Last week, Disney World announced upcoming changes to the Carousel of Progress, one of its iconic attractions. The rotational stage show is one of my family’s favorite rides in the Magic Kingdom, so I have thoughts!
First thought: just a couple of weeks ago, I promised a future take on Disney World’s parks as travel destinations, complete with “history, abandoned spaces, continuous renewal, educational opportunities, local celebrities, politics, factions, insider secrets” and more. I could not have picked a single attraction to be a better example than Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress.
Let’s Take a Ride
Before we start breaking the fourth wall, let’s take a quick spin through the Carousel as it is today. The show is housed in a 6-stage theater, with one stage used for loading and another for unloading. And it’s not the stage that rotates—it’s the similarly-divided-into-six-parts auditorium that turns every 5 minutes to change scenes.
You’ll take your seat at the loading stage, where the narrator, John, introduces the show. He’ll note that it was created for the 1964 World’s Fair, and that the Carousel of Progress has had more performances than any other stage show “in the history of American theater”. (A run time of only 20 minutes gives it a leg up with that.)
As your load time comes to a close, your seat begins to move, and the Carousel’s earworm theme song “It’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” plays as you rotate into the next stage. For the next four acts, you’ll follow John, Sarah, Grandma, Grandpa, daughter Patricia, son Jimmy, and the family dog Rover through almost a century of progress. The scenes are set as follows:
- Act I: Turn of the Century – Valentine’s Day
- Act II: Twenties – Fourth of July
- Act III: Forties – Halloween
- Act IV: Nineties – Christmas
Each of the first three acts follows a similar formula. John narrates a monologue from the kitchen about recent innovations and how much they’ve improved the quality of life. You’ll hear about marvels such as the cast iron stove and icebox at the turn of the century, and then later about indoor plumbing, and then refrigerators.
Family members interact with John from the sides of the stage, where lighting reveals other rooms of the house that were concealed by scrims. These concealed areas are actually additional rotating stages, one on each side, so there are a total of 5 scenes in each of these acts.
In the final act, “present-day” timing would make a narrator’s monologue a bit awkward. Instead, the stage is full-width and shows the family gathered on Christmas Day. We see “technology of today” presented with the same optimistic tone about quality of life and the future ahead. (I keep using quotes here because the “today” of the Carousel is 30 years in our past … )
One thing the show does exceptionally well is to express its benchmarks as meaningful impacts, more than a vague “it’s better.” In the first act, we’re told that you can now travel across the country by train in just 7 days. In the second act, we hear that it’s only 3 days, and transatlantic flight is right around the corner.
These benchmarks mostly focus on technology, but follow advances in several sectors. In the first act, we hear that increased ice capacity helps keep milk fresh longer in the icebox; in the third act, we hear that refrigerators let you store more food because you no longer need to leave space for the ice. We progress from the phonograph to the radio to the television to video games. And there’s a little bit of social context thrown in; we hear about the rise of jazz music, the rat race, and the rumpus room.
What to Know Beyond the Show
Before this week’s announcement (which we’ll get to in a minute), here’s the history that I would have said makes Carousel of Progress stand out as “more than a ride” on a visit to Disney World.
Innovation
Audio-Animatronics, robotic figures that repeat complex motions and actions according to a set script, are synonymous with Disney. Although other theme parks use them, Disney Imagineers were the original inventors and developers of this technology. Carousel of Progress was groundbreaking: along with another attraction developed for the World’s Fair, it was the first use of human Audio-Animatronics. If you have five minutes, you might enjoy seeing Walt himself discuss how they work.
To give you an idea how novel this was, the core concept of the show dates to the late 50s. A 1958 proposal document for an extension of Main Street U.S.A. at Disneyland speaks of a plan for this area where “America will be seen passing from the ‘old’ of the 19th Century to the ‘new’ of the early 1900s. The electric light is seen taking the place of gas lamps …” The main attraction in this Edison Square area would lead guests through a sequence of stages, each depicting the same home, moving forward in time 20 years at each stage. The idea was shelved for most of a decade, partly because the tech to create it was too heavy a lift.
Sponsorship
Edison Square was to have been a partnership with General Electric, and in 1964, GE asked Disney to build an attraction for their exhibit at the 1964 World’s Fair. With a few changes, that Edison Square attraction proposal became the Carousel of Progress. One of the biggest tweaks was the idea to implement it as a rotating theater. This was a bit of operational wizardry that cleverly addressed the problem of how to get over 200 people to quickly and neatly move between the stages.
You don’t need to know that General Electric sponsored Carousel of Progress from its development through 1985 to enjoy the ride. But it sure does put a different spin on it! Advances in household appliances aren’t the only achievements used to demonstrate the cutting edge of progress through the years, but they are quite prominent. Knowing the sponsorship history will make you see the choices in a different light.
Disney Celebrities
Some of the most well-known Imagineers and creatives in Disney history worked on the Carousel of Progress. That includes Walt Disney, who died in 1966 between its closure at the World’s Fair and its reopening in the parks. The attraction was one of the last projects that Walt himself worked on. And it’s one of a short list of projects he was personally involved in that is still in operation today.
Other Disney-famous names include Bob Gurr, Marc Davis, Alice Davis, and John Hench, all of whom have been honored by Disney as “Disney Legends”. These people might not be well known outside of the Disneyverse. But within it, they are titans for their contributions to both film and parks.
There are a couple more Disney Legends I should mention. Richard and Robert Sherman may be the kings of Disney attraction earworms. “It’s a Small World”? They wrote that. “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”? They wrote that. “Chim Chim Che-ree” from Mary Poppins? Yup. And they also wrote the theme song for Carousel of Progress: “It’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow.”
Finally, there’s Marty Sklar. The Carousel has seen some updates, especially the final scene, which was set in the 1960s when it opened in 1964. Sklar—another Disney Legend—has worked on every version of the ride. The current finale, installed in 1994, features a note tacked to the bulletin board that reads “Marty Called—Wants Changes.” Some Disney historians have speculated since it appeared that this was a subtle acknowledgment that the ride needs more than animatronic maintenance to keep future audiences invested in it.
The End of an Era
When Carousel of Progress first opened at the 1964 World’s Fair, audiences were aware that the Audio-Animatronic technology in it was new and marvelous. Despite being what’s known in Disney lingo as a “people eater” with an hourly capacity of about 3000, it often had long waits. It was so popular that it was the source of another innovation—the wait time sign.
Today, the show is beloved by many—but by no means all—Disney World regulars. But that first-of-its-kind wait time sign only posts more than the 5 minutes to the next show in a few peak weeks. Disney had already announced the addition of a Walt Disney Audio-Animatronic to the show’s introduction in August 2025. Now we know that the current show is being replaced with all-new acts and scripts representing new decades.
The Turn of the Century first act will move to the 1960s, as the family gathers to watch the historic moon landing. Halloween shifts to Act II, set in the 1980s, and Sarah takes on the narrator’s role. Act III moves to the turn of the 21st century, on New Year’s Eve 1999. And Act IV will show a possible future, with handy household robots and space travel.
Disney’s explanation of the reimagining is that it restores a key piece of the Carousel concept. In 1964, the show covered about 60 years of the past, highlighting innovations within the living memory of visitors. The updates aim to restore guests’ ability to relate personal experience to the progress the family portrays.
Disney consistently makes a variety of changes to park attractions to keep them relevant. And these are invariably met with screeching from a faction that I will refer to as “the diehard Disney faithful.” Some of the screeching is about the idea of any change at all. Some of the screeching is about intuited motives: “How dare they give in to woke modern viewpoints and let Sarah take the lead as narrator?!!” And, there are some interesting Ship of Theseus questions about whether it will still be accurate to say that Walt worked on the Carousel when the upcoming work is done.
I won’t deny that my first thought on hearing about the changes was that my daughter—who loves this ride perhaps more than any of us—was going to freak out. But after the initial shock, she, like me, thinks this new version of the Carousel could be great. Because Disney is right.
We, and others who love the Carousel as it is today, appreciate its history and educational impact. We enjoy seeing the Progress Family bring its decades to life for us. But many guests don’t share that contextual appreciation, and I’m sure Disney has data that says exactly that. To put the problem differently: the ride concept taps into nostalgia, but the nostalgia we feel is limited to our experience of the Carousel itself. It doesn’t apply to the content the way it’s supposed to.
Of course, I won’t feel that Disney was right if they don’t do a good job of it. And I have some concerns about that future-focused final act. It’s beyond the scope of this article, but let’s just say that Disney doesn’t have a great history when it comes to imagining the future. And the mid-century modern meets Jetsons vibe that the finale scene concept art gives me isn’t reassuring.
Reservations aside, Disney’s announcement shows they get the love for the current show. The announcement highlights nods to the current version in some of the new scenes, like Grandma switching the TV to wrestling after Grandpa falls asleep. Other descriptions make clear that the individual personalities won’t be changing.
The educational component is also not lost. None of my three kids will have personal experience of the new Act III timeframe; my oldest was born in late 2000. The difference is that if we get to talking about how shag carpet really was a real thing, I’ll be able to share personal stories about other design choices of the era, like wood paneling and the pink toilet in the house where I grew up.
The current version of Carousel of Progress will run through the July 4th weekend at Disney World. On July 6, 2026, it will close, and reopen in 2027 with the new eras in place.
