Disneyland Edutainment Part 7 of 10 ~ Tomorrowland ~ Reprised

Disneyland Edutainment Part 7 of 10 ~ Tomorrowland ~ Reprised

There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow in Tomorrowland?

It’s Teaching Disney Tuesday!

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 or how much more it could be doing today! 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. 

Star Tours just reopened after a long shutdown to upgrade the ride! When you ride this ride you can talk about the movies and translating movies to rides. How would you do it differently? 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 do you and your kids think 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 knights would joust they would carry their lance in their right arm and they wanted their opponent on the right side when they 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? Consider the distance between the wheels of horse drawn cart of 1850, the modern train are the same. It was easy to put a carriage on a train because it the same width. When cars were first designed the width was the same so the wheels would follow in the well established tracks made by the wagons that had already gone ahead. 

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! Help them find out what they need to learn about to bring to life the ideas they have. Tomorrow is a hope and dream for something better than today, even if today was a perfect day at Disneyland.