page_title: Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress
section_title: Disneyland
hierarchical_section_title: Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress / History / Disneyland
caption_attribution_description: English: General Electric Carousel of Progress 1972, second act
context_page_description: Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress is a rotating theater audio-animatronic stage show attraction that is located in Tomorrowland at the Magic Kingdom theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida just outside of Orlando, Florida. Created by both Walt Disney and WED Enterprises as the prime feature of the General Electric Pavilion for the 1964 New York World's Fair, the attraction was moved to Tomorrowland at Disneyland in Anaheim, California as Carousel of Progress, remaining there from 1967 until 1973. It was replaced in Disneyland by America Sings in 1974, and reopened in its present home in the Magic Kingdom in 1975.
  Steeped in both nostalgia and futurism, the attraction's premise is an exploration of the joys of living through the advent of electricity and other technological advances during the 20th century via a "typical" American family. To keep it up with the times, the attraction has been updated five times and has had two different theme songs, both written by the Sherman Brothers, Disney's Academy Award-winning songwriting team.
  Various sources say Walt Disney proclaimed that the Carousel of Progress was his favorite attraction.
context_section_description: The Carousel of Progress was re-opened at Disneyland Park on July 2, 1967, and this version only had small differences from the version at the New York World's Fair. The new home for the ride opened nearly seven months after Walt's death, as part of the New Tomorrowland. Due to the success of the attractions Disney created for the Fair, General Electric agreed to sponsor the Carousel of Progress at Disneyland. However, the Carousel of Progress was to be a permanent fixture at Disneyland, and it is unknown how many years General Electric would have sponsored the ride had it stayed there, although it is presumed the sponsorship would have lasted 10–12 years as many other sponsors throughout Disneyland Park had.
  The actual attraction was located on ground level and a new nearly identical theater system was constructed. The sets and "performers" all came right from the Fair exhibit and remained in nearly their original state. There were some slight changes: a new voice was recorded for Mother, "Christmas in the Home of the 1960s" was slightly updated in set design and technology, all references to General Electric's passé "Medallion Home" campaign were dropped, and Father from "The Home of the 1940s" now sat on a bar stool, rather than on the kitchen nook bench.
  After the show, guests boarded an inclined moving walkway that would take them to the second level of the building. On the upper level, a 4-minute post show, narrated by Mother and Father, with a few barks and growls from their dog, coincided with guests gazing at an enormous model of Progress City. Progress City was based on Walt Disney's original concept for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) and the Walt Disney World property.
  As the 1970s rolled in, the Carousel of Progress saw dwindling audiences. GE thought they were not getting the most for their advertising dollars, surmising that 80% of the people that saw the attraction were Californians and had seen the attraction many times. GE asked Disney to move the show to their new Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. The Disneyland show closed on September 9, 1973 and was packed up for Florida. The Progress City model was disassembled and portions of the center of it were re-assembled in Florida.
  Disneyland soon incorporated The Carousel Theater into its plans to celebrate America's Bicentennial.  The theater was filled with a new show in 1974 called America Sings, a salute to American music. That show closed in 1988, not to be replaced for ten years. Innoventions, a version of the popular Epcot attraction of the same name, opened with the New Tomorrowland in 1998, using a stylized rendition of "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" as its theme song. The building was then redesigned and reopened in 2015 as the Tomorrowland Expo Center, hosting the Star Wars Launch Bay.
caption: Act 2 of the 1972 Disneyland version
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