Originally Posted By Schmitty Good Vibes There has been a lot of 'arm chair imagineering' done over the years on this site about what we'd like to see done to improve Tomorrowland. One thing that has been mentioned a few times by several posters is the concept of multiple levels of attractions in Tomorrowland. It's an idea I liked. I've been in the midst of a big project of organizing stuff I've had in storage for years and one thing I had been collecting was actual construction blueprints for the attractions. One of my favorites is a Site Plan for the Park at a scale of 3/4" = 50'. Another I have is a site plan for Tomorrowland at a much larger resolution. It really only covers the East 2/3 of Tomorrowland, not the entire land. I know that it is from the late sixties or thereabouts. The Carousel of Progress is prominent, and that was open from 1967 until 1973. Space Mountain (opening in 1977) is a future attraction. This site plan looks just like a blow up of the one of the entire park, but with more detail. For example, the tunnel from the Carousel area to the Tomorrowland Terrace is shown. The titles of the individual show scenes in the Carousel are there. I was rolling it up to put it away again when my eyes caught something. I'd always noticed it said "Future Space Mountain", but now I saw that this blueprint from WED said 'Future Space Mountain Above' and 'Future Flying Saucers Below'. Wow! Sometime in the late sixties or perhaps the early seventies someone at WED was thinking about bringing the Flying Saucers back and perching Space Mountain above them! I can imagine how high up in the air Space Mountain would have been and that's probably why this didn't come about. The loading area of Space Mountain was put quite a few feet below ground level to keep the site lines from Main Street from being overwhelmed (they used to think a lot about those things). You don't dig an expensive hole like that for nothing. I'm just getting my PC at home set up, so I'll try to get a photo of this up for all on the LP Flickr site soon.
Originally Posted By Hans Reinhardt You may have already seen this, but take a look at this Space Mountain concept art that shows a two level Tomorrowland proposed for 1967: <a href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/101/256749934_8f89a2fa72.jpg?v=0" target="_blank">http://farm1.static.flickr.com....jpg?v=0</a>
Originally Posted By oc_dean Can't wait to see it. And I can't wait to see ... IF we ever see it anytime in the near future .... the plans Tony Baxter has up his sleeves with the proposed make over of the land.
Originally Posted By Schmitty Good Vibes O.K., I just had my internet hooked up at home half an hour ago, but I'm back at work until very late (see World Events). At least it's paying for my new PC, which would have fit right in with the "New Tomorrowland" seen above. I sort of wish the Space Mountain vehicles could have come out looking like that. Then again, I'm always voting with OC_dean, if you must do a 'retro' Tomorrowland, go Googie! Now where did that hottie Judy Jetson go to?
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I really like the idea of stacking things on top of one another in TL and really making it a place with a ton of things to do. The problem with this, as has already been stated, is that it would get pretty tall pretty quickly. Most attractions (especially the ones in TL) have very high ceilings (15-20+ ft in most places). While this is great for the attraction itself, it's bad for trying to make them several layers. Obviously there are ways around it, but they can be a little tricky. Alice in Wonderland managed to do it, but all of the scenes on the upper level are quite short (they feel like the height of a normal room in a house), as well as Mr Toad below being a little shorter than the other darkrides (though not too much shorter). It's possible for them to work around that, or even work with it if they try, but it's definatley a lot harder to pull of an impressive ride with short sets. The PeopleMover made this work wonderfully, as it was on the second level, but utilized many of the same sets, and had a small impact on each building for the relatively narrow track. And there's yet another option. There are smaller spaces within existing buildings that aren't being used to their fullest extent. Probably the easiest of these to point out is the upper level of the Starcade, which has been empty for about a decade now. There's also some room inside the Space Mountain building from the kitchen area of the snack bar (was it called the Space Bar??) that used to be in the area that now houses the FP stations for SM. If they rearrange some of the traffic patterns, they could get a ton of space from the area that currently has the HISTA queue, Redd Rockett's overflow seating, and Space FP too. Also, they built an identical copy of DL's Space Mountain in Hong Kong Disneyland, and managed to find room inside the mountain to add a small-ish gift shop, and a Stitch attraction similar to Turtle Talk. I don't think there was a ton of room for either, but if used wisely, and with other neighboring spaces, they could create some really cool attractions that have a way of 'interlocking' with each other, sort of like how they might if they were stacked. I don't know how feasible it would be to have several layers to Tomorrowland (especially with current wheelchair accessability laws), but there are definatley other ways to make that general idea work. I think it would be really interesting to see what they could do with all the little pockets of unused space sitting around in Tomorrowland.
Originally Posted By RobinsonCrusoeEsq Hi. Just wanted to say that if you can find concept art from the era to look at, a two-tiered Tomorrowland was at least always in the back of someone's mind at WED. The Peoplemover would slow down and match speed-ramps so one could hop on or off at points of interest. To this day, the entrance to DL's Space Mountain is on that second floor. Carousel of Progress actually exited on the second floor too, and if you want to stretch your imagination, so did RocketJets. There are others, like the monorail that boarded upstairs. Tokyo Disneyland tomorrowland shops have huge atriums and ceilings, that echo the 60s tomorrowland that was original to WDW. You could say they were always "reaching for the stars" in Tomorrowland.
Originally Posted By Schmitty Good Vibes Rats! My brand new monitor isn't working! I'll try to troubleshoot it tonight, then I'm probably off to Fry's tomorrow to fix whatever it is (video card?), so no blueprint photos for a while. Anyway, there is a lot of unused space in the deck area in front of Space Mtn. The queue generally uses the perimeter of that area. I can imagine that if they reworked it and pushed the queue to the East side of that deck, using all of the East half or East 2/3, they could expand the Starcade area quite a bit. I doubt that either the Starcade or that deck were built to support ride vehicles, but with a little imagination they could provide some great walk through exhibits as filler attractions and use the Carousel for a big E ticket or two. Without too many floor modifications they could put pillars through that could provide a roof deck strong enough to suspend vehicles from and get a great 'Peter Pan' style attraction - no characters please. There are hundreds of things they could do, but where is the will and the $$? I miss the Space Mtn. escalators. Bring them back with an elevator for ADA compliance, get rid of that awful marble and you have a bunch of extra room (I guess the escalator would require too many cast members as you'd have to have one at the top and one at the bottom to keep people from boarding it when the crowd backs up upstairs, so why not a spiraling pedestrian ramp?) I think it is all an issue of $$ and an under appreciation by top brass of the value of new ideas.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros "I guess the escalator would require too many cast members as you'd have to have one at the top and one at the bottom to keep people from boarding it when the crowd backs up upstairs" Hey, this is the 21st century, I'm sure they could figure something out. They could install a video camera at the top of the ramp, and have a little screen at the bottom for the CM to watch. Heck, that's how the FP merge points work on Space Mountain and Indiana Jones already. It could in theory need an extra CM in addition to the ones they already need, but I think that the 2 or 3 usually positioned at the entrance of the attraction could probably handle that as an additional task.
Originally Posted By monorailblue What is amazing is how multi-level Tomorrowland has been for quite some time. Subs with Autopia, Peoplemover and Monorail above it. Space queue above a theater. 2-level Innoventions. Formerly Rocket Jets above Peoplemover. With New Orleans Square, Tomorrowland has, historically, been the most stacked land in the park. I'm all for more of it.
Originally Posted By Schmitty Good Vibes Yeah, it seems to be all there, they just aren't using these areas, or the areas being used aren't being used to their potential (Innoventions).
Originally Posted By mawnck >>My brand new monitor isn't working! I'll try to troubleshoot it tonight, then I'm probably off to Fry's tomorrow to fix whatever it is (video card?),<< Fry's? Fix, schmix. Make 'em give you a new one, or better yet a refund so you can buy one at a real store. ;-)
Originally Posted By inlandemporer I always loved the idea of a multi-level TL. I don't think we'll see anything like it unless they do a total re-do, as opposed to just piecemeal fixing up.
Originally Posted By Schmitty Good Vibes Got a brand new monitor. It is awesome. I'm figuring my way around Vista, but I'll try to have some picks up this weekend.
Originally Posted By patrickegan Get a Mac! Tomorrowland is turning out to be very futuristic as it languishes in great promise with no budget.
Originally Posted By Bellella How in the heck could they pull off a feat of construction like that? If they're going to make Tomorrowland a two-level thing, they might as well raise Space Mountain and let it tower over the Matterhorn as the tallest ride in the park!
Originally Posted By Hans Reinhardt Originally Space Mountain was going to be as tall as, or taller than the Matterhorn. The final version was "sunk" (the loading area is below ground level) and chopped in height to fit into DL's smaller scale. Isn't WDW's Space Mountain roughly the same height as the Matterhorn?
Originally Posted By trekkeruss WDW's Space Mountain is actually taller than the Matterhorn, but it doesn't look like it because of its shape and location.
Originally Posted By 2001DLFan <<Hans Reinhardt: You may have already seen this, but take a look at this Space Mountain concept art that shows a two level Tomorrowland proposed for 1967: <a href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com....jpg?v=0>>" target="_blank">http://farm1.static.flickr.com...>></a> That bottom right rendering looks a lot like an early concept they had for the Euro Disneyland’s “Discovery Mountain” (name changed to Space Mountain) project. I recall that the Tomorrowland 2055 project had two levels in some areas. That concept was somewhere in the late 90’s.
