Between meeting characters like Pleasure from Inside Out, riding epic roller coasters like Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, and consuming their weight in Mickey ice cream bars and Dole Whips, it’s no surprise it takes my three youngsters a minute to share their favourite factor about Disney World. However on our most up-to-date journey, all three of them fell in love with an surprising attraction — one which’s been at Walt Disney World for 50 years, and one which’s often getting essentially the most wait time in Tomorrowland if it’s raining and folks need an enclosed attraction to get pleasure from.
My youngsters fell head over heels in love with Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress. And the extra I considered it, it made full sense.
Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress is a type of Disney World attractions with a wealthy historical past. It’s been within the Tomorrowland part of Magic Kingdom since 1975, and was initially a sponsored Common Electrical attraction on the 1964 New York World’s Honest. It was meant to be an revolutionary, rotating stage present that highlighted a number of the expertise that’s modified the common, on a regular basis American household because the early 1900s. For the reason that ‘60s, it’s been up to date to mirror much more trendy adjustments. Every of the many years options the identical household, and it’s the proper little slice of life to witness as expertise and innovation have actually taken off during the last 100 years.
However the attraction was designed to focus on each nostalgia and progress, and in 2025, I really feel the depth of that with my three women. The primary time we sat by means of it, even our 2-year-old was in awe.
It opened up a complete dialog for my youngsters in regards to the adjustments on this planet and what “progress” actually means. From Sarah sharing that laundry solely takes her 5 hours now as a substitute of three days (and John, in fact, making somewhat quip about all of the free time she’ll have now) to the daughter Patricia worrying about what her boyfriend will consider her in a Statue of Liberty costume, all of the whereas making an attempt to get in form with an train machine within the ’40s, my women witnessed extra than simply technological progress: They acquired to see feminism in an American household totally launch.
By the tip of the present, the household finds themselves within the 12 months 2000. Patricia’s carrying a university sweatshirt whereas her dad does the cooking — and Mother is on the pc. It is a delicate shift in gender stereotypes, however I really like this development simply as a lot as the arrival of the automobile telephone and speaking home equipment.
In 2025, it is exhausting to think about the Carousel of Progress rising any additional. The present’s finale has been up to date over time with small particulars, however the precise script of the finale (with speaking home equipment and digital actuality recreation headsets) was written in 1994. It is fairly unimaginable to suppose that the imagined future appears to be like a lot like our precise future… and that it appears like we have hit our peak.
In 1994, they imagined we would be able to discuss to our ovens and play digital actuality video games with our grandparents. Now we do. Whereas AI and self-driving vehicles and different expertise really feel like they’re subsequent in line, there additionally appears to be this concept that model new expertise lately is a little bit of a wrestle — it appears like new expertise simply because, and never as a result of we might truly use it or want it in our actual lives. Carousel of Progress takes expertise and makes it work higher and sooner for our households, with out lacking any of the simplicity inside.
Between every decade, the Sherman Brothers’ basic track “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” performs because the attraction’s theme, and my youngsters instantly launched into it. Within the darkened, rotating theater, listening to my three women sing this, feeling all of Walt Disney’s hope and optimism and desires, I acquired tremendous emotional. Carousel of Progress is an ode to shifting ahead, to greater and brighter issues. However it’s additionally an homage to having fun with what’s occurring proper now, to being proud of what we have now and the place we’re.
Carousel of Progress is not about change or kissing the previous goodbye. It is about optimism, pleasure, and development. It is about realizing that these moments along with your youngsters — once they’re all this age as soon as, and also you’re all in Disney World collectively — are valuable, however they don’t seem to be the tip.
It is really easy to get caught up in nostalgia and need our youngsters had the identical childhood we did or that issues have been the identical as they have been earlier than. However our household remains to be our household, and as I develop from having a home filled with preschoolers and infants to tweens and massive youngsters, it feels fairly particular to sit down within the rotating theater and keep in mind that there is a “nice massive lovely tomorrow.”
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