Disney announced the Tomorrowland overhaul at D23. Then said basically nothing about it.
Some context.
Look, Disneyland is about as close to a perfect theme park as anybody has built. Adventureland holds up. New Orleans Square might be the finest themed area Disney has ever done. Critter Country, Frontierland, Fantasyland, Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, all working. The park is dense and walkable in a way that Florida parks never managed to pull off.
And then there is Tomorrowland.
Fans have been saying the same sentence for a decade. It looks like the future as imagined in 1998. Empty track running overhead. Buildings sit half-used. A Star Wars ride in a park that already has an entire Star Wars land. Too many overlays have piled up since 1955, and now the place says nothing coherent about tomorrow at all.
So D23 rolls into California this month, and this is the announcement everybody wanted.
Disney delivered. Kind of.
Neil Patrick Harris and Disney Experiences Chairman Thomas Mazloum took the stage at the Horizons: Disney Experiences Showcase and confirmed Tomorrowland is getting reimagined around the theme “Yesterday's Tomorrow, Today.”
Now here is the part nobody wants to talk about.
They Gave Up Almost No Details
The whole presentation was philosophical. Honor Walt's vision. Restore the optimism. Lovely as a mission statement.
No concept art. No confirmed closures. No timeline whatsoever.
Nobody knows if Astro Orbiter moves off the entrance. Nobody knows what takes over Star Wars Launch Bay. Nobody knows if the PeopleMover is coming back.
Which tells you this is early. It also means there is still time to be loud about it, and three things matter more than anything else.
1. The PeopleMover, Obviously
This is the whole ballgame.
If the entire Tomorrowland project turned out to be nothing but the PeopleMover returning, a huge chunk of fans would call it a success and mean it.
The Walt Disney World version, the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover, is still one of Magic Kingdom's most beloved rides. Calm, continuous loading, actually relaxing in a park that rarely lets you sit.
Disneyland's version arguably had the better track.
And that track is still up there. Empty since Rocket Rods shut down in 2000. Guests have walked underneath it every single day for 26 years.
Losing the ride was bad. Leaving the bones hanging over the land for a quarter century and never replacing it is the part that actually stings.
Skip it now, and this goes down as one of the great missed opportunities in Disneyland history.
2. Star Tours Needs a Reason to Be There
It made sense once. A motion simulator felt genuinely futuristic in 1987, and it belonged in a land about the future.
Different park now.
Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge takes up an enormous footprint on the other side of Disneyland. Having a second Star Wars attraction parked across the way no longer makes sense, and it feeds the real problem. Tomorrowland has turned into the place IP goes to sit rather than a land with an identity of its own.
The ride system can survive. Star Tours could get a completely new skin without Imagineering having to start from scratch.
The better answer is something original. An attraction built around Tomorrowland's optimistic future instead of one more IP swap. Harder. More expensive. Also, the only version that fixes the actual issue.
3. Do Not Pave the Lagoon
Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage and Autopia together take up roughly 302,580 square feet.
Massive canvas. Not quite Toy Story Land, but in the neighborhood.
Not all of it is usable. The Monorail runs through there, and a revived PeopleMover would want some of it.
But here is the nightmare scenario.
That lagoon, those trees, that greenery are the only visual breathing room in the entire land. Everything else in Tomorrowland is concrete and has hard edges. The green is the only thing keeping it from reading like a parking structure with bolted-on attractions.
Flatten it, drop in another block of buildings, and you have made Tomorrowland worse while spending a fortune to do it.
What Is Already Moving
Autopia is getting modernized. Gas engines will retire early next year, with fully electric vehicles in development. Obvious move for a land about the future, though Disney has not said it is officially part of the reimagining.
Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters went down for refurbishment in April 2026 and returned in June with fresh exterior paint and interior lighting upgrades. Magic Kingdom and Disneyland Paris both received major upgrades recently, so more could follow.
Rumor mill is loud on a Space Mountain systems refresh and a Carousel of Progress return. Neither one announced.
The Actual Assignment
Tomorrowland cannot just look new when this is over.
It has to feel like a vision of tomorrow again. That is a much taller order than paint and another IP overlay.
Disney has the space. Disney has the track. Disney now has the stated intention. The next round of announcements tells us whether Disney has the nerve.
