Dark Ride Diaries - Dreaming Up a New Carousel of Progress
Dark Ride Diaries isn't something I plan on doing on the reg. I'm in the middle of writing a longer ramble, plus I thought up another DRD to do as a goof, but then the news broke: Disney plans on updating the Carousel of Progress to add their newest Walt Animatronic to it.
When it comes to the Walt Animatronic, I am firmly in the "this is unneccessary" team. The animatronic is impressive, sure, but it feels like one more step in Disney The Company's obsessive deifying of Disney The Guy. They've been slapping the same old "fun to do the impossible" quotes on sweatshirts and coffee mugs for decades, but the recent editing out cigarettes and the myth making with stuff like Walt's Dreaming Tree and Walt's Lamp stories during COVID are a whole different level of hero worship.
But I know that animatronic cost STUPID money, so yeah of course they're going to get their R&D dollars worth and plop that guy somewhere in the Orlando park. And what better place than the ride that hasn't been updated since 1994 and also technically has Walt Disney's name right in the title?
The official news makes it sound like Walt-bot will be added to the intro and the rest of the attraction will basically stay as-is. If you've never been on the ride, it technically begins with a closed curtain, a spotlight on the logo, and a narrator (voiced by Jean Shepherd, who also does John in the ride) telling us about the '64 World's Fair and how Walt loved this ride, and progress, and the American family, so on, etc. It's a few minutes of staring at a curtain, and it lasts as long as it does because the theater revolves every 4-ish minutes. Giving the folks something to actually watch there sounds like a great idea.
But what if the Imagineers went beyond that and completely revamped the whole ride? It wouldn't be the worst idea; introducing the attraction with a modern 2025 highly-articulated animatronic and then turning the corner and watching a bunch of stiffer 90s animatronics may be a little illusion-breaking. I've thought a lot over the years about how one would modernize the Carousel, and here's my take: Go in chunks of 50 years.
The current Carousel of Progress has four acts, one for each season: Spring 1900, Summer 1920, Fall 1940, and Winter. In the original iteration, Winter was 1964. Today, the final act is the "21st century", which is 1994's not-entirely-inaccurate vision of today. I think keeping the four seasonal stops is nonnegotiable. Any more or less would mean radically changing the way the theater moves and the size of the stages, entirely reworking the building, which is something I can't imagine they'd want to spend the budget on. So how do you decide where to start and begin the story? The original has always begun at the turn of the century, but there's no way to get from there to today (or beyond) in the traditional two-decade chunks.
That's why I propose instead going by 50 years: Spring 1900, Summer 1950, Fall 2000, and Winter 2050.
Spring can basically stay the way as-is. Throw a bone to us oldheads who appreciate the Worlds Fair iteration and the '93 remake.
Summer is where things start to get fun. I've gone on record saying that not only is the CoP my favorite dark ride, I also find it flawless. And I stand by that. But there's always been a part that slightly takes me out of the immersion, and that's the way John completely sidesteps World War II in the 1940s section. And I completely get it, that's a very big and potentially very heavy topic to bring up in less than four minutes. But the way absolutely no one acknowledges it feels silly. But if Act Two is set in the 1950s, it's not an issue anymore! And think about all the fun we could have with the kids! Patty in a poodle skirt, or James listening to this new-fangled Rock N Roll Music.
Act Three is now Halloween in 2000. John cracks jokes about how Uncle Orville hoarded bottled water and toilet paper for Y2K, which came and went with no issue. Patricia's room is wallpapered with posters of boy bands. Maybe Sarah remodeled their basement to turn it into a home theater (a nod to the Rumpus Room in the '93 version). She bought a lot of the components through the computer, on the World Wide Web! Can you believe it? Insert joke where John complains about modem screech here. I don't have a concrete idea for what James should be up to. Skateboarder? Guy Who Saw The Matrix Too Many Times And Now Wears A Big Black Trenchcoat Everywhere? Or maybe he's big into playing Snake on his Nokia brick phone.
Act Four is Christmas in the far(ish) flung year of 2050, and I've got two words for you: HORIZONS, BABY. Throw a couple more bones to the oldsters and mention Patty's newest beau lives in a city "floating" upon the sea, or feature a 3D holographic phone call from Grandma & Grandpa, or maybe set the whole thing on the first-ever colony of a newly terraformed Mars. The last act is always destined to become laughibly outdated or laughibly naïve, so you might as well have fun with it.
That's my dream remake. When everything is said and done, am I upset that Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress, my most favorite dark ride, is getting an update?. I'm more upset that this is going to bump up wait times significantly. But seriosuly though, everything we've heard so far just sounds like they'll be adding Walt-Bot to the beginning of the intro, and that's A-OK by me. The only thing I fear CoP-wise would be a permanent closure, or a revamp with a bunch of Disney properties shoehorned in, like how they reworked Country Bears and El Rio De Tiempo. It would tear the focus of the ride away from the fun optimism to product placement. But hey, the entire genesis of the ride was "how can we find a fun way to hawk General Electric appliances to World's Fair attendees". I guess in some ways it would be more authentic to return to John fawning over his Disney Plus© with Hulu© and ESPN© Unlimited Premium Bundle©© where he can watch his favorite Marvel properties©©©©, available now.
It's cyclical, y'know? It's like a carousel.