Back in 2015 I wrote extensively about Tomorrowland at Disneyland and penciled out a plan to address some of the issues facing one of my favorite lands. You can find that original blog post here: Save Tomorrowland!. In that post I cover the issues I saw with the land in detail. Head there first as I won’t be retreading the issues just daydreaming a new built plan.

PLAN

Smaller is Better: Making Tomorrowland smaller is the most important element of any plan that could be put forth to deal with the land’s persistent issues. This plan reduces the size of  Tomorrowland from 16.4 acres to 4.8 acres. Tomorrowland would now be a much more manageable size and would be comparable in size to the other lands.

Remove Autopia: While beloved by many, this attraction has one of the lowest hourly capacity/sf ratios of any attraction in the park. This problem is not offset by other factors. The land used by this attraction does not add ambiance or other value to adjacent areas. A good example of this would be how the Rivers of America and it’s attractions add value and visual appeal to the lands immediately around them. Autopia’s vehicles are loud and produce exhaust. A high number of cast members are required to operate the attraction. It has a height requirement that precludes some guests. It has high maintenance costs and operating costs. It also has higher than average personal injury liability for guests and cast members. Removing this single attraction would free up nearly 5 acres of land. That’s the equivalent land needed to house all of the following: Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Peter Pan’s Flight, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Snow White’s Scary Adventure, Pinocchio’s Daring Journey and Alice in Wonderland! This is by far the most under-utilized land in all of Disneyland.

Re-purpose the Submarine Voyage: The Subs also have a very low hourly capacity/sf ratio, but it’s still double that of Autopia. Here we keep the lagoon and disconnect this entire area from Tomorrowland.

Edit the Monorail route: In this plan the winding Monorail track north of Innoventions, around Autopia and the Matterhorn would be completely removed. The Monorail would now enter only into the park at its station adjacent to the submarine lagoon. The Monorail would now act only as a transportation system. The existing track length is approximately 2.5 miles. By removing the looping ‘attraction’ portions (nearly a mile of track) the transit time from the station outside the park to the station within the park is reduce by roughly 60%. This would greatly increase capacity, reduce operating costs, reduce maintenance costs,  make it a true transportation system, free up huge amounts of valuable real estate, remove the theme conflict at as the Monorail passes through Fantasyland and open up the possibility of adding a station at the Grand Californian, DCA or a future third gate.

Tomorrowland Plaza as Center: With it’s reduction in size, Tomorrowland would be located only immediately around a new Tomorrowland Plaza. If buildings are constructed on the north edge of the plaza, this land now begins to have a sense of physical connection through adjacency. This space would be designed to be both convex and positive in form.

Create a New Lands: With the reduction of the Tomorrowland’s size, 14 acres are freed up to be developed into new lands and attractions.

Create a new spoke off of Disneyland’s hub: The entrance to Tomorrowland would be relocated and a new spoke off the main hub would be created. This spoke would roughly align with the existing path that leads to the restrooms that are currently located between the Plaza Inn and the current entrance to Tomorrowland. This spoke and entrance would be made to be roughly symmetrical to the Adventureland spoke. This new entrance would solve several problems. It would enhance guest circulation by creating another exit from the main hub. It would balance the hub’s circulation symmetry and reduce bottle-necking on the east side of the hub. It would set-up an entrance that would use Space Mountain as the proverbial “weenie”, drawing guests to the back of the land. Space Mountain would now be located on the axes of both pathways into the land.

Revised Tomorrowland Concept: At the heart of our plan is a shift in the concept from knowable future-technology to unknowable, mysterious technology while maintaining the underpinnings of optimism, empowerment and freedom. Space Mountain embodies these traits and would remain as the centerpiece of this new Tomorrowland. Arthur C. Clarke’s third law of futurism: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Using this idea as our foundation, we can construct a Tomorrowland that is unconstrained by current or predictable technologies. In designing this land and it’s attractions we can let our imaginations reach beyond what is conceivable to that which is magical. This type of thinking also allows Tomorrowland to come into harmony with the rest of the park. This is at the core of what Disneyland was intended to be: a place to explore the imagination. With these ideas in mind we can create a powerful place that is mysterious, magical and beautiful.

Theme / Built Form: To accomplise transporting guests to an optimistic future I’m choosing to dig deep into our past. The land would feel as if guests were walking into an ancient canyon not into a path between buildings. Entrances into interior spaces would feel more like caves than doorways. Importantly, the rock itself would be made from a substructure of voxel-like elements that are all one sized. All dimensions and form within the rockwork would be divisible by this simple building block. This smallest unit of form would be visible in areas at the lower elevations of the rock-work and help create an effect of classic rustication. Each of these units would me about 4″-5″ on a side rougly matching the size of a human hand. They would be matte and have a dark, basalt-like texture. Most of the rock-work would be comprised of geometric translucent fiberglass which wraps and expresses the underlying form of the smaller voxel units. At night this skin of the rock-work would glow and guests could perceive underlying, darker stone-like voxel structure that forms the basis for the forms themselves. The glowing structures would be only lighting in the land at night. Like crystalline structures rising from a bed of noise, the rock-work forms would become more coherant and geometric the higher up the wall guests look. Creating a naturalistic looking form, yet one that also looks constructed at the same time. I’ve used alogorithms to generate these forms. The diamond-square alogrith, often used to create topographical height maps for CG terrain, was used to extrapolate the initial ground state of the seed values of a simple displaced plane. A cellular automata alogorith was used in 3 dimensions to create a variety of 3d forms comprised of voxels. I modified initial conditions and curated outcomes of the cellular automata process to arrive at the final rock-work forms. What I hope to achieve with this is a naturalistic looking landscape in scale and form, yet one that at the same time looks as if it were engineered. My hope here is to create a profound sense of wonder and optimism that humanity will seek to recreate and augment nature, not superceed it. I believe a vision of our future where the built environment has the form of ancient canyons, caves and mountains presents a novel, timeless and hopeful view into our future that would also create an ‘evergreen’ premise for Tomorrowland that is deeply rooted in our humanity.

Pathways Elevated Above Ground: The current pathways are at ground level or even seem to be below the ground plane when adjacent to raised planters. This plan proposes ‘elevating’ all walkways from the ground plane. This can be achieved by excavating the planted areas to create a natural rough terrain some 12″ below the walkways. The desired effect would be similar to that of walking on an elevated pathway when approaching a beach. The landscape feels wild and untouched. The elevated walkway gives freedom of movement over difficult and lush terrain. This will reinforce our concept of freedom and empowerment. The lower ground plane will be planted with ancient species of ferns, succulents and non-flowering trees. There will be no raised planters in this land. Large raised planters give the impression of walking below the ground plane. Plantings above the ground plane will differ greatly from those on the ground plane. While the ground plantings will feel ancient and wild, plants above the ground plane will feel cultivated. All flowering and edible plants will be located in the cultivated areas above the ground plane. All trees will be planted in the lowest ground plane or within the rock walls themselves. A tree-like feel may be replicated above the ground plane by built structures that house many separate plants.

‘Relocate’ Buzz Lightyear: Add a second track and show building at the existing pad directly behind Toy Story Midway Mania in DCA. This new attraction will carry the Buzz Lightyear name and theme, but incorporate the 3D technology and ride vehicles from Toy Story Midway Mania. This will essentially double the capacity of this very popular attraction. It will also give a second attraction that will have some shared operating and maintenance costs. As very little of the existing Buzz Lightyear attraction will be reused (we’ll reuse the Buzz AA and other queue elements only), the new attraction can be built while the old version is still in operation allowing for a down time measured in weeks. We feel that this is a much stronger move to increase capacity than simply adding a second track that is identical to the existing Toy Story attraction.

Remove Astro Orbiter: The much criticized relocation of this attraction to the front of Tomorrowland creates problems: the queue and attraction create pedestrian congestion at the entry walkway and the position of the attraction is so close to the hub that it creates visual competition with the castle. We recommend removing the attraction completely. While it has an outstanding capacity/sf ratio, it has a very low hourly capacity. This footprint can be used in more productive ways.

A timeless attraction for Tomorrowland: Create a new dark ride developed around the film ‘WALL-E’ within the land utilizing some existing back-of-house space. The underlying themes of this attraction would be transformation and optimism. This attraction would not take guests through the story presented in the film, but would rather pick-up where the movie left off and take them on the journey as presented in the end title sequence. Guests would bear witness as humanity and its technology transform the Earth from a state of utter desolation back to a state of beauty and harmony. WALL-E and Eve act as the hosts, separately appearing at various points and ultimately coming together in the final scene where we see a re-built and beautiful planet. In this new world there is a place for WALL-E, Eve and their kind. We see them in the final scene at a distance enjoying this new world and their place in it.

Dining options and locations: Two elevated dining locations for Tomorrowland. The first would be counter-service and would be located near the north Tomorrowland entry. A portion of this building would be a covered greenhouse-like space similar to the Eden Project structures in Cornwall England. This space would serve as guest seating and would be filled with water-features and terraced lush plantings. The second restaurant would be located deeper into the land near the Space Mountain queue entrance. The building itself would be a greenhouse made of sharp crystalline forms similar to the rock-work in form but would be competely transparent with dichroic reflections. Within this greenhouse would be a table service restaurant. Guest seating would be throughout the greenhouse amongst living trees, gardens and water features. Life-like animatronic animals of all kinds would live amongst the trees, rocks and streams.  Wondrous machines would float overhead providing soft, shifting light at night.

Disneyland Resort Development Plan: In 2015 I wrote how Disney could be well served by not proceeding with the Eastern Gateway parking structure, but instead focus its efforts on bringing guests in through Downtown Disney. I created the preceeding map to show how this approach could have several benefits. Disney has since cancelled the Eastern Gateway project and is currently building a parking structure exactly where I was showing it as a phase 1 move. I’m sure Disney’s thinking is diffent than my own and it is certaintly much better informed and thought out than my simple plan here, but I think this could portend a transformation in the way all guests enter the parks. In my next post I plan on expanding on the simple plan I presented in 2015 and dig a little deeper into the possible reasoning behind the cancellation of the Eastern Gateway project and the recently proposed 5 star hotel.