Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress is turning over a new leaf.
The company announced a massive overhaul for the attraction, which first debuted at the 1964-65 World’s Fair and has been in almost continuous operation since. (It proudly proclaims itself as “the most performed stage show in the history of American theater.”) Now the ride is shutting down next month. It is set to reopen sometime in 2027. This will be the biggest update to the attraction in more than 30 years.
If you’ve never been on the Carousel of Progress, it is a moving theater that hinges around a fixed stage with four separate show scenes, which followed a typical American family through the years. Each section our narrator, John, would discuss the technological innovations of the time and what is happening socially or politically. He is joined by his dog, Rover, who also makes occasional remarks in the form of well-placed barks. Initially the periods were the 1900s, 1920s, 1940s and then a flash forward to the 21st century. (The “final act” of the show has been the piece that has been changed/updated most consistently.)
Perhaps just as well known as the show itself was the theme song “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow,” which was written by Robert and Richard Sherman and has been used in Innoventions at Disneyland and Horizons at Epcot (both now defunct) and has been utilized by ESPN during NCAA Football Singing Day in 2015, in the movies “Meet the Robinsons” and “Tomorrowland” and in a recent Mickey Mouse short called “House of Tomorrow.” Even if you aren’t a Disney fanatic you might recognize it from the final episode of the first season of “The Studio.”
According to Disney, the new iteration of the attraction will start with a new scene featuring a Walt Disney animatronic figure, similar to the one that was recently installed in Disneyland inspired by the 1964 special “Disneyland Goes to the World’s Fair.” This was announced at a Destination D23 event in 2025 and now will finally be implemented. Now the attraction will be focused around the 1960s (with the family gathered around the television to watch the moon landing), the 1980s (Halloween night 1985), “the New Millennium” (there’s a thing called the Internet!) and the Possible Future (“we see the family one last time in the distant future, in an out-of-this-world home,” this time joined by the family robot which looks suspiciously like H.E.R.B.I.E. from last summer’s “Fantastic Four” movie).
The current version of the attraction will shutter on July 6, to make way for the great big beautiful tomorrow shining sometime in 2026.
Some Disney fans on social media are up in arms about both the alterations to the classic attraction and to how quickly it is shutting down (leaving many without the time to make a trip down to Florida to say goodbye). But it is the Carousel of Progress, after all, not the Carousel of Nostalgia. (Although there certainly is a bit of that too.)
The attraction moved to Disneyland following the end of the 1964-65 World’s Fair, still sponsored by General Electric (who would sponsor the show until 1985). The rotating theater was housed in a unique, two-story building, with the post-show devoted to a giant model for Disney’s Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, which would one day morph into EPCOT Center. In 1974 the Carousel of Progress show scenes were shipped off to Florida, where a new, single-story version of the attraction would open in the Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland in 1975. (Disneyland would get a new show for the bicentennial, America Sings, and then the West Coast version of Innoventions.)
Since 1975 it has been housed at the Magic Kingdom, right next door to Space Mountain. The 1975 version featured new audio-animatronic figures and new voice actors. 1981 would see a new final act added, this time devoted to the “home of the 1980s.” The attraction nearly closed in the early 1990s, with blueprints circulated for a new “Flying Saucers” attraction in the space where the Carousel of Progress sat, but it was instead updated, with a new voice cast (again), and a new final scene imagining the “house of 2000.” It reopened in 1994 as part of the New Tomorrowland initiative, which also included the Timekeeper and Extra-TERRORestrial Alien Encounter.
The closest the attraction has gotten to a really-for-real update in the past 20 years was a version envisioned to play off of Brad Bird’s 2015 film “Tomorrowland.” This version of the attraction would have had the ride stop, with guests greeted by an audio-animatronic version of Athena (played by Raffey Cassidy in the film), a young robot girl and recruiter for Tomorrowland. Cassidy told us she was scanned at Imagineering for the animatronic version of her character. She would tell guests that they were responsible for delivering a great big beautiful tomorrow, before the ride would resume.
Maybe they can work in a nod to this abandoned version in the new iteration of the attraction?
Walt Disney Imaginnering’s Michael Hundgen will oversee the project for the company.
