Out with the Old Future: Inside the Ambitious, Ground-Up Rewrite of Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress

Magic Kingdom’s longest-running family is leaving the turn of the century for a new future, featuring an all-new Walt Disney animatronic.

There’s a great big, beautiful tomorrow on the way for Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom, but it means saying goodbye to a classic for just a little while.

Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress is temporarily closing its doors on July 6, 2026. The historic rotating theater is scheduled to step out of the rotation until 2027 to undergo one of the most ambitious, ground-up reimagining projects in its 62-year history. For an attraction explicitly designed to celebrate change rather than stand still, this massive update will shine a light on recent accomplishments and look into a future once thought unimaginable.

Walt originally envisioned an extension of Disneyland’s Main Street, U.S.A., called Edison Square. It was to feature a walkthrough drama titled Harnessing the Lightning, focusing on how electricity changed family life. While the street was never built, the core concept survived and was eventually reworked into the Progressland pavilion for the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair.

The show became an instant smash hit, marking the debut of the iconic rotating theater and the legendary Sherman Brothers anthem, “There’s a Great Big, Beautiful Tomorrow.” However, the show centered so heavily on family life because of its corporate sponsor, General Electric.

When GE approached Walt Disney to build the pavilion, their goal was commercial. They needed to salvage their corporate reputation following a major 1959–1961 price-fixing scandal. Involving GE, Westinghouse, and 27 other companies, the controversy resulted in massive fines, high-level corporate resignations, and brief jail sentences for several executives, remaining one of the largest antitrust cases in U.S. history.

GE needed to fix its image, and the Carousel of Progress successfully rebranded the company as a friendly, forward-thinking provider of household comfort by showing how technology improved domestic life across the 1900s, 1920s, 1940s, and the future.

Because the attraction’s last major script refresh happened over three decades ago, the timeline is getting a complete chronological shift. While the Sherman Brothers anthem remains the musical heartbeat of the show, John, Sarah, and the family are transitioning into entirely new decades.

GE stopped sponsoring the attraction in 1985. So the question is how far afield does the new script go from household-centric technological advances.

Guests will also get a glimpse of Uncle Walt himself. The new introduction scene will feature a Walt Disney Audio-Animatronic, inspired by the 1964 television special Disneyland Goes to the World’s Fair, which originally introduced the Carousel concept to the public.

Following the intro, the updated show will feature four brand-new acts:

• Act 1: The 1960s (The Dawn of Space Exploration)
  It’s the summer of 1969, and the family is gathered around a glowing television set to watch Apollo 11 land on the moon.

• Act 2: The 1980s (Bigger, Brighter, and Louder)
  Welcome to Halloween night, 1985. For the first time in the show’s history, Sarah takes center stage to narrate, detailing how high-tech kitchen appliances are revolutionizing the household while John deals with trick-or-treaters and Uncle Orville complains about a lack of privacy.

• Act 3: The New Millennium (Y2K and the World Wide Web)
  The family gathers on New Year’s Eve, 1999, to watch the clock tick down to the year 2000. This scene explores the early days of the internet connecting the world. Keeping the classic domestic humor alive, Grandpa falls asleep before midnight while Grandma secretly switches the channel to watch pro wrestling (Sound familiar? It happens now in the 1940s with one of the first black and wite television).

• Act 4: The Possible Future (An Out-of-This-World Finale)
  The final scene catapults the family into an interstellar future home, complete with space travel and a helpful household robot assistant. The environment draws direct inspiration from original, mid-century concept sketches by legendary Disney Imagineer John Hench.

Carousel of Progress Photos

A look at the Carousel of Progress attraction that had its last performance on July 5, 2026.

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