New Tomorrowland: A World on the Move (1967)
Walt didn’t live long enough to see the New Tomorrowland that opened July 2, 1967. He passed away seven months prior due to lung cancer. But Walt’s fingerprints were present in almost every corner of the land – it was exactly as he had envisioned from the start.
Imagineers called this stunning, groundbreaking New Tomorrowland “a world on the move.” And it was. If Frontierland was meant to display the idling speed of the past with its humungous riverboats and stagecoaches, Tomorrowland would be a kinetic paradise of bright colors whizzing past; motion above, below, and before; the sounds of transportation all around.
Indeed, standing at the entrance to this New Tomorrowland, guests would look down an entry corridor not unlike the “old” land. But now, gone were the boxy showbuildings so distinctly of the 1950s. Instead, tall, soaring geometric fins and rounded exteriors of two mirrored showbuildings – one to the north and one to the south – signaled that this land was dynamic and fluid. Gone were the ornamental flags and concrete towers. Instead, this land was white and sleek, packed with Googie architecture – upswept roofs, curves, boomerangs, and parabolas.
Between those mirrored showbuildings, the white, geometric tracks of the Peoplemover whisked guests along the land’s second story in brightly colored trains – a pop of color whizzing past white architecture. The trains of the Peoplemover would glide effortlessly down this central straightaway, beginning and ending their round-trip tour of Tomorrowland from a pedestal at the land’s core.
Monsanto
As the story goes, the Monsanto Company who had sponsored the House of the Future and the Hall of Chemicals in the “old” Tomorrowland had grown tired of the outdated confines of their exhibits. Times had changed, and so had Monsanto’s reach. Guests no longer fawned over microwave ovens, and Monsanto had better products to showcase. When Tomorrowland went under the knife for its 1967 rebirth, the Monsanto House of the Future was demolished. (According to Disney legend, the wrecking ball bounced right off of the plastic house, necessitating a week-long demolition done by hand with hacksaws.)
Monsanto wanted a better showcase of their specialties, and they got their chance when New Tomorrowland debuted a new starring attraction: Adventure Thru Inner Space. Born of the same thoughtful processes that would later give rise to EPCOT Center and its educational, historic, and epic dark rides, Adventure Thru Inner Space was a wonder. It was a high-capacity dark ride in tune with the optimism and wonder that filled audiences of the 1960s as they explored this utopian Tomorrowland that they saw as their very real future.
Step into tomorrow
As you step into the magnificent New Tomorrowland, you’re likely to be awe-struck. The Peoplemover glides effortlessly overhead as the towering Rocket Jets spiral in the center of the land. Just beyond, the Carousel Theater gracefully turns, hosting the brand-new, Audio-Animatronics packed Carousel of Progress designed by Walt Disney himself. In the distance, the Monorail glides past the towering Matterhorn Bobsleds as the mysterious Submarine Voyage propels through a crystal-clear lagoon. This is Walt’s “World on the Move” – a genuine, thoughtful look at what the wonders of the Space Age might contain. It’s sleek and white with pops of red and blue and yellow. If we’re lucky, this is what the future will look, sound, and feel like.
And the key to that future is right inside the land, beneath the towering silver fins that mark the land’s grand entry. This is Adventure Thru Inner Space.
You’ve been on Disneyland’s classic dark rides in Fantasyland, like Peter Pan’s Flight and Snow White’s Scary Adventures. But this new ride in Tomorrowland is different. It uses an entirely new ride system unlike anything you’ve seen before.
Stepping into the spacious lobby of the attraction, something catches your eye: the Mighty Monsanto Microscope towers over the gently winding queue, the Lost Legend: The Peoplemover gliding behind it. The microscope appears to be focused on a snowflake, its graceful geometric arms broadcast on a massive screen looming overhead. You’ll also notice something else: deep blue, egg-shaped vehicles carrying passengers glide effortlessly into the base of the Mighty Microscope. At the microscope’s end, they exit, but now they’re merely a few inches tall, the vehicles – and the guests inside – completely miniaturized.
If you’re ready to undergo this magnificent shrinking, step onto the continuously-moving pathway that glides alongside a chain of the constantly-moving vehicles. Step right into it as it moves and sit back. You’re about to shrink down to the size of an atom.
The first thing you’ll hear once seated is the voice of Paul Frees (famously the narrator of another Disneyland Omnimover-based attraction: the Ghost Host of the Haunted Mansion).
“I am the first person to make this fabulous journey… Suspended in the timelessness of inner space are the thoughtwaves of my first impressions. They will be our only source of contact once you have passed beyond the limits of normal Mag-ni-fi-ca-tion!”
The Atommobile presses forward into the Microscope, shaking lightly as all light fades. Very slowly, small streaks of light appear in the darkness… Snowflakes. They’ll falling and twisting and tumbling through the darkness. And the appear to be getting bigger.
“I am passing beyond the magnification limits of even the most powerful microscopes. These are snowflakes – and yet they seem to grow larger and larger. Or can I be shrinking… shrinking beyond the smallness of a tiny snowflake crystal? Indeed, I am becoming smaller and smaller!“
As guests continue to shrink, a giant wall of geometric patterns comes into view. But wait… this isn’t a wall of ice. It’s a single snowflake, filling up our entire field of vision. “These tiny bits of snowflake crystal tower above me – like an enormous wall of ice. Can I penetrate this gigantic prism?”
The answer, of course, is yes. Objects on Earth exist in three states: solid, liquid, or gas. But even solids, on a microscopic level, are made up of molecules arranged in rigid patterns. At this level of magnification, we can see the gaps between those molecules. “And yet, this wall of ice only seems smooth and solid! From this tiny viewpoint, I can see that nothing is solid, no matter how it appears.“
A great lattice structure comes into view as we see that the “solid” snowflake is indeed made up of spheres lined up in infinite, parallel columns and rows.
“What are these strange spheres? Have I reached the universe of the molecule? Yes, these are water molecules – H2O… They vibrate in such an orderly pattern because this is water frozen into the solid state of matter.”
The magnification continues as the infinite lattice gives way to blurry spheres, like great metallic orbs.
“These fuzzy spheres must be the atoms that make up the molecule – two hydrogen atoms bonded to a single oxygen atom. And I see that it’s the orbiting electrons that give the atom its fuzzy appearance. And still I continue to shrink. Is it possible that I can enter the atom itself?”
The Atommobile pushed further into the atom itself as the car becomes surrounded in a flurry of falling white lights, darting from all sides. “Electrons are dashing about me – like so many fiery comets! Can I possibly survive?” Somehow, the electrons suddenly disappear, leaving the vehicle to float through an infinite darkess with spheres of light glowing all around – it’s a hypnotic and beautiful sight, as if drifting through an eternal outer space.
“I am so infinitely small now that I can see millions of orbiting electrons. They appear like the Milky Way of our own solar system. This vast realm, THIS is the infinite universe within a tiny speck of snowflake crystal.”
If the grand finale of Spaceship Earth at Epcot is intended to make us feel small – to see our own insignificance in the grand scheme of time and space – then this finale does just the opposite: it allows us to see that infinity exists within a snowflake. We’re floating in an endless sea of electrons as vast as outer space, but contained within a microscopic molecule. While it’s difficult to conceptually understand the borderless infinity of the universe, it’s downright impossible to comprehend how, to an atom, a snowflake is an endless universe unto itself!
…Sorry, folks. Lost myself there for a minute. But now, from the darkness, a large red sphere suddenly appears, floating. It’s pulsating with warm light.
“And there is the nucleus of the atom! Do I dare explore the vastness of its inner space? No, I dare not go on… I must return to the realm of the molecule, before I go on shrinking…forever!”
As the riders begin to re-enlarge, humongous water droplets surround the Atommobile. They rise and fall, swirling around.
“Ah, how strange! The molecules are so active now! They have become fluid – freed from their frozen state. That can only mean that the snowflake is melting! Yes, the snowflake has melted, but there is no cause for alarm. You are back on visual, and returning to your normal size!”
Now, looming overhead was perhaps the ride’s most recognizable feature: a huge eyeball gazing down at the riders as they return to our world.
Emerging from the darkness, the Omnimovers pass beneath the Peoplemover yet again and enter a small post-show exhibit. Before disembarking, though, the Omnimovers encircle… a woven fiber vortex with smartly-dressed mannequins within?
It may seem an odd finale, but remember that despite the grandiose and abstract journey that preceded it, Adventure Thru Inner Space is an advertisement for Monsanto… And this post-show experience is our opportunity to explore how the company’s experimentation in chemicals and plastics have yielded a new age in textiles and manufacturing…!
“This has been one of many exciting Adventures Thru Inner Space in a never-ending search for new ways to rearrange molecules for the benefit of man-kind. Now, in our display area, you will see modern miracles created by rearranging the molecules of not only water, but air, coal, petroleum, and many other raw materials. This is Monsanto.”
Like the EPCOT Center dark rides it would inspire, Adventure Thru Inner Space concludes with the mesmerizing and peppy tunes of a Sherman Brothers’ sing-along guests will be humming all afternoon: Miracles from Molecules.
As always, we like to close our Lost Legends ride-throughs with the best point-of-view videos can find. Luckily, we have the Disney History Institute who provided this ride-through video on YouTube – one of the only videos of the ride – from which two of the images on this page were taken.
Because Adventure Thru Inner Space closed in the 1980s, it’s difficult to find any videos that accurately represent the ride experience. Luckily, the ride’s cult-following has allowed for many fans to create ultra-accurate computer-generated recreations of the ride, including this fantastic one by Steve Wesson:
And thus ends one of the greatest educational dark rides Disney ever produced. What became of Adventure Thru Inner Space, and why? Find out the rest of the story on the next page…
I really liked the conclusion to this story! It was very well written.