Changing tomorrows
The real question remains – when, where, why, and how is this stunning E-Ticket coming to the United States?
And to answer that question, consider what ended up happening to that Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. Opened in 1971, the classic Tomorrowland of simple geometry, concrete towers, white rockets, and pastel patterns lived through the ’70s it was designed for, then through the ’80s as an admittedly dated design in the face of the era’s darker futurism.
By the ’90s, it was clear that the “Great, Big, Beautiful Tomorrow” envisioned in Walt’s time was simply not going to cut it in the approaching 21st century. And worse, Disney could drop big bucks in a floor-to-ceiling rebuild of the outdated Tomorrowlands in California and Florida… only to have those become “Yesterlands” in a matter of years, too. In other words, any attempt to actually keep up with real science and pop culture’s current and ever-changing view of the future would require constant, continuous, and costly updates.
Luckily, the incredible work being done on the new Disneyland Paris was a beacon of hope.
The new French park wouldn’t have a Tomorrowland at all. Instead, it hosted “Discoveryland,” dropping the science in favor of a fantasy future. Instead of trying to predict what the world might actually look like decades from now, Discoveryland brought to life a future as envisioned by the past… A steampunk, fantasy, seaside port of zephyrs and submarines, this golden future showed a world at one with nature, not a sterile, concrete, white future opposed to it. Even the land’s headlining Lost Legend: Space Mountain – De la Terre à la Lune put a convincingly literary twist on the formerly-futuristic ride, theming it to the Jules Verne novel From the Earth to the Moon.
That promise – of a Tomorrowland that would never need updated – ignited Imagineers who set to work designing equally timeless futures for the still-60s-stylized Tomorrowlands at Disneyland and Magic Kingdom. Plans for a Possibilityland: Tomorrowland 2055 at the former were dropped when budgets swelled, but Magic Kingdom did get a New Tomorrowland, opening in 1994.
Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom
Though it’s actually fairly controversial among Disney Parks fans, Magic Kingdom’s New Tomorrowland was, in many ways, beautiful and brilliant. The entire land was recast as a sci-fi city of the future – a land of industrial art-deco, comic book cogs, gears, and rivets, electro-mechanical palm trees, landed alien saucers, and a level of world-building exceeding even Disney’s best. This New Tomorrowland wasn’t just a collection of rides, it was a place… one overarching continuity connected each of land’s rides, attractions, and even restaurants into one story.
Consider how brilliant it was: entering town via the Avenue of Planets (featuring all of the city’s municipal signs), one would be flanked by the Tomorrowland Science Center (hosting a new time travel exhibit centered around the Lost Legend: The Timekeeper)…
…and Tomorrowland’s Interplanetary Convention Center (currently rented out by Martian company X-S Tech showing off their new interstellar teleportation technology, used in the park’s most famous Lost Legend: Alien Encounter).
The city’s public transit (the Tomorrowland Transit Authority Peoplemover) would whisk guests through downtown while advertising stops and stations that exist only for world-building. The city even featured a nightclub run by aliens (Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café), a municipal Light & Power Company (the arcade), and a space port (Space Mountain) to connect Tomorrowalnd to the rest of the galaxy.
Even if the rear half of the land was only lightly dressed in the comic book silver sci-fi port story, surely you can see the storytelling smarts of a land that so thoughtfully connects all of its occupants – all original stories with no intellectual properties, by the way – into one carefully constructed universe.
The problem is that it didn’t last. First, the Lost Legend: If You Had Wings (and its aviation-themed successors) disappeared to make way for Toy Story 2. Then, Alien Encounter exited for the worst attraction Disney World’s ever hosted –the Declassified Disaster: Stitch’s Great Escape – based on Lilo & Stitch. The Timekeeper was evicted for Monsters Inc., and The Incredibles moved in for a non sequitor dance party.
Pretty soon, the Peoplemover stopped referring to the land’s locations by their in-world names, and the storytelling simply stopped. Now, like all of its sister lands (including Discoveryland), Tomorrowland became a cartoon catch-all for Pixar properties, simply dressed in a beautiful art deco shell…
Designed or dropped in?
Once TRON hit the rails in Shanghai, it was only a matter of time until rumors began to rumble. Fans of Disney Parks began to coalesce around where this phenomenal thrill could end up next… It seemed like wishful thinking…
At the semiannual D23 Expo in 2017, Disney announced that TRON Lightcycle Power Run would be coming to Magic Kingdom. While many expected the ride to replace either the long-lived Tomorrowland Speedway or – more unthinkably – the long-running Modern Marvel: Carousel of Progress, concept art shows the attraction – copied-and-pasted from Shanghai – nuzzled into previously-backstage area behind the Speedway and next to Space Mountain.
There’s no question at all that at Magic Kingdom, TRON Lightcycle / Run will be smash hit; a stellar E-Ticket that redefines the resort; a must-see experience that brings people back to Walt Disney World. We cannot wait for this ride to make its way closer to us. But one question does remain…
Curiously, in Shanghai, TRON Lightcycle Power Run is the cornerstone of the design of the park’s Tomorrowland… the rest of the land, it seems, it built off of and based on its gleaming, curved, glass canopy and its glowing, incandescent aesthetic.
Weirdly, concept art so far shows that the attraction is being “plopped” into Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland without much care for the land already built there. On one hand, it’s great – the canopy is an attraction in and of itself for onlookers. But how will this distinctly modern design feel soaring over the fifty-year-old tracks of the Tomorrowland Speedway and its puttering racecars? How at home can this 2021 ride look when set literally against and next to the Space Age, Googie-stylized, 1970s Space Mountain?
One of the most interesting things we’ll be watch for in an otherwise copy-and-paste cloning is how (or – yikes – if) Disney bothers to extend the style to the rest of the land. That’ll be important, because Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland right now is a bit of a mutt… Its front end retains the beautiful sci-fi / art-deco style of its 1995 renovation (albeit with every original ride torn out and replaced with Toy Story, Lilo and Stitch, and Monsters Inc.), and the entire back half of the land is still decked in ‘70s simplicity.
TRON Lightcycle Power Run is beautiful; Space Mountain and Carousel of Progress are beautiful; the Avenue of Planets and the Astro Orbiter are beautiful; but none look like they were meant to inhabit the same world.
Will Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland receive a fitting, land-wide redesign by time TRON opens? Or will this new and distinctly-different attraction simply be tucked away in its own corner of the mismatched land?
Derezzed
When TRON Lightcycle Power Run opens at Magic Kingdom (allegedly aiming for a 2021 debut), it’ll be a much-needed, well-loved, and spectacular thrill ride that will bring Magic Kingdom to the next level. It’s a stunning E-Ticket that’s as fun to watch as it is to ride. Of course detractors will (correctly) decry it as the first “exposed” steel coaster at Walt Disney World; another step of the IP invasion; a ride whose placement is evidence of Disney’s thoughtless rush to stuff the parks with hot properties and big, flashy rides with little care for their long-term sense.
But all those (legitimate) concerns aside, do you agree that this flashy new roller coaster is the right fit for Magic Kingdom? Did you know about its Chinese origins and the way it was meant to introduce a new kind of Tomorrowland? Do you have any hesitations about such a modern ride and its juxtaposition against the rest of Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland and its once-headlining Space Mountain? Share your comments in the thoughts below.
Then, make the jump back to our Modern Marvels series to set your sights on another fan-favorite!