The history of Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress  starts in the early 60's when many companies were preparing for the World's Fair in New York City in 1964 and 1965.  The Walt Disney Company, then known as WED Enterprises (Walter Elias Disney) was hired by several companies, Ford and Pepsi among them, to design and create exhibits to boldly represent their respective corporations.  None, however, so grabbed the founder's heartstrings like the exhibit he was hired to produce for General Electric.  Progressland's Carousel Theater would be a completely new experience for Walt, and a challenge he couldn't wait to throw himself into.

Subway Poster

Walt immersed himself in the project, even choosing the voices for the show personally, to make sure that the characters reflected the Midwestern values and attitudes that he felt so strongly about. Trying his hardest to let the engineers do the work, he took every opportunity to make his point ever so clear about what story the show should convey.

"When we were designing the thing, Walt couldn't resist getting up and doing the work himself," explains imagineer, John Hench. "He jumped in the bathtub for the Cousin that was visiting--the guy who invented air conditioning with the fan and block of ice. And he'd say, `What would Cousin Orville do if he were in here?' Walt turned the tub around to face the audience, and he took off his shoes and wiggled his toes to show us. He went through the whole bit. He did several of the acts and even vented dialogue as he went. He was the best story man, particularly on the small bits of business, and it's the small individual things that you never forget." (Persistence of Vision Publishing)

Of all of the exhibits that came to fruition, the Carousel Theater was by far the fan-favorite.  It is, in fact, often remembered as the G.E. pavilion. In reality, there were five different sections to the presentation, including Fusion on Earth and Electric Living - an on display electric community.

Designer: WED Enterprises, Inc., Burbank, CA

Structural Engineer: Richard Bradshaw, Inc., Van Nuys, CA

Mechanical & Electrical Engineer: Syska & Hennessy, Inc., NY

Electrical Contractor: Fishback & Moore, NY

Steel Fabricator & Erector: Bethlehem Steel

 

After the fair's end in 1965, the theater was demolished while all of the animatronics and control systems were moved to Disneyland so the show could be put on display in Tommorowland.  The name was changed from Progressland to G.E.'s Carousel of Progress.  It remained there until the early 70's, when it was closed and moved to Walt Disney World in Florida, being replaced at Disneyland by America Sings.  The theme song that had been used since the opening at the fair, "Great Big, Beautiful Tomorrow," was dropped during the transition, and changed to "Now is the Time."  A major change was made in 1992 when G.E. removed its sponsorship of the attraction.  A dramatic rewrite of the final scene, changed the setting from a late 60's culture to a more 90's look with high definition TV., Dad in the kitchen, and Mom doing her work at the computer. (Which if you look closely, is scrolling the script along with the animatronic family.)  During this revamp, the show was renamed Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress and the original song was returned to it's rightful place. Today, the show has the distinguishment of having more performances than any other stage presentation in the world.

 

ADDITIONAL INFO below by Eric Paddon:

and partially obtained from www.burnsland.com



A major change was made in 1992 when G.E. removed its sponsorship of the attraction.

GE actually dropped sponsorship in 1985 which necessitated a quick rerecording of some of Andrew Duggan's lines from the 1981 version, which dropped explicit references to GE.    This was the final version of "Now Is The Time" that played until 1994 and this modified 1985-1994 version was made available in its original archival format on the "Disneyworld Forever" CDs that were sold at the part in the late 90s.

The pristine archival recordings of both the original Fair/Disneyland version of the show and the 1985-1994 Disney World version are located on the audio page.

    Again, I enjoy the site and hope it helps lead to the show getting a renewed lease on life at WDW.

Eric Paddon

Steamboat Willie

"I love the nostalgic myself. I hope we never
lose some of the things of the past." -Walt Disney

 


Click "What's New" above for an excellent feature & additional tribute to the Carousel of Progress from Bill Young's site of the 1964 NY World's Fair  WWW.NYWF64.COMnywf64SiteLogo

 
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