The Disneyland Book of Secrets 2014: One Local's Unauthorized, Rapturous and Indispensable Guide to the Happiest Places on Earth (104 page)

A flat, circular screen below
the viewers served as the “rocket window” through which Guests watched the earth recede and the moon approach.  The visual and kinetic effects designed by
Imagineers
gave Guests the simulated thrill of space travel and helped inspire public interest in the nation’s real advances in space exploration as they progressed.

So w
hen Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969, it was appropriate that
Disneyland
Guests watched a live feed of the historic event on a
Tomorrowland
Stage
screen.

Unfortunately,
despite superb attractions like
Rocket to the Moon
, and later
Adventure Thru Inner Space
, real-world events, styles, and technologies often passed up
Tomorrowland
.  One generation of Guests saw
Space Man
and
Space Girl
as super-cool, super-hip emblems of the future.  And that jet-pack guy zooping around in his white jumpsuit in 1969?  Groovy!  Later generations, however, were more inclined to see such figures as goofballs in foil outfits, capes, and minis (foil suits and capes never really having caught on with the general public). 
Tomorrowland
architecture that appeared cutting edge one year suddenly seemed stale and dated the next.

The
Imagineers
did their best to keep
Tomorrowland
fresh, frequently retiring attractions and shows with fading appeal and introducing fresh offerings.  1959 was an exciting year.  Only four years after the park opened,
Walt
and his team introduced a cohort of exciting new attractions, particularly in
Tomorrowland
.  Additions included the
Matterhorn Bobsleds
(which were then considered part of
Tomorrowland
), the United States’ first
Monorail
that operated daily, and the
Submarine Voyage
.

To keep up with the tim
es,
Flight to the Moon
became
Mission to Mars
from 1975 to 1992.  But by 1992, Guest interest in simulated Mars missions and space travel in general was so low that the attraction was closed, to reopen in 1998 as
Redd Rockett’s Pizza Port
, a brightly colored, crowded pizza-and-pasta joint whose only futuristic elements are the names of the meals.  (It’s said that part of the
Luna
and
Diana
theaters still exist
backstage
as part of a
Tommorowland
Cast Member break area, relics of a more optimistic era.)

Some
Tomorrowland
changes stood the test of time by being timeless. 
Space Mountain
launched in 1977 and has been going strong ever since.  It quickly became
Tomorrowland
’s most popular attraction and the most popular “mountain” attraction at
Disneyland
. 
Imagineers
tinker with it periodically to keep it fresh, from a new soundtrack in 2007, scored to match every dip and curve, to
Ghost Galaxy
, a spooky overlay for Halloween that launched in 2009.

Star Tours
, the result of collaboration between
Disney
and
George Lucas
, has been successful since its 1987 launch, but in recent years lines had dwindled to five minutes in length. 
Tony Baxter
,
Disneyland Park
’s
Creative Director
, confirmed in a March 2010
D23
online chat that the rumors were true:  A massive overhaul for 2011 was in the works.  When the new 3D
Star Tours
opened in June 2011 it blew Guests’ minds, delivering a kaleidoscope of exhilerating effects and simulator sequences.

That, it seemed, was the key in
Tomorrowland
.  Create an attraction of timeless appeal and enhance it if it ever does seem in danger of growing stale.  But creating timeless attractions can be challenging, even for
Disneyland
.  There were hits, and there were misses.  Over the years it became prohibitively expensive for
Disneyland
to constantly redesign the district’s style, making futile attempts to keep ahead of the future.

In
a major stylistic revamp in 1998,
Imagineers
tried to solve the problem by establishing a classic “retro-future” look based on designs by 15
th
-century artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci and 19
th
-century pioneering futurist and sci-fi author Jules Verne.  This metallic, largely Victorian retro-future look was inspired by
Disneyland Paris
’
Discoveryland
.  It was intended to be timelessly appealing to Guests, no matter what advances in transportation, style, and technology occurred in the world beyond the
berm
.

S
ome Guests welcomed the new look, which presaged the popularity of the Steampunk genre.  In fact, if
Disneyland
made the same changes today, nearly twenty years on, younger Guests
would
call it Steampunk, and would probably love it.

But when the new
Tomorrowland
was unveiled in 1998, many Guests were up in arms and demanded the return of the district’s classic Googie style and its palette of arctic white and silvery blue. Remember that
Disneyland
Guests are mostly locals.  They visit
Disneyland
frequently and are the backbone of its success.  So if they
really
don’t like something, well, they
really
don’t like it … And the park usually listens.  An especially sore point for many was the covering over of
Disney
artist and colorist
Mary Blair
’s
Tomorrowland
murals.  Though some considered the artwork “dated” by 1998, to many Guests they were timeless landmarks.

Disney
listened to and evaluated Guests’ complaints about the new
Tomorrowland
. 
Space Mountain
, which was originally designed by
Disney
Legend John Hench
, never looked as lovely bronzed and gilded as it did in its original white-blue glory. 
Imagineers
recognized that not everything that worked in
Disneyland Paris
’
Discoveryland
would translate to
Anaheim
.  So in 2004,
Space Mountain
’s snowy color returned.

During
the new millennium,
Tomorrowland
’s metallics were stripped away, and blues and whites made their way back into
Tomorrowland
’s color scheme.  Talented young
Imagineer Scot Drake
painted fresh new
Star Tours
and
Space Mountain
-inspired murals above the
Star Tours
and
Buzz Lightyear
show buildings in 2005, the same year the
Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters
debuted.

Of course that still didn’t please everyone.  Many
continued to be chagrined at the loss of
Mary Blair
’s stylized murals, and many who actually
had
welcomed the 1998 bronzing of
Tomorrowland
were unhappy with the return of the functional, “shopping mall” white.  As this clearly illustrates, trying to please everyone with
Tomorrowland
’s style has been a dicey and thankless proposition at best.

Because of its need to constantly re-invent itself,
Tomorrowland
has a greater number of retired attractions than any other land. 
The Imagineering Field Guide to Disneyland
includes a partial list of
Tomorrowland
attractions that have taken a final bow over the years. 
Adventure Thru Inner Space
,
Carousel of Progress
,
Flying Saucers
,
Monsanto
’s
House of the Future
,
PeopleMover
,
Phantom Boats
,
Rocket to the Moon
and many more–gone, gone, gone. 
Submarine Voyage
?  Gone in 1998, but reintroduced in 2007 after an exhaustive overhaul as
Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage
.

One challenge that
Tomorrowland
will always face is the hazard of trying to predict the future.  Even
Walt
, prescient in many ways, was better at identifying the advancements that humanity
should
focus on, rather than the advancements that we
would
focus on.

Walt
was wild for transportation and civic planning.  He conjectured quite correctly that faster, cleaner, and more efficient public transportation and civic planning would be a great boon for the planet.  Transportation is also just plain exciting.  Hence the kinetic mosaic of moving vehicle attractions during
Tomorrowland
’s history, the
Autopia
cars,
Bobsleds
,
Monorail
,
PeopleMover
,
Rockets
, and
Submarines
.

Autopia
went through many configurations in its history, but was always meant to introduce kids to the thrill of the open road and encourage them to become safe, responsible drivers.  Anyone who’s driven in Southern California can form their own conclusions about how well
Autopia
has achieved the latter goal.

The
Monorail
and
PeopleMover
gave Guests an enjoyable ride while pointing the way toward better public transportation.  Rockets, space ships, and subs fed an earlier generation’s thirst for discovery and encouraged exploration in outer space and
liquid space
, for the betterment of all.

Many of these attractions remain popular in
Tomorrowland
, thanks to ongoing tinkering by the
Imagineers
who strive to keep them fresh and relevant.  But they never had the full impact beyond the
berm
that
Walt
anticipated.  If only our freeway drivers were generally courteous and responsible; if only high-speed, super-safe monorail trains delivered us all to work and to idyllic green-belt recreational facilities; if only we had established industrial, scientific, and recreational colonies on distant planets and undersea bases!

What
Walt
couldn’t predict, what few had predicted in the 1950’s, 1960’s, and even the 1970’s, was that although there would be advances in transportation, the really big paradigm shifts were going to be in communication, entertainment, information, and biological technologies.

Growing up in the 1960’s and
1970’s, like many kids I devoured classics by sci-fi geniuses Isaac Asimov and
Ray Bradbury
, watched “The Jetsons,” “Lost in Space,” and “Star Trek,” and was hooked on the
Star Wars
films and their inevitable imitators.  Like most Americans young and old at that time I followed the progress of the NASA space program religiously.

I can remember our 6
th
-grade class receiving the amazing news that decades of text books were wrong:  Saturn
didn’t
have three solid rings!  Advancements in space research revealed that it was more complex and textured and gritty than that; Saturn had three dense belts of ice, rock, and debris, from enormous boulders to tiny granules, orbiting the planet in a junkyard ballet.

There were new discoveries
and advancements all the time.  It was heady.  Everybody knew—thought they knew—what the future held.  Apartment buildings would hover above the planet’s surface.  We’d all zip to work and school in jet cars, or via jet packs and pneumatic tubes.  Fashion would fade in favor of simple, uniform-like onesies (often silver, white, or red) that everyone would wear; they’d be minimalist, stylish, and made of awesome synthetic materials.  Cuisine would be supplanted by nourishing food tablets; why slave over a hot stove when you can pop a pot-roast pill?

There’d be settlements on the Moon, Mars
, and beyond, and
Atlantis
-like outposts at the bottom of the sea, graceful, super-strong glass domes keeping out the seawater and its deadly pressure.  These far-flung colonies would provide recreation for the adventurous, and limitless supplies of the metals, minerals, fuels, and assorted resources necessary to keep our civilization racing forward.  There would be such a plenitude of resources, we wouldn’t have to keep fighting over them in war after war.