Walt Disney’s Carousel Of Progress Is 50 Years Old & Still A Perfect Attraction

Between meeting characters like Joy from Inside Out, riding epic roller coasters like Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, and eating their weight in Mickey ice cream bars and Dole Whips, it’s no wonder it takes my three kids a minute to share their favorite thing about Disney World. But on our most recent trip, all three of them fell in love with an unexpected attraction — one that’s been at Walt Disney World for 50 years, and one that’s usually getting the most wait time in Tomorrowland if it’s raining and people want an enclosed attraction to enjoy.

My children fell head over heels in love with Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress. And the more I thought about it, it made complete sense.

Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress is one of those Disney World attractions with a rich history. It’s been in the Tomorrowland section of Magic Kingdom since 1975, and was originally a sponsored General Electric attraction at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It was meant to be an innovative, rotating stage show that highlighted some of the technology that’s changed the average, everyday American family since the early 1900s. Since the ‘60s, it’s been updated to reflect even more modern changes. Each of the decades features the same family, and it’s the perfect little slice of life to witness as technology and innovation have really taken off over the last 100 years.

But the attraction was designed to highlight both nostalgia and progress, and in 2025, I feel the depth of that with my three girls. The first time we sat through it, even our 2-year-old was in awe.

It opened up a whole conversation for my kids about the changes in the world and what "progress" really means. From Sarah sharing that laundry only takes her five hours now instead of three days (and John, of course, making a little quip about all the free time she'll have now) to the daughter Patricia worrying about what her boyfriend will think of her in a Statue of Liberty costume, all the while trying to get in shape with an exercise machine in the '40s, my girls witnessed more than just technological progress: They got to see feminism in an American family fully launch.

By the end of the show, the family finds themselves in the year 2000. Patricia's wearing a college sweatshirt while her dad does the cooking — and Mom is on the computer. It's a subtle shift in gender stereotypes, but I love this progression just as much as the advent of the car phone and talking appliances.

In 2025, it's hard to imagine the Carousel of Progress growing any further. The show's finale has been updated over the years with small details, but the actual script of the finale (with talking appliances and virtual reality game headsets) was written in 1994. It's pretty incredible to think that the imagined future looks so much like our actual future... and that it feels like we've hit our peak.

In 1994, they imagined we'd be able to talk to our ovens and play virtual reality games with our grandparents. Now we do. While AI and self-driving cars and other technology feel like they're next in line, there also seems to be this idea that brand new technology these days is a bit of a struggle — it feels like new technology just because, and not because we'd actually use it or need it in our real lives. Carousel of Progress takes technology and makes it work better and faster for our families, without missing any of the simplicity inside.

Between each decade, the Sherman Brothers' classic song "There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" plays as the attraction's theme, and my kids immediately launched into it. In the darkened, rotating theater, hearing my three girls sing this, feeling all of Walt Disney's hope and optimism and dreams, I got super emotional. Carousel of Progress is an ode to moving forward, to bigger and brighter things. But it's also an homage to enjoying what's happening right now, to being happy with what we have and where we are.

Carousel of Progress isn't about change or kissing the past goodbye. It's about optimism, excitement, and growth. It's about knowing that these moments with your kids — when they're all this age once, and you're all in Disney World together — are precious, but they aren't the end.

It's so easy to get caught up in nostalgia and wish our kids had the same childhood we did or that things were the same as they were before. But our family is still our family, and as I grow from having a house full of preschoolers and babies to tweens and big kids, it feels pretty special to sit in the rotating theater and remember that there's a "great big beautiful tomorrow."