ORLANDO, Fla. — A big change is coming to Magic Kingdom’s long-running rotating stage show.
Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress, which follows an American family over several eras, will close July 6 as the park plans to revamp the attraction with new scenes from different decades.
Walt Disney himself will also come to the stage via audio-animatronic technology, welcoming guests during a brand-new introductory scene.
Each act is as follows, according to the announcement from Disney:
- Act 1 – The 1960s
- Act 2 – The 1980s
- Act 3 – The New Millennium
- Act 4 – The Possible Future
Disney says Act 1 will follow the family in the summer of 1969, gathering together to watch the moon landing of Apollo 11.
Act 2 will pick up on Halloween Night in 1985, where Sarah, the wife of the current show’s main character John, will lead the scene.
Act 3 brings the family to the night of New Year’s Eve 1999, where the characters are getting used to new turn-of-the-century technology like the internet.
Act 4 takes place in the “distant future” and an “out-of-this-world home,” according to Disney. The company also says the final scene will draw inspiration from concept sketches by the late John Hench, a former artist and eventual senior vice president of Walt Disney Imagineering.
Since coming to the Magic Kingdom in 1975, the Carousel of Progress has been largely untouched aside from the final scene, which was updated in 1994 to feature the family in a house during the 2000s. The current cast of voices have also been in use since the 1994 update.
Disney says it expects the new version of the attraction to reopen sometime in 2027.
Alex Henley
Source link