Now is the time, now is the best time to bone up on your Carousel of Progress facts. The longtime Magic Kingdom attraction will be closed after July 5 for an major update that will change the timeline of its scenes and add an animatronic Walt Disney introduction. The Carousel is expected to turn around sometime in 2027, Walt Disney World says.
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We’ve gathered Carousel of Progress talking points for our next Tomorrowland-themed cocktail party.
In the round
Although Disney lore frequently mentions that the attraction was moved from Disneyland in California to Florida in 1975, that makes it sound like the theater was airlifted to Magic Kingdom. In fact, the structure was new construction. A big clue: the Carousel had two stories in Anaheim and as the original at the 1964 New York World’s Fair but just one level at Disney World.
An early concept from Walt Disney had audience members getting up and moving to the next room for a continuing story. That all shifted with the World’s Fair, where Imagineers Roger Broggie and Bob Gurr devised the familiar rounded theater with moving floor. Other Broggie projects: Disneyland’s monorail, Matterhorn Bobsleds and the Omnimover ride system. Gurr, still making appearances at age 94, has credits that include vehicles for Haunted Mansion, Autopia, Matterhorn, the monorail and more.
The original Carousel and the Disneyland version moved clockwise, while the Magic Kingdom attraction goes counterclockwise. We can see this in action in a 1967 film shot in Tomorrowland and digitized by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. (I watched it via paelofuture.com.)
Also gratifying: The vibrating belt / exercise machine got laughs in the ‘60s.
Heard mentality
The current version of Carousel of Progress features a few familiar voices. Playing the role of John, the ride’s father figure, was Jean Shepherd, who is also the narrator/adult Ralphie (and writer) of “A Christmas Story.” (Sunshine State sidenote: He moved to Florida in the ‘80s and died on Sanibel Island in 1999.)
Also heard in the attraction is Mel Blanc, voicing legend, as Uncle Orville. Among Blanc’s legion of other animated characters are Bugs Buggy, Wile E. Coyote, Marvin the Martian, Foghorn Leghorn and Barney Rubble. His Disney-related credits are the hiccups of Gideon the cat in “Pinocchio” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”
Finally, in perfect Tomorrowland synergy, Janet Waldo, who played young Judy Jetson, gave voice to Carousel grandma.
Named tunes
This is COP101, but the ride has had two theme songs, both written by the Sherman Brothers. The original one – and the current one – was/is “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow.”
When the show landed at Magic Kingdom, sponsor General Electric requested a new song, so “The Best Time of Your Life” was introduced and it lingered until the 1994 update. You might catch a snippet in pipe-in music in Tomorrowland today as well.
“Great Big Beautiful” was restored with the latest update – yikes, 32 years ago – and Disney executives say it will remain with the upcoming update.
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Ho-hum or hype?
The arrival of Carousel of Progress in Florida was not exactly trumpeted in the pages of the Orlando Sentinel. One article refers to the attraction as depicting “a nostalgic review of life in an American home from the 1890s to the present.” A Disney World advertisement refers to it as a “revolving electrical time machine.”
There was more excitement about the planned Space Mountain and even the PeopleMover at that time. Carousel of Progress has zero Sentinel mentions in 1976 and really not much through the ‘80s, when the arrival of Epcot turned heads. A 1992 story reports that a Carousel update will happen.
For a while, folks looked at the attraction as wasted space, and there was a rumor about it never going away because of vital computers stored beneath it. Its cycle eventually has come back to Beloved Attraction Once Touched by Walt Disney.
In 1993, Sentinel TV critic Hal Boedeker reported that Disney would be filming a scene from the “Tomorrowland” movie starring George Clooney at the attraction. (He also published that Clooney’s publicist had called a photo of the star getting a pedicure in Central Florida a fake.)
The film “could help renew interest in the carousel,” Boedeker wrote.
Save the update
Including the coast-to-coast transfers, the next update is the sixth refurbishment of Carousel of Progress.
The shift to California in ‘67 resulted in a new finale scene set in Progress City, a precursor of sorts to Epcot. In ‘94, the current finale – which includes VR and voice-operated appliances – was installed, and the attraction name was expanded to become Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress.
Disney has given a few details about the refurbishment, including the new timeline that picks up soon after the original debut of the Carousel. Act 1 will be set in the summer of ‘69 in time for the moon landing. Act 2 is Halloween 1985. Act 3 will be New Year’s Eve 1999.
Disney lists the finale as “the possible future” and in an “out-of-this-world home.”
Staying: The song, the family and the dog.
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