Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress is getting another update, and Disney says a “great big, beautiful tomorrow” is on the way for the long-running Magic Kingdom attraction. The company says guests will soon be able to see Walt Disney himself in the ride through Audio-Animatronics technology.
The change adds a new layer to an attraction that has already spent 60 years shifting with the times while keeping its message intact. Disney said the new figure will appear in a scene inspired by the 1964 special Disneyland Goes to the World’s Fair, the program in which Disney first introduced the idea behind Carousel of Progress.
That history runs back to the 1950s, when Walt Disney imagined an extension of Main Street, U.S.A. called Edison Square. The concept would have centered on Harnessing the Lightning, a walkthrough drama about how electricity and technology changed the American family’s daily life. Disney and his team of Imagineers later reshaped that idea into Carousel of Progress for the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair, where it debuted in the Progressland pavilion and introduced both the attraction’s rotating theater system and its anthem by Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman.
Disney brought the show to Disneyland in 1967, where it opened with a refreshed finale set in Progress City. It moved to Walt Disney World in 1975 and has remained a fixture at Magic Kingdom, changing over time through new scripts, voice actors, time periods and full scene updates. For its first two decades in Florida, the attraction featured The Best Time of Your Life, which still plays as background music throughout Tomorrowland today.
The last major update came in 1994, when Disney added a new finale scene and brought back There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow. That song returned the ride to the message at the center of Walt Disney’s original thinking: that progress was not just a technical idea, but something that could improve ordinary family life. Disney Parks Blog said Carousel of Progress was designed to celebrate change, not to stand still.
The new Walt Disney figure also deepens the personal connection between the attraction and its creator. Carousel of Progress grew out of the same era that produced Disneyland Goes to the World’s Fair, where Disney explained his faith in progress as a force that could shape a better future. The attraction has long reflected that optimism, and the coming update suggests Disney is leaning into it rather than preserving the show exactly as it was.
That is the tension built into Carousel of Progress after six decades in operation: it is a classic because it keeps changing, but every update has to respect the version of the future Walt Disney believed in. Disney has not said when guests will see the new figure, but the announcement makes clear the attraction is heading into another phase, one that puts its founder back inside the carousel of progress he imagined.
