Concept for entrance to Land of Tomorrow,
Tomorrowland, Disneyland;
Anaheim, California
1954
Herbert Ryman

Walt Disney Imagineering Collection
© Disney

Tomorrowland

The various versions of Tomorrowland on view exemplify the difficulty of envisioning the future. It is the only area of Disneyland not based on specific models from the movies or cultural sites throughout the world. At its birth in Anaheim, Tomorrowland consisted of nothing more than a rocket ship as a vertical focus plus balloons, props, and sets from Disney's then-recent film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. By 1959 the first monorail assembled in America was installed there, a glamorous mode of public transportation in contrast to the car culture that was transforming America. Visitors will see that Tomorrowland became an area that was under constant revision from its start; serial visions of the future quickly became outmoded. Paradoxically, the solution at Disneyland Paris has been to focus on a late nineteenth-century view of the future as conceived by Jules Verne. In a sense all of Disneyland is a vibrant fiction, and Tomorrowland crystallizes and reinforces this impression.

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[Simulations]
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