TOMORROWLAND
Armchair Imagineering - New Tomorrowland
I took a chance.
In 1979, when I was 19, I moved from Wisconsin to California with a specific goal: to become a Disney Imagineer. I had already worked on animated figures at the House on the Rock in Wisconsin, and WED Enterprises seemed like the place where engineering, imagination and storytelling all came together.
I applied shortly after arriving in California. I still have the rejection letter. According to the letter, the obstacle was that I wasn't a member of the required union.
I went on to spend my life designing other things, but I never stopped thinking about themed attractions and the future.
When Disney announced in 2026 that Disneyland's Tomorrowland would be re-imagined, I began designing the Tomorrowland I would build today.
I envision a thriving retro-futuristic metropolis full of kinetic energy and guest interaction that make the guest feel involved in the continuing evolution of Tomorrowland.
It's blue sky, but I always start with the sky and eventually find my way back down to earth. I'm working on the ride interiors next and will be posting more details, the ride systems, and hopefully a ride-through of each attraction soon.
New Tomorrowland
This Tomorrowland is a living city of possibility.
Guests do not merely look at predictions of the future—they travel through new transportation systems, experiment with emerging technology, explore science, design inventions, encounter new worlds, and experience practical demonstrations of healthier ways to live. The land is designed to remain unfinished, with exhibits, prototypes, dialogue, and experiences that can continue changing.
What Remains:
The white track is the current Monorail track.
The bluish track is the new Flying PeopleMover track with dashed lines where it passes through attractions to preview them.
The train tracks are in their current location as well
The lagoon remains in its current location.
Space Mountain, Monorail, Railroad, and the lagoon and Submarine track and show building are all preserved.
What would Walt think?
Which ideas best align with Walt Disney's documented design principles?
I was wondering what Walt Disney would think of my ideas for a new Tomorrowland, so I developed an AI-assisted research framework called the Walt Lens. It does not impersonate Walt Disney or claim to know what he would personally think. Instead, it evaluates concepts against documented patterns in his work—kinetic energy, family participation, transportation as experience, optimism, practical operation, and constant improvement. The Flying PeopleMover ranked highest.
I also got a lot of very practical feedback I can use to refine the ride ideas and designs. This is Imagineering in the future!
What was the strongest expression of Tomorrowland ever created—Disneyland’s 1967 New Tomorrowland, Magic Kingdom’s 1994 New Tomorrowland, or something else? For me, the most complete expression was not technically a Tomorrowland at all: it was EPCOT Center’s original Future World. It was futuristic, inspiring, educational, fascinating—and fun.
Flying PeopleMover
What's more retro-futuristic than flying cars?
There is nothing futuristic about driving cars so it's time for Autopia to take to the skies with flying cars!
I understand that the old PeopleMover track isn't salvageable, but everyone loves it and wants it back. I think a Flying PeopleMover is a great way to bring back the PeopleMover and add even more kinetic energy to the land. It traverses the land and previews attractions just like the old one. It could even interact with the attractions it previews, like Edna Mode commenting on a lack of privacy in her Future House with all of the cars flying by her windows.
The ride system can be a suspended tubular guideway with either inductive drive sections on the track or individual drives on each vehicle. The ride should be low speed but variable at different points on the track, like the PeopleMover was. It can sway a little on turns and go up and down easily in different sections of the land.
Another possibility would be to have a second station on the PeopleMover line so it would actually take people over to Exomoon and back making it a true transportation system.
Exomoon: The Crystal Frontier
Race across an alien moon on humanity's most urgent field expedition.
Guests travel to the Asteria Research Outpost on a distant moon covered with towering crystals and orbiting a massive gas giant. When scientists detect an unexplained energy pattern moving beneath the surface, expedition teams board magnetic survey skimmers to deploy a network of monitoring beacons before the moon enters a long eclipse.
The high-speed coaster races through low-gravity canyons, glowing caverns and an electrical storm triggered by the planet overhead. When a moonquake blocks the planned route, the skimmers must find another way through the crystal wilderness.
The expedition ultimately reveals that the crystals form an enormous interconnected system unlike anything previously discovered. An exit exhibit explores the real science of exomoons, tidal heating and the search for environments beyond our solar system.
Edna Mode's House of Tomorrow
Edna designs a home the way she designs a supersuit: around the people who use it.
Guests board Edna’s elegant moving sofas and become the first test residents of her experimental House of Tomorrow. The trackless vehicles glide through transforming living spaces, a robotic kitchen garden, an adaptable multigenerational suite and Edna’s climate-responsive wardrobe.
When Jack-Jack accidentally activates the house’s extreme testing program, the residence must respond to storms, extreme heat and a failure of the electrical grid. Rooms reconfigure, windows adjust and independent energy systems come online—demonstrating that a home of the future can be intelligent, resilient and fun.
After the ride, guests can explore working demonstrations of adaptable furniture, vertical gardens, healthier living environments, water conservation and clean energy. Regularly changing exhibits would allow the House of Tomorrow to present technologies that are emerging now instead of making predictions that quickly become dated.
The Lagoon and Ocean Worlds
Journey through the many worlds hidden beneath the surface.
The beautiful Tomorrowland lagoon remains as the setting for a relaxing new family voyage. Guests board accessible, glass-canopied AquaGliders at the Ocean Worlds pavilion and join an expedition to complete a global network monitoring the health of Earth’s oceans.
After crossing the sunlit lagoon, the vehicles enter a cavern and appear to descend through coral reefs, the mysterious twilight zone, a glowing world of bioluminescent life and an abyssal ecosystem surrounding deep-ocean vents. Physical scenery, animated creatures, water effects and immersive projections reveal the extraordinary variety of life beneath the surface—and emerging technologies that could help protect it.
The pavilion would continue the experience with ocean-exploration exhibits, restoration demonstrations and live scientific discoveries. At night, underwater lighting and fountains could transform the lagoon into a gently glowing bioluminescent sea.
The concept proposes studying whether portions of the existing submerged guided route could be adapted for the new vehicles. This is not assumed to be a plug-and-play conversion; its feasibility would require a full engineering, accessibility and evacuation review.
Inner Space - Beyond Reality
I can't help paying tribute to some of the retro classics that really made an impression on me as a kid.
Adventure through Inner Space was originally an accurate educational ride about matter down to the subatomic size. It was really cool! Now our new frontier has gone past the electrons and the nucleus of the atom and entered the even stranger realm of quantum reality. It's another great chance to educate people about the true nature of the world they live in, and what they are made of.
I think the ride should start where the old one left off. A quick recap of shrinking down to subatomic size and then the rest of the ride exploring the quantum realm with all its quirks and quarks and bizarre behaviors. The finale could explore some of the most fascinating open questions in quantum physics—and end with a playful reminder that imagination is often the first step toward making the impossible real.
The Heart of Tomorrowland
Possibility Spire - Living Futures Gardens - Restore Earth
Open areas:
Tomorrowland’s center is a living demonstration of a better future: the Possibility Spire inspires guests to look upward, while the gardens below show how imagination, technology and nature can improve everyday life.
Possibility Spire:
At the heart of Tomorrowland, the Possibility Spire unites architecture, gardens, water and motion in a living symbol of human imagination. Waterfalls, elevated walkways and the suspended Flying PeopleMover keep the landmark constantly alive.
At the heart of Tomorrowland, the Possibility Spire unites architecture, gardens, water and motion in a living symbol of human imagination. Waterfalls, elevated walkways and the suspended Flying PeopleMover keep the landmark constantly alive.
Living Futures Gardens:
Surrounding the Spire, the Living Futures Gardens let guests experience a healthier tomorrow through solar energy, recycled water, pollinator habitats, sustainable food and welcoming family spaces.
Surrounding the Spire, the Living Futures Gardens let guests experience a healthier tomorrow through solar energy, recycled water, pollinator habitats, sustainable food and welcoming family spaces.
Restore Earth: The Regeneration Challenge
No single invention can restore a planet. Everything has to work together.
Guests join teams devoted to water, energy, food or natural habitats. Through physical experiments, each team develops solutions for a community facing environmental change and carries those ideas into the central Regeneration Chamber.
There, everyone works around an enormous living landscape. Guests restore rivers, balance an electrical grid, reconnect wildlife habitats and support food production while discovering that every decision affects the others. When the teams achieve a workable balance, water returns, vegetation rises and the model transforms into a thriving community.
Their success creates a Renewal Pulse outside the pavilion: the Possibility Spire’s waterfalls intensify and waves of light travel through the Living Futures Gardens. The entire land can see that another group has helped restore tomorrow.
Singularity
Dinner comes with a window into the universe.
High among the spires of Exomoon, Singularity is a full-service restaurant and astronomical observatory overlooking the lagoon, Monorail, Flying PeopleMover and alien coaster landscape.
At the center of the dining room is the Gravity Lens, an experimental observatory that periodically transforms the restaurant for Light Beyond Time. The windows appear to open onto stellar nurseries, distant planets, pulsars and light bending around a black hole before gradually returning guests to the real Tomorrowland panorama.
The menu combines familiar favorites with global flavors, hydroponic ingredients, plant-forward dishes and shareable “orbital flights.” Singularity is designed as a complete dining and entertainment destination—not simply a restaurant with a good view.
Space Mountain Mission Center
Every journey through Space Mountain begins with a mission.
The new Mission Center transforms the Space Mountain queue into the headquarters of the Starlight Survey Corps. Guests become flight crews preparing to carry a navigation beacon through the newly discovered Umbra Passage and extend humanity’s map of the outer solar system.
While moving through the indoor queue, guests encounter changing mission displays, spacecraft laboratories, navigation exercises and windows overlooking robotic vehicle preparation. Each Space Mountain train receives its own flight number and launch assignment.
The existing coaster could remain largely unchanged while synchronized audio, launch effects and a post-flight debrief create a complete story. After every successful return, another beacon appears on the Mission Center’s continually expanding star map.
Tomorrowland Transportation Gateway
A transportation center for an entrance to Tomorrowland.
The current train station in Tomorrowland is functional, but not much to look at. How about a much grander, welcome to future, greeting for guests arriving on the train?
While we are rebuilding the train station why not move it slightly to the north and add a second story that is a tunnel for the Monorail to pass through as it enters the park from the hotel? It could act as a transition from Harbor Blvd. to the future. Maybe some screens or projected effects on the inside of the tunnel-shaped second floor as the Monorail passes through while it is slowing down for the upcoming corner where it turns into Tomorrowland.
While we are on the subject of the Monorail, and since they are building a bridge across Harbor Blvd. for the new Eastern Gateway anyway, wouldn't it be possible to run the Monorail over to the new Eastern Gateway parking lot? That's how they get people to the Magic Kingdom in Florida and it's a great way to enter the park. It would take some more track and another station and it could offer an alternative, exciting way to enter the park. A future feasibility study could examine extending the Monorail to the Eastern Gateway transportation hub.
Muppet Labs: Future Inventions Show
Tomorrow is about to be invented - whether Beaker is ready or not.
Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker unveil the Tomorrow-Maker 9000, a machine designed to create solutions for nearly every problem. Demonstrations include an overly helpful robot, personal weather, instant transportation and several inventions that probably should not be activated together.
When the Tomorrow-Maker combines all of its experiments into one uncontrollable system, the audience must help Beaker stabilize the theater before Bunsen’s vision of tomorrow arrives all at once.
The high-capacity comedy show combines Muppet performers and figures with moving scenery, wind, mist, lighting and seat effects. Changing demonstrations and audience decisions allow the experiment—and the resulting disaster—to vary between performances.
Utopia Idea Foundry
Explore the creative process and develop new attractions using Walt Disney's documented creative principles.
This is a pavilion consisting of several parts. An Omnimover-style dark ride that explores creativity and AI. The experience culminates in Walt’s Tomorrow Workshop, where families develop attraction ideas with an AI-assisted design system. An Audio-Animatronics figure of Walt uses authenticated archival recordings and approved dialogue to ask questions and encourage further thinking, while a clearly identified Imagineering AI analyzes and visualizes the concepts. It is not presented as Walt’s personal judgment or as unrestricted synthetic speech.
Alternatively, the guest could also invent solutions to real-world problems similar to those that were addressed in the original EPCOT plans.
The use of Walt Disney’s likeness and recorded words would require strict historical, legal and creative oversight. The figure would deliver only approved archival or authored dialogue, while a separately identified Imagineering AI would analyze and visualize guest concepts. The purpose would not be to simulate Walt’s personal opinions, but to introduce guests to the questioning, experimentation and constant improvement that characterized his creative process.
Also, the best part of this project redesigning Tomorrowland was getting my Walt lens AI to comment on all of these designs. I think it would make a great attraction to involve the guests in the continued creation of a park that will never be complete.
The Robinsons' Tomorrow House
The future is better when everyone has a seat at the table.
The Robinson family has opened its remarkable home to visiting inventors, travelers and anyone willing to stay for dinner. The multilevel complex combines quick-service dining, garden terraces, moving inventions and panoramic views of Tomorrowland.
The menu offers “comfort food from tomorrow”—familiar favorites with global influences, hydroponic ingredients, customizable meals and playful desserts. Overhead delivery systems and eccentric kitchen inventions keep the entire building in motion.
Several times each hour, Franny Robinson’s frog orchestra rises from the garden stage. Lights, clocks, kitchen machines and inventions throughout the house join the music, turning the restaurant into a kinetic family celebration.
The Time Tunnel: Disneyland Through Time
Disneyland's past was built. Its future is still open.
Guests walk into an apparently infinite sequence of illuminated rings and vanish from view as the tunnel transports them outside ordinary time. They then board Chrono Cruisers for a journey through Disneyland history.
The family dark ride travels from the park’s construction and 1955 opening to the kinetic New Tomorrowland of 1967. It also explores remarkable concepts that were never built before a temporal malfunction begins combining different eras around the vehicles.
When the system attempts to visit Disneyland’s future, it discovers that no single future exists. Guests encounter several possibilities based on exploration, restoration, invention and human connection before returning to the one place from which tomorrow can still be changed—the present.
Use of The Time Tunnel name and television property would require rights clearance. The attraction could otherwise receive an original time-travel identity.
Beyond Earth: Warp Drive
Humanity's first voyage to another sun begins with you.
Guests ascend to an orbital spaceport and join the maiden voyage of Horizon One, the first spacecraft capable of bending spacetime. Its mission is to travel 4.24 light-years to Proxima Centauri b and determine whether our nearest potentially habitable exoplanet could support life.
A violent stellar flare damages the experimental drive, sending the ship careening through distant planetary systems—including the seven-world TRAPPIST-1 system, an ocean planet, a newborn solar system and an uncharted world that may contain signs of life. Stranded far from Earth, the passengers must work together to stabilize the warp field and attempt an untested Horizon 7 jump home.
The attraction combines a rotating motion theater, a surrounding projection dome, real exoplanet science and an evolving post-show connected to humanity’s continuing search for other worlds. Intamin makes a version of this: https://darkridedatabase.com/dome-ride-theater-concept-reintroduced-by-intamin-and-attraktion/
WALL-E Robotics Lab
Build it. Program it. Put it to the test.
Guests work alongside WALL-E, EVE and a team of robotic assistants to turn ideas into working prototypes. Designs created in the Utopia Idea Foundry can be transferred to the lab, or families can choose from rotating challenges involving exploration, recycling, transportation, gardening and future living.
An AI design assistant helps each team develop a buildable plan. Guests then assemble motors, wheels, sensors, arms and other modular components, program their invention and test it in a physical challenge. If it fails, they modify the design and try again.
Each team leaves with a digital visualization showing how its invention might work at full scale, along with the possibility of a small 3D-printed souvenir component. Selected guest inventions are periodically developed into larger prototypes, allowing the lab—and Tomorrowland itself—to keep evolving.
Tomorrowland Monorail Station
A new sleek modern station for Monorail loading and unloading.
This new station is further back toward the Matterhorn and connected to the upper floor of the House of Tomorrow and Robinsons Tomorrow House restaurant.
I'm showing several possible styles for the Monorail Station in this picture, as well as an idea for what the interior might look like.
Tomorrowland should never present the future as finished. It should be a living place where guests travel, experiment, invent and leave believing that tomorrow can be shaped. Its attractions may continue changing, but that purpose should remain.
Disclaimer:
Independent concept study.
Not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by The Walt Disney Company or Walt Disney Imagineering. Disney names, characters and properties remain the property of their respective owners. Concept images are AI-assisted visualizations and are not architectural or engineering drawings. Structural feasibility, capacity, accessibility, cost, operations and intellectual-property rights would require professional evaluation.
All proposed layouts and attraction concepts are independent fan concepts except where existing Disney properties and infrastructure are expressly referenced.