Disneyland Edutainment Part 7 – Tomorrowland

This land was built by Walt to be the most changing and has been the most challenging to imaginers over the years. Often it ends up feeling more like Yesterland or Dreamland. When the park first opened in 1955 Tomorrowland was designed to show the then far away future of 1986. Today there is no set future date. This land above all others represents hope for a better tomorrow.

Drop into the House of the Future inside Innoventions. See what technology of today will be doing for us tomorrow! See what is about to be put out for the general public to purchase for their homes in the near future. How could that technology make your life better and what ideas do you have for new things to make life easier. Check out the other areas of Innoventions while you are in there. See what other technology is just coming out to make our lives safer, easier, fun and healthy than it is today.

You can step into Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters and enjoy a flight into a fanciful fight between good and evil! More fun than learning but you can still ride and talk about how the ride is done and how would your child make a ride of their favorite video game, book or movie? What is the story the ride is telling? This ride can really be helpful in expanding your child’s imagination and creativity. It can encourage your child to read. They get the enjoyment of acting out a character from a story they have read and therefore maybe encouraged to read more. This ride could encourage hours of creative play time at home as well.

Ride Star Tours (Shut down for now with new tours being planned to start May 2011.) and talk about the movies and translating movies to rides. How would you do it differently? What other planets in the Star Wars universe would you like to see added and how could it be done? How would you do the line area to make it more interesting for the people standing in the long line? How would you design the line so the maxim amount of people could be waiting for the ride in the available space without feeling squished and allow movement? How do they do that ride?? What is space REALLY like? How does real spaceflight work today? Get into the history of spaceflight and talk about astronomy. Who knows! Your child could be the next Buzz Aldrin or Sally Ride.

Finding Nemo is a good place to talk about the fragility of the sea and what we can do to protect it. You can talk about different marine life and how important it is to us landlubbers. What does it take to keep a Submarine going? How do you design them and what happens when it goes under water? What is in a scuba tank? How do they get the characters swimming right in front of you?

The Autopia is a fun place to talk about transportation again. Right around the corner from Autopia is the Tomorrowland Train station. Talk about a clear vision of past and present transportation! What is the best way to get around? How did people get around 50, 100, 150 or even 200 years ago? 175 years ago how long would it have taken to cross our great country? What about 150 years ago? How about today? What type of personal transportation will be around in 20, 30 or maybe 50 years? Why do we have road signs and traffic laws? Here is a funny bit of interesting trivia. Why do the English drive on the left side of the street? They drive on the left because when jousting you would carry your lance in your right arm and you wanted your opponent on the right side when you were passed. It is a carryover from days long ago. History affects today in strange ways. What other ways does history effect transportation and other parts of our lives?

Most of the plants in Tomorrowland are edible. What is the reason behind planting edible plants in Tomorrowland? What do you think it takes to keep them all looking so beautiful? What edible plants would you like to plant in your garden and how could you plant it so it is beautiful and provides food. How many plants would you need to plant to provide enough food for your family? Maybe this could be a start to a family garden!

Over all Tomorrowland is a good place to get kids excited about tomorrow. There is a great big beautiful tomorrow waiting at the end of every day! What does your child see in their future? What job would they like to do? What new inventions would they like to see when they grow up? Do they have ideas for a new “thing-a-ma-gig” that just might make tomorrow a brighter day? Encourage them to try! Tomorrow is a hope and dream for something better than today, even if today was a perfect day at Disneyland.