European reinvention
The next stop on our road to the Rocket Rods? Paris.
In 1992, EuroDisneyland opened its gates for the first time after years of scorn from the French press. Labeled a “cultural Chernobyl” and an invasion of “American consumerism,” Imagineers had had to work overtime to soften the park to appeal to Parisian audiences. You can imagine why! After all, Europeans wouldn’t find much to love in Tomorrowland with its 1960s rockets, Googie architecture, and Space Age bravado. So designers axed it entirely.
EuroDisneyland instead offered Discoveryland, peeling back the mid-century Americana in favor of a very new wrap. Discoveryland still featured Tomorrowland’s classics, but reimagined from the point of view of great European thinkers. For example, the land’s unique anchor offered a Circle-Vision 360 film, but allowed the technology to recede into the background. Instead, the Lost Legend: Le Visionarium took guests on a journey through time with Jules Verne in tow.
Similarly, rather than rockets swirling high over the land, the Orbitron was grounded, surrounded in rockwork, and reimagined as a golden planetary model straight from the sketchbooks of da Vinci. A bubbling lagoon in the land’s center offered the docked Nautilus sub from Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, hosting a walkthrough of Captain Nemo’s 19th century metallic beast.
And looming over it all would be the Lost Legend: Space Mountain – De la Terre a la Lune, a golden reimagining of the Space Age standard back in the U.S. This steampunk-stylized peak would be a total reinvention, launching guests from a gold cannon on a literary, fantasy journey to the moon and back, drawn straight from Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon.
Discoveryland hadn’t just successfully smoothed Tomorrowland’s hard edges into a more rich, romantic, story-centered, European-friendly product… it also avoided the “Tomorrowland Problem” entirely. Instead of trying to actually predict the styles, architecture, and pop culture of the future, Discoveryland was tomorrow as seen from the past; a retro-future that would never fall out of date! It’s no surprise that Imagineers were now tasked with creating similarly timeless Tomorrowlands back at home…
Almost-tomorrows
In the early ’90s, plans to finally revitalized Disneyland’s Tomorrowland finally gained traction. The so-called Tomorrowland 2055 project would’ve at last masked the mid-century simplicity of Walt’s 1967 aesthetic with an ambitious, expensive reimagining.
As the story goes, Tomorrowland 2055 would’ve crafted a glowing, neon, alien landscape powered by crystals and geysers burst forth from the ground. These pulsing power rocks would be an intergalactic beacon, drawing aliens from around the galaxy to set up shop in a living, breathing eclectic space port.
In fact, Tomorrowland 2055 would’ve been anchored by none other than the Lost Legend: The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, with the old “Flight to the Moon” / “Mission to Mars” theater-in-the-round making way for a multi-sensory horror attraction releasing a carnivorous alien into the audience.
Of course, Tomorrowland 2055 didn’t happen. Why? Despite its grandeur and heart, EuroDisneyland opened… and fell immediately on its face. The Parisian resort was plunged into financial devestation, leading to a decade of cancellations, closures, and cop-outs as then CEO-Michael Eisner swore off any large scale investments ever again. Tomorrowland 2055 was among its body count.
The problem is that even if Tomorrowland 2055 was far too grand to ever make it through the budget-conscious Disney leadership, Disneyland needed a New Tomorrowland. Imagine how it looked in 1995:
- The Carousel Theater had been closed for nearly a decade. Its latest show – “America Sings!” – had its curtain call in 1988 so that its cast of over 100 Audio-Animatronic critters could be reused for 1989’s Splash Mountain.
- The Lost Legend: Captain EO starring Michael Jackson was still playing in the land’s 3D theater nearly a decade after its debut (and in the midst of growing sexual assault allegations against the star).
- Mission to Mars had closed for its conversion to Alien Encounter, and now sat empty given the cancellation of Tomorrowland 2055.
- And to top it all off, on August 21st, 1995, the PeopleMover was closed forever.
Why? Disneyland was getting a New Tomorrowland… But now, it would need to be done inexpensively, leaning on existing research and development. So when New Tomorrowland opened in 1998, it looked a world away from the land that had come before, and from the plans for Tomorrowland 2055… Why had the PeopleMover closed? We’ll go for a ride on the next page…