There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, and you can find it in Orlando! (Magic Kingdom Part 2: Tomorrowland)

     Welcome back to my mini series on the Magic Kingdom, friends! For those of you that missed my first post about it, you can look back at the post from two weeks ago. In that post I gave a brief overview of the park as a whole, and then went more into detail about Fantasyland, one of the themed lands that comprise the park. For a quick recap, Adventureland has pirates and jungles, Frontierland has cowboys and yeehaw, Liberty Square has Presidents and spooks, Fantasyland has magic, and Main Street USA has shops and good old fashioned Americana. What about Tomorrowland? Why, dear friends, that's what we'll be talking about today!

                                     Space Mountain, the busiest attraction in Tomorrowland

    Tomorrowland has always been considered the strangest idea of the themed lands, as the idea is constant progress. The issue with this area is that because they obviously can't look into the future and do constant updates based off of what they see, this land could look kind of out of date at some point. This is something that Walt Disney himself was worried about, though I certainly have never looked at Tomorrowland as anything other than an amazing and idealistic vision of the future that Walt envisioned. Let's begin the little tour around this futuristic area, shall we?

Keep Moving Forward!

    In 1964, Walt Disney was approached by General Electric to make an attraction celebrating the progress that different technology has brought about over the years for the 1964 World's Fair in New York. Disney created a little show called, "The Carousel of Progress," a show that has been running since the fair, and it runs constantly in Tomorrowland even today. The show utilizes audio animatronics as the actors as they ferry the audiences all through the 20th century, and even into the future which we have just about reached at this point. The show has experienced a few changes over the years, but the central theme has always been the same, and that's progress. I've been worried about the Carousel for a little while, but I recently saw an ad for Walt Disney World that used the song, "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow," which is the theme song for this attraction, so I feel like it should be safe for at least several more years. I love this show, and I feel like everyone should see it at least once, especially since the line is never very long, and the show is always running as long as it's not undergoing maintenance. It's kind of timeless, even though it takes the audience through different decades and shows how the American family reacts to new technological marvels such as lightbulbs and refrigerators, the family stays the same, and the show is more about how no matter how good people think they have it at a time, there will come a time that's even better. There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow shining at the end of every day. That's certainly something we need to remember during Covid times, as well as any other time, and that's a big part of why I love the attraction so much.

A quick ride on the Peoplemover!

    "The Carousel of Progress" is a great time, but it's not a ride (even though the seats do rotate around the center of the theatre), which is why up next I'm cheating a bit and telling you about a ride that includes parts of other rides. That's right, it's the Tomorrowland Transit Authority Peoplemover! In the middle of Tomorrowland, you can see the Astro Orbiter looming above the land, and constantly spinning people around like a futuristic version of Dumbo (which is what it is, it's just rockets instead of Elephants), but just below that sits the entrance to the Peoplemover, a little tram ride that takes you on a tour through Tomorrowland. It gives a whole presentation on different attractions, and even shows you what some attractions look like inside. You see a stretch of Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, Space Mountain, and inside one of the gift shops just to name a few, plus you get some pretty great views of Cinderella's castle from a raised vantage point near the beginning of the ride. The Peoplemover is a great time, and it's definitely my most ridden attraction at Disney World, as there was one visit to the Magic Kingdom where I rode it about eight times during the day. It never got old, and we even got to the point where we would say the narration along with the ride. I could probably still recite a lot of it today, to be perfectly honest.  I know I need to move along and talk about more of these attractions, so think of me as your own personal Peoplemover, because it's time to move on along! All aboard!

    Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin is a fun ride, and it's very similar to Toy Story Mania at Hollywood Studios, though it trades out the 4D elements and screens from that ride for a space aesthetic and the ability to steer the car with a knob. You compete with the other people in your car, with each of you trying to get the most points by zapping the robot army of the Evil Emperor Zurg, and ultimately facing off against him at the end of the ride. The ability to turn the cart by yourself actually adds a really interesting element to the ride as a whole, and the animatronics will always be a plus for me, which is one thing that Toy Story Mania doesn't have going for it. Tomorrowland is also home to one of the longest wait times in the park, Space Mountain. Take a trip to the moon in a bobsled of a thing, and enjoy a coaster almost completely in the dark, save for the space imagery that's projected all around you. It's a really cool idea, and a coaster that nearly made me lose my voice for a few hours the last time I was there. The wait is normally about 180 minutes or so, so if you want to ride it, your best shot is definitely to go during a magic hour if you're staying on Disney property and haven't already gotten a Fastpass before your arrival. Before we stop talking about attractions here, I have to ask, would you be interested in going to a comedy club where monsters stand up on stage and tell jokes? Welcome to Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor! It's a show that runs every 20 minutes or so that is full of great bits and side characters, and every time it's a different show thanks to the same technology that they use in Turtle Talk with Crush over at Epcot. It's definitely the funniest time at Magic Kingdom that I can think of and I highly recommend it, if for no other reason than to see Mike Wazowski's adorable nephew, Marty, who tells jokes that the audience texts in before every show.

    I would be remiss while talking about Tomorrowland to not bring up one of my favorite restaurants in the park, Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe. The food is nothing special, you can find most stuff served here at most of the restaurants around the Magic Kingdom, such as pizza, hot dogs, and burgers, but there's one thing that you can only find here. The "biggest little star in the galaxy," Sonny Eclipse plays here every day, backed by his invisible Space Angels! Sonny is an animatronic green alien guy who sits at a keyboard in the main dining area, constantly singing his space themed lounge music. It's a really strange idea, but I love it a lot, even though the first time I went I was terrified, because as I said before, when I was in third grade, I was afraid of everything. This is such a bizarre restaurant that I feel like even if you don't eat there, you should sit down for a few minutes and listen to some of his songs about how he met his Space Angels, which aren't animatronics, because they're invisible. You can hear them though, so you definitely know they're there!

More progress ahead!

    A new attraction is coming to Tomorrowland in 2021, the Tron Lightcycle Power Run ride. This ride originally opened in 2016 in Shanghai Disneyland, and it takes riders into the virtual world of the Grid to ride a light cycle. I can't tell what the plot of the ride is, if there is one, because it's only in Shanghai and there's a video of a Siren from Tron Legacy giving you instructions in another language that I don't speak. The ride utilizes a Lightcycle vehicle which looks pretty true to the movie, and utilizes a backcushion to keep the rider in place in a forward crouched position, similar to the one used in Flight of Passage over in Animal Kingdom. It looks like a really exciting ride, and one that may be a little too high octane for me, but I want to try it once anyways. It doesn't appear to have a full upside down section to it, but there is a part too dark to tell from the ride through video. Either way, I'm always excited for new attractions and rides, even if I don't feel the immediate need to ride them. I'm curious to see how this new attraction will impact the wait for Space Mountain with the two being so close together, but we'll have to wait and see.

    Tomorrowland is certainly one of my favorite areas of Magic Kingdom, and I hope I've been able to adequately explain why that is in this post. I haven't been to the park in a little while and in that time, apparently they've changed the entrance sign with very little explanation as to why. This new sign looks much more simplistic as it's just a little white sign as opposed to the old one which looked kind of like a laser or something cool like that. I'm not sure how I feel about that, or if it means that the land as a whole could be in for some retheming, but they may be planning something like that around the 50th Anniversary of Walt Disney World happening in 2021.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, everyone! Before I go, I have to give a quick word on the announcement of the new opening day for Super Nintendo World in Japan, which is now opening in February of 2021. I'm super excited for it, and though I won't be able to go anytime soon, just knowing that it's out there makes me really excited, and hopefully the version opening in Orlando will open relatively soon after the version in Hollywood. Thanks again for reading this post, and let me know if there's something in Tomorrowland that you really love too! I hope you're all doing well, and I'll talk to you again next Friday (which happens to be my birthday)!