with the Carousel. And I don’t mean simply updating the final scene again to reflect the world of 2010. Consider: the original show showed us the innovations of the 20th century in twenty-year intervals, starting at the turn of the century and ending in the ‘60s. If you reset the final scene to the modern day, then you’ll have a show that takes three twenty-year jumps forward followed by one huge fifty-year jump. And that’s just silly.

The original Carousel was a look back at a period of time that was still fairly fresh in everyone’s memory. In order for the show to resonate with modern audiences in the same way, you’d have to overhaul the entire thing. The first scene would be set in 1950s, the second in the 1970s, the third in the 1990s before we arrived at the 2010s. However, keeping it fresh and relevant would necessitate a big upgrade every ten years in which the “oldest” scene would be discarded and a new final scene set in the current decade would have to be designed and built. Given that Team Disney Orlando is extremely reluctant to spend any kind of money at all on the Florida theme parks unless it comes from a corporate sponsor (TDO did not want to embark upon the costly Fantasyland expansion project; they had to be ordered to do it by Corporate headquarters in Burbank) I can’t imagine they’d actually do this. Which leaves us with only one other option:

Since it’s already called “Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress”, why not just restore the final scene of the show to what it was in 1964? I mean, the first three scenes are almost exactly as they were in ‘64 (minus the General Electric references) so you might as well be consistent. Sure, it means turning the show into a museum piece, but really that’s all it is anyway. Currently, it’s caught in the awkward position of trying to pretend it’s still up-to-date even though everyone knows it’s not. If they restore it to its 1964 incarnation, it’ll become the kind of attraction Team Disney Orlando likes best: the kind that requires only periodic maintenance. Disney could promote it with some kind of a “you won’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been” theme.

Sure, it might seem incongruous to have an attraction devoted to the past in a place called “Tomorrowland”, but since the rest of the land is devoted to cartoon characters, gasoline-powered go-carts, and a roller coaster that hasn’t changed much since the ‘70s, the 1964 Carousel really wouldn’t be so out-of-place.

What do you think?

A New Tomorrowland?

 

 

The ongoing Space Mountain renovation, along with the change in the TTA’s audio track to one that more closely resembles the old pre-1994 PeopleMover narration has some people speculating that a change in Tomorrowland’s “theme” is imminent. As I’ve discussed before, prior to its 1994 overhaul, Tomorrowland’s “theme” could best be described as “space, the future, and other stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else”. For a short time after the ‘94 refurb, however, the area actually had a fairly cohesive theme. New attractions like Alien Encounter and Timekeeper, along with the conversion of the PeopleMover to the TTA and StarJets into the Astro Orbiter, all contributed to the the idea that the new Tomorrowland was a retro-futuristic metropolis. Of course, when Alien Encounter and the Timekeeper were replaced by Stitch and Monsters Inc. attractions, respectively, Tomorrowland once again reverted to a crazy quilt of mismatched elements. It’s hard to see how it could return to thematic unity without an expensive and near-total overhaul, which, given the huge Fantasyland/Toontown Fair overhaul that won’t be completed until 2013, doesn’t seem very likely.

So, how can Tomorrowland return to some semblance of the thematic unity it had in 1994? I don’t think it can, not completely. As much as they irritate the purists, Stitch’s Great Escape and the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor are probably here to stay for better part of the next decade. After all, converting the Timekeeper’s theater into the Laugh Floor wasn’t cheap, and unless a sinkhole opens up under the building, I don’t see Disney closing it anytime soon. And there’s only so much that can be done with building that houses Stitch’s Great Escape; restoring the old Flight to the Moon/Mission to Mars rocketship ride wouldn’t exactly wow modern audiences, and a more “extreme” version of the “escaped creature” show has already been tried and deemed incongruous with Disney World’s family friendly atmosphere. Since Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin is probably Tomorrowland’s second-biggest draw behind Space Mountain, it’s safe to bet that it’s not going anywhere, either.

The most likely scenario, I think, is the informal division of Tomorrowland into two areas; the western “Toon” area where the Buzz Lightyear, Stitch, and Monsters Inc. attractions live, and an eastern “Classic” area encompassing Space Mountain, the PeopleMover, Carousel of Progress, and the Speedway. Hopefully, after the Space Mountain rehab is complete the Carousel of Progress will get the refurbishment it’s needed for most of this decade. If that happens, Tomorrowland will have struck a balance between the kind of character-based attractions that are popular with the general public, and the old classics toward which longtime Disney fans feel so protective.

Return of the PeopleMover

Well, folks who miss the pre-1994 Tomorrowland got a small piece of the old place back this week. It seems the Tomorrowland Transit Authority has a new audio track that closely resembles the one it had back when the attraction was known as the WEDWay PeopleMover.  Some folks are speculating that this is the first step in a “soft reboot” of Tomorrowland that will dispense of all references to the area as a futuristic spaceport.

Here’s a video of the ride with the new narration:

 

And for comparison’s sake, here’s a video of the WEDWay PeopleMover from 1991:

Of towers and fake rocks

When Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom was constructed in Florida, it boasted one improvement over its California predecessor: a complex of tunnels that ran beneath the park, enabling the moving of people and equipment, garbage collection, and other essential park business to be carried on out of the guests' view, lest anything spoil their illusion. There's an old story that says Walt got the idea one day at Disneyland when he saw a Frontierland cowboy walking through Tomorrowland, thus piercing its futuristic "bubble". Theming is something at which Disney has historically been very good.

Which brings me to Tomorrowland. There have been many Internet postings complaining that the 1994 refurbishment of Tomorrowland into some sort of Flash Gordon spaceport amounts to an abandonment of the future. This isn't one of them. Ultimately, whether a person prefers the pre-1994 Tomorrowland with its sleek, minimalist design sensibility rooted in the 1960s, or the new version with it's deliberately retro-1930s/1940s/1950s stylings really depends on their own individual taste. However, I encourage you to take a look at the picture below and tell me which element(s) don't quite belong:

Could it be the GIANT FAKE ROCKS? What exactly was Disney thinking here? How do the rocks fit in with the whirlygigs and the radiator fins and the neon lights? They're as out-of-place in Tomorrowland as, well, a Frontierland cowboy. Compare the rocks with what used to be there before the 1994 rehab:

Now, I understand why the towers were taken down. They clashed with the retro-50s design aesthetic the Imagineers were going for, and they would have competed with the fancy-schmancy Tomorrowland sign that arcs over the entrance. But were the ridiculously fake rocks the best replacements Disney could conjure up? They have a distinctly Warner Brothers cartoon look, as if they're the divider between Duck Dodgers In The 25 1/2 Century Land and Road Runner and Coyote Land. And the thing is, they aren't a Magic Kingdom-only abberation. California's Disneyland has them, too:


Clearly the fake rocks are an intended part of the design. What's the story behind this? Did Eisner have some kind of faux boulder fetish? Were a bunch of fake rocks fabricated for a planned Thunder Mountain expansion, then dumped in front of Tomorrowland when the project was canceled? What's really ridiculous is that Disney Imagineers are masters of making things look real. If Eisner wanted rocks, it wouldn't have been that hard for them to whip up something that looked like rocks instead of Looney Tunes come to life.

Or, if they really wanted to save money, they could have taken a cue from Tokyo Disneyland . . .


. . .and simply given the towers a new paint job. Would they still have clashed with the Flash Gordon radiator fins and neon lights? Sure, but not as much as the rocks.

What belongs in Tomorrowland?

"That show doesn't belong in Tomorrowland!" That's what many longtime Disney fans said when Stitch's Great Escape premiered in the Magic Kingdom back in 2004. We heard it again in 2007, when the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor moved into the space formerly occupied by the Timekeeper. Presumably, folks felt this way because Stitch's Great Escape and the Laugh Floor aren't really "futuristic". But if one examines the history of Disney World's Tomorrowland, it's surprising just how many of the attractions it's housed over the years have had nothing at all to do with futurism.

Let's start with the original Tomorrowland attractions, the ones that opened during the Magic Kingdom's first five years of operation. Obviously, Flight to the Moon (later Mission to Mars), Carousel of Progress, Star Jets, Space Mountain, and the WEDWay PeopleMover were future or space-oriented. But what about the Grand Prix Raceway, If You Had Wings, or the films in the CircleVision theater? What do driving a car, flying in an airliner, or a CircleVision film about America have to do with the future? It's as if these three attractions were just shoved into Tomorrowland because they didn't quite fit anywhere else.

None of this really changed during the park's first two decades of operation. If You Had Wings went through a few name and sponsor changes, but remained devoted to contemporary 20th century air travel until its replacement by Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin. The CircleVision theater hosted America the Beautiful, Magic Carpet 'Round the World, and American Journeys, all of which were about showing viewers scenic panoramas and had nothing to do with the traditional Tomorrowland themes of science, technology, space travel, and futurism.

Therefore, it could be said that Stitch's Great Escape and the Monsters' Inc. Laugh Floor do belong in Tomorrowland, inasmuch as they continue that area's tradition of housing attractions that don't really belong anywhere else. And although If You Had Wings/Dreamflight and the Circlevision films are long gone, the Grand Prix Raceway still operates as the Tomorrowland Indy Speedway, and guests still putt-putt around the track in little racecars much as they did when the attraction first opened in 1971. Yet, I don't recall any online cries of outrage that the Speedway doesn't belong in Tomorrowland because it has nothing to do with the future.

Indeed, most of the complaints about Tomorrowland's newest attractions seem to revolve around the fact that kid-oriented Disney character-based shows, once restricted to Fantasyland, have slowly spread throughout the entire Magic Kingdom. Whether or not one appreciates that is, of course, a matter of personal taste. But a look at Tomorrowland's history shows us that what "belongs" there is a rather fluid concept.