Now most carousels just go round and round without getting anywhere. But on this one, at every turn, we’ll be making progress. And progress is not just moving ahead. It’s dreaming and working and building a better way of life. Progress is the sound of a motor, the hum of a turbine, the heartbeat of a factory, the sound of a symphony, the roar of a rocket. Progress is people getting release from drudgery, gaining more time to enjoy themselves and live richer lives. And as long as man dreams and works and builds, this progress will go on…in your life and mine.
And with those words, Rex Allen began the original “Progressland” attraction hosted by General Electric at the 1964-65 World’s Fair in New York. Progressland is more familiar to us as the theatre portion of the experience – the Carousel of Progress. In truth, there was quite a lot more to the World’s Fair exhibit and we go over all of its retro-fabulous history. While we may all be able to recite the current iteration of the classic Carousel of Progress attraction, it does have a very interesting and storied past, including Walt Disney’s personal involvement in its creation.
General Electric’s Progressland pavilion – a Walt Disney Production – from the 1964-65 World’s Fair in New York
In this episode of Up the Waterfall podcast, we journey back to the very beginnings of this beloved attraction, the changes it has experienced over the decades, and what we hope will happen for its future. We hope you enjoy this info-packed episode, I know we loved recording it!
General Electric’s Progressland pavilion at night
You can listen anywhere you download and listen to podcasts, including:
(If there’s a podcast service where you can’t find our show, let us know and we’ll get it added there!)
You can also watch on our Up the Waterfall YouTube Playlist– where you can see our fun opening sequence and some fun images of the Carousel of Progress over the years. Here’s the latest episode:
Feel free to comment below with your memories of Carousel of Progress, any questions or info you’d like to add, or if it’s easier, head to the Zannaland Facebook page and join the discussion there with fellow Carousel of Progress fans!
Early concept art for the Progressland energy-filled future
Artist rendering of the incredible drama of nuclear fusion from the Progressland exhibit
Here are some of the books and recordings mentioned in this episode (the links will go to the item on amazon.com and are affiliate links – meaning no extra cost for you but a small portion goes back to zannaland if you make a purchase – thank you for supporting our site!):
The images from this post are from this CD set and booklet an amazing trove of Disney history!Designing Disney – Imagineering and the Art of the Show by John Hench Walt Disney Imagineering – A Behind the Dreams Look at Making Magic Real
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This week we take a stroll back in time…and space. Space Mountain that is. Pull back on your safety bar and sit back as we explore the history of this beloved attraction, from concept art to present day, and everything in between.
Space Mountain concept art by John Hench from the Top of the World lounge at Bay Lake Tower
Scott takes us on a journey through the years and the historic milestones of the Space Mountain attraction in Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and beyond. Believe it or not, I only rode Space Mountain at age 31. Crazy, right? Anyway, we hope you enjoy our chat and stories along the way as we share some fun facts and history of this iconic attraction that is the cornerstone of Tomorrowland (or Discoveryland) in every Disney park.
Disneyland Paris Space Mountain in Discoveryland
For this episode, we highly recommend you watch the video version as well, Christian has added some great images of the topics we bring up, from the many books Scott brought out for this episode. We will link to those books on amazon below, some of which may be through 3rd party Marketplace Sellers on Amazon, or you may find them on ebay as well:
We hope you enjoyed this episode, if you did, please share with a friend so they can discover us too. What are your favorite memories of Space Mountain? We’d love to hear about it either in a comment below or on social media. Feel free to comment wherever is easiest for you with the hashtag #UpTheWaterfallPodcast. We thank you for listening and for your support of our passion project – Up the Waterfall.
FOLLOW THE ZANNALAND TEAM ON SOCIAL MEDIA, WATCH OUR VIDEOS, VLOGS AND PODCAST TOO:
Hello! Well, it’s all finally happening. If you’ve been following along these recent Zannaland.com changes, we’ve been talking about all the things that were coming up. With the addition of our video producer-extraordinaire, Christian (my son, who’s basically grown up with Zannaland), we’ve added more videos, vlogs, and now, a project I’ve been wanting to do basically ever since getting married to @otisney and realizing the amount of Disney history we wanted to discuss and share, a podcast! Since podcasting has grown and changed and morphed over the last 15 years, we have decided to share ours as both an audio and video podcast. We aren’t doing any fancy effects at this point, but if you want to follow along and see our faces while we talk and any props we may use as an example along the way, feel free to watch vs. just listen.
I explain this in our first episode, but we will go into it more in the future too, but the name, “Up the Waterfall” comes from Walt Disney’s Tencennial show for Disneyland’s 10th birthday. And seeing him explaining things to Julie Reihm, the first Disneyland Ambassador, just always made me instantly smile…even just watching the clip at the end of our first show put a smile on my face again. So that’s the sort of feel I wanted to have with our podcast. It’s not just a historical podcast, it’s not a news podcast, it’s a combination of all of our experiences, thoughts, and yes, knowledge (which I will admit is mostly on Scott’s side of the desk!) about Disney parks and all the made them what they were and are today. We hope you’ll listen in on our journey as we explore this podcasting path.
We’re no podcasting or even broadcasting experts, so keep that in mind as I say “um” 27 times 😛 But we’ll keep figuring things out and hopefully make a great show that keeps you wanting more.
You can listen to the podcast right here on Zannaland, there is a Podcast tab at the top of the site now, or you can (eventually, it’s not quite searchable there yet but it is there!) search “Up the Waterfall” on iTunes, or you can watch on Zannaland’s YouTube channel. You can also visit UpTheWaterfall.com for the latest show too, but everything will be shared here as well. Thank you so much for supporting all of these updates and new ventures that we’ve wanted to do for so long, and a HUGE thanks to Christian for making it all happen and pushing us to just do it, and of course Scott for his patience when it took me 5 years to get it going. 🙂
Walt Disney Imagineering – A Behind the Dreams Look at Making Magic Real
