September 9 - Carousel of Progress

On this day, in 1973, the Carousel of Progress ended its run in Tomorrowland in Disneyland.

Walt and his imagineers were incredibly busy in the months, and in some cases years, running up to the opening of the 1964 New York World's Fair in Queens, New York. They were creating four different attractions for three different companies and one state. The project that Walt was most excited about was the one being created for General Electric's Progressland Pavilion: the Carousel of Progress.


Early in Disneyland's history, plans were made to expand Main Street, USA with an "International Street" and an "Edison Square." The highlight of Edison Square was to be a show, sponsored by General Electric, chronicling the advancement of electricity usage in the home. As often happened with Walt's ideas, the technology of the time period was inadequate to making them a reality, at least to the standards Walt wanted. The expansions never happened and the show was shelved but not forgotten.

Several years later, GE came to Walt again, wanting to do something for the upcoming World's Fair.  This was music to Walt's ears. Remember that show we wanted to do a while back but couldn't? Well, now we can. Will it sell lots of GE appliances? Then we love it. And that's the story of how Walt got GE to pay for the further development of Audio-Animatronics. Seriously. The Enchanted Tiki Room already existed, but its figures were fairly simple and the show developed for the state of Illinois' pavilion only involved one. GE's show would involve dozens of figures on multiple stages. The real progress in animatronics would happen here and on GE's dime.

Walt spent more of his time tinkering with this attraction for the Fair than any other. He asked the Sherman Brothers for a song to help bridge the time between scenes. They came up with the classic "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow." They based it on Walt's enthusiasm about the future and technology and believed it to be his theme song. Walt had Roger Broggie and Bob Gurr design a moving theater that would bring guests from scene to scene, rather than making people get up and walk between theaters. He got the last singing cowboy, Rex Allen, to play Father, the show's narrator. And he constantly tweaked and fussed and tweaked the whole thing some more. All that attention payed off.

The final show, Carousel of Progress, was one of the biggest hits of the Fair. Even though 200 people were seated for a new show every four minutes, a capacity of over 3,000 people an hour, the line frequently grew to over an hour long. An extended, covered queue had to be built next to the pavilion to keep waiting guests out of the summer sun. Everyone loved the show, not least GE executives.

After the Fair closed in October 1965, plans were made to move the Carousel of Progress to Tomorrowland in Disneyland, which was currently being made New. It would re-open July 2, 1967, several months after Walt's death. It would also survive its cross country move relatively intact, the biggest change being the removal of any references to a now obsolete GE marketing campaign. As the 1970s began, however, the audience for Carousel began to dwindle and GE began complaining it wasn't getting a big enough bang for its sponsorship buck. It asked if perhaps the attraction could be moved again, to the Florida Project, where maybe some new customers would get the chance to see it. And so Carousel of Progress made the journey back to the east coast, sort of.

Unlike the minor changes that had been made between the Fair and Disneyland, the Walt Disney World version of Carousel would be something kind of familiar but at the same time completely different. The first and last theaters had featured "Kaleidophonic Screens", silver screens that lit up in patterns like a kaleidoscope. Rather than fix the technical problems that had started to develop with them, the new version just hung curtains. The Sherman Brothers were asked to write a new theme song. They wrote one, "The Best Time of Your Life", but still thought the original song was better. The entire voice cast was changed and the audio re-recorded. And the fourth scene, the one depicting the near future, was given an update. GE signed a new ten year sponsorship agreement and the new Carousel of Progress open in January of 1975.

Over the years since then, Carousel of Progress has drifted along in its back corner of Tomorrowland. The fourth scene was updated again in in 1981. When the sponsorship agreement ran out in 1985, all references to GE were taken out, except the logos on several of the appliances. In 1993, the attraction received another major facelift, including a new voice cast, the reinstatement of the original theme song and another update to that pesky fourth scene. Since 2001, Carousel is technically listed as a seasonal attraction, although it runs pretty much every day. There are constantly rumors that it will close permanently and Disney constantly denies those rumors.

Those who know me, know that I'm a Disney traditionalist, so it may surprise some people that my personal opinion on Carousel is that it's time to let go. I know that Walt hoped the attraction would never close but I also know that when something wasn't working, he didn't keep it around for nostalgia's sake. Otherwise you'd still be able to ride mules at Disneyland. Beyond the fact that the audiences just aren't there anymore, it's a show that is impossible to keep current well. Maybe if the whole thing were rewritten whenever the fourth scene needed updating, it would be okay. But to have the third scene set in the 1940s and then suddenly jump 70 years for the fourth only highlights how dated the whole thing has become. And that's not Progress.