Disney Announces Reimagining of Tomorrowland at Disneyland, World’s Worst Most Popular Land.

In one of the biggest surprise announcements during D23, Disney announced a reimagining of Tomorrowland at Disneyland. Finally!!! This post shares details, concept art, and everything we know about the overhaul. Plus, commentary about why we are unreservedly optimistic about this project in light of what we’ve heard from leadership and given the decades-overdue need to reinvigorate this land of the future.

This news was announced during the “Horizons” Disney Experiences Showcase or Parks Panel presentation during the 2026 D23 Expo at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. During that presentation, host Neil Patrick Harris was joined by Walt Disney Imagineering creatives and other leaders for a series of conversations who discussed bringing Disney’s next chapter to life.

It was mostly about pulling back the curtain for a deeper dive into projects that were announced at the last D23 Expo, from Villains Land to Piston Peak to the projects underway at Disney California Adventure. After thoroughly tempering fan expectations for bombshell announcements, Disney also teased some surprises and magic. Suffice to say, the transformation of Tomorrowland at Disneyland finally coming to fruition qualifies as both.

Revealed during the closing moments of the Parks Panel, Disney Experiences Chairman Thomas Mazloum revealed a reimagining of Tomorrowland in Disneyland is in the works!

The transformation of Tomorrowland will honor the legacy of the original land while reimagining its future. Disneyland Resort will strive to preserve what guests cherish most, while also introducing new experiences and possibilities for the next generation of fans.

Walt Disney Imagineers are already beginning to dream up the next chapter of innovation and storytelling for Tomorrowland with new attractions, more open spaces and new places for Disneyland guests to dream about the future. The plans for Tomorrowland will restore the spirit of optimism, innovation and possibility that inspired Walt Disney to create “a vista into a world of wondrous ideas…” in 1955 and have defined this land for decades.

Tomorrowland Reimagining Background

In the decade after Disneyland opened, Walt became increasingly dissatisfied with Tomorrowland, even dubbing it ‘yesterdayland.’ With the opening of the 1964 New York World’s Fair, Walt and his Imagineers could once again turn their attentions to Disneyland. A core component of that was to update Tomorrowland with new stories and technologies, so it could realize its full potential.

Walt Disney’s first reimagining of Tomorrowland debuted in 1967, and was one of his last major projects at Disneyland. As Walt would put it, “Tomorrow is a heck of thing to keep up with,” and from the beginning, Tomorrowland proved the most challenging area of the park to design and build. The so-called “Tomorrowland Problem” of today catching up to the future has been persistent issue since with the various versions of the land.

Disney tried to “solve” this with the last big overhaul of Tomorrowland in 1998. This update debuted the Rocket Rods, “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience!”, Astro Orbiter, and Innoventions, while other attractions were updated or refreshed. If you’re a longtime Disneyland fan, the words “Rocket Rods” probably send a shiver down your spin. That probably says all that needs to be said about the “success” of that overhaul.

Suffice to say, ever since 1998 and the days of AOL dial-up, Disneyland diehards have been begging for another Tomorrowland overhaul. We’re finally getting our wish! Here’s the announcement from Disneyland, followed by addition background shared with media, and our commentary…

Tomorrowland Reimagining Media Briefing

In addition to what was shared on-site at the D23 Parks Panel and via press release, I also had the opportunity to attend a separate Tomorrowland media briefing with Emily “Emo” O’Brien, Imagineering Portfolio Executive Creative Producer at Disneyland Resort and Jill Estorino, President of Disneyland Resort. That added background context about the Tomorrowland transformation, along with timelines for the various projects at Disney California Adventure and (now) Disneyland.

There was a lot of overlap between that briefing and the presentation, with both emphasizing the importance of Walt’s original vision for Tomorrowland. They said they’d be looking to that as their “guidepost” and “North Star” when envisioning the future of Tomorrowland, adding that Walt’s sense of optimism is at the core of their vision for Tomorrowland as a vista into wondrous worlds.

Specifically, they’re drawing inspiration from Walt Disney’s July 17, 1955 dedication of Tomorrowland:

A vista into a world of wondrous ideas, signifying man’s achievements … a step into the future, with predictions of constructive things to come. Tomorrow offers new frontiers in science, adventure and ideals: the Atomic Age, the challenge of outer space and the hope for a peaceful and unified world.

They’re using the heritage of Tomorrowland as their basis going forward, honoring the legacy of the land while evolving it for new and future generations to enjoy. While the second half of this might make some fans nervous that “modernization” will be used as a license to inject ill-suited intellectual property, that’s not my read on it.

My seem more concerned with improving Tomorrowland’s sense of place and making it a land where families will actual want to linger, as opposed to racing from ride to ride, getting in and out as quickly as possible.

Emo specifically referenced her work at Tokyo Disney Resort, where she and Jill worked together on Fantasy Springs. She said that in addition to new attractions, there will be new open spaces for guests to come together, relax, and “dream about an optimistic future.”

This caught my attention in part because Tomorrowland at Disneyland as it currently exists is the antithesis of a pleasant place to spend time. Not only that, but it sounds strikingly similar to how Tokyo Disneyland is describing its new Tomorrowland Plaza, a place park-like space in front of the new Space Mountain Earthrise (concept art below).

Obviously, we haven’t seen the fruits of that firsthand yet, but the concept art looks very promising. Whether it be Fantasy Springs or Tomorrowland Plaza (or a mixture of both), Emo bringing a taste of Tokyo to Tomorrowland at Disneyland should be a big win!

When discussing the overhaul, both leaders repeatedly emphasized the enormous responsibility, privilege, and honor it was to improve Tomorrowland. Emo specifically indicated that Imagineering was approaching this with a tremendous amount of thoughtfulness, care, and attention to detail, and knew how important it is that they get this right. Both pointed out how this was the only version of Tomorrowland that Walt himself actually envisioned, designed, and walked in.

All of that was good to hear, to be sure. At the same time, it wasn’t a reassurance that I necessarily needed on this particular project. For one thing, Tomorrowland has gotten so bad that there’s nowhere to go but up at this point. For another, I know that Imagineering wanted another chance at overhauling Tomorrowland for a long time, understands the importance (past and present) of the assignment, and won’t squander the opportunity.

Finally, the leadership team at Imagineering and Disneyland have my full confidence on this; not just because the fruits of the Fantasy Spring project speak for themselves, but also because everything I’ve heard suggest that they “get it.”

When it comes to the Tomorrowland reimagining, my suspicion is that the bigger hangup for fans will be the lack of specifics. This announcement promises new attractions, new spaces, and other new things for guests to experience.

There’s obvious low-hanging fruit and it stands to reason that certain attractions will be reimagined or outright replaced, but we don’t know for sure what will be touched, what won’t, or what will be added.

Of course, the most conspicuous omission from the announcement is the PeopleMover. While everyone will likely be relieved that Tomorrowland is getting love, that’s the one component (or lack thereof) that’s going to be make or break for many diehard Disneyland fans.

Our Commentary

I feel almost like the dog that caught the car with this one. Even though one of the entries in our list of 12 Things Disney Will (and Won’t) Announce at the 2026 D23 Expo for Disneyland was a long overdue transformation of Tomorrowland, I didn’t expect an ambitious overhaul.

In fact, my prediction was specifically not a fully-fledged reimagining of Tomorrowland. I had lost hope in that. Based on what I had heard, Tomorrowland was viewed as too popular to take offline for wholesale update. The reason previous overhaul proposals had never quite crossed the finish line and gotten greenlit despite credible rumors was because Disneyland could not afford to lose that crowd-absorbing capacity.

That, essentially, is the story about why Tomorrowland at Disneyland became the world’s most popular, worst land. And now that Dino-Rama is dead and Animation Courtyard has been revitalized, I’m not even sure that it needs the “most popular” qualification. Tomorrowland at Disneyland might be the worst land in Disney’s global portfolio, without qualification.

At least, from an aesthetic and atmospheric perspective. It’s hard to argue that a land with Space Mountain, Star Tours, and the Disneyland Monorail whizzing overhead or the subs gentling gliding by underwater is truly bad or even substantively on par with the front half of the old Walt Disney Studios Park or other flat ride-centric kiddie lands. But you get the point.

It’s likely that this imbalance between Tomorrowland’s thematic weakness and its strong ride roster has been the demise of previous reimagining pitches. From what we’ve heard over the years, previous leadership always got cold feet about losing one of the busiest lands in the world (or portions of it) for a project that would cost a lot but might not move the needle on attendance.

Surely it would improve guest satisfaction and other important metrics, though, and I’m personally even skeptical of claims that it wouldn’t increase attendance. Just because most guests who visit Disneyland enter Tomorrowland does not mean they love the land.

To the contrary, if Tomorrowland really is too popular to touch, the real mistake was actually not touching it. Letting it further rot in plain sight for another decade, and tarnish the brand as it does.

I’m glad that leadership from top to bottom now “gets” this, from the Disneyland President to the Parks Chair to the CEO. If the rumors I’ve heard over the last decade are true, the stars truly had to align to make this Tomorrowland overhaul possible. It’s truly incredible that fans are finally getting what we’ve been begging for since, quite literally, even before the very first D23 Expo in 2009.

Suffice to say, there’s a reason “New Tomorrowland” makes our wish list for every D23 event. It’s the same reason why the company itself announced “A Great, Big, Beautiful Tomorrowland Entrance Coming Soon to Disneyland” back in November 2019. Tomorrowland has been embarrassingly bad for the last couple of decades.

The walls are still up and the concept art on them had become so faded that they replaced it. As has become a running joke here, that construction wall will soon be of legal drinking age in some territories. Like mold or rabbits, those walls will likely soon spawn more walls. It’s only a matter of time.

That entrance was likely the first step in a planned, long overdue transformation of Tomorrowland at Disneyland. It seems logical that the next “new” Tomorrowland will revisit the 1967 ideas of Walt Disney and his Imagineers that envisioned it as a “world on the move,” streamlining the design to remove the visual hodgepodge and replace it with clean mid-century modern stylization.

Since as long as we’ve been visiting Disneyland, Tomorrowland has been its worst land. Even while the Tomorrowland ’94 concept still held up at Walt Disney World, the version at Disneyland had drifted into irrelevance, falling apart at about the same speed as the Rocket Rods braked around turns.

The 1998 retro-future overhaul was a swing and a miss, to put it charitably. The big problem was that this overhaul didn’t just flop like Light Magic, which could quietly glowing away when it was poorly received by fans. Tomorrowland ’98 had actively removed things people loved, like the PeopleMover, and in service of an aesthetic that felt dated the instant it opened.

The problem with Tomorrowland ’98 was that it sought to solve its datedness issues by evoking Disneyland Paris’ Discoveryland, but only superficially. Instead of investing in a top-to-bottom Jules Verne-esque steampunk overhaul, Disney opted for a much cheaper and more superficial approach. In some cases, quite literally with liberal coats of bronze paint. Thankfully, Space Mountain is back to its classic and clean color.

The failures of Tomorrowland ’98 are well-documented, so there’s no point in belaboring them. If you’ve walked around the land in the last couple of decades, you’ve seen them. The hodgepodge of visuals; the many underutilized or flat-out vacant venues; the odd satellite and ‘zapper’ structure that looms large (it’s the Observatron); those empty PeopleMover tracks and load platform overhead; the massive Innoventions/Super Hero HQ/Star Wars Launch Bay building that’s now basically just a DVC lounge; two of the absolute worst counter service restaurants in the entire world; the lack of any semblance of a cohesive identity.

The good news is that laundry list of issues presents tremendous opportunities for improvement! Fixing the above entries is a tall task, but it’s one that mostly doesn’t involve outright replacing or even wholesale reimagining the existing attractions. There’s a lot that can be added, cosmetically and capacity-wise, without even touching the attractions that are currently operational. There is so much dead space that isn’t be used in Tomorrowland–or isn’t being utilized efficiently.

The Tomorrowland overhaul is a “fix what’s broken, don’t start from zero” project, which Imagineering has proven is the kind of project it can execute efficiently in the last couple of years. Our expectation is that this ends up being like a larger-scale version of the overhaul of Animation Courtyard at Hollywood Studios, similarly fixing an area with dead mall vibes. Another comparison would be Tropical Americas at Animal Kingdom, if Disney had stopped with only the Dino-Rama half of that project and left DINOSAUR alone.

Basically, we’re expecting a maze of walls through an operational land. The project is likely to be carried out in phases in order to keep as much of the existing Tomorrowland online as possible. Because, as noted above, this is too popular of a land for Disneyland to lose all at once.

There are also valid reasons why Tomorrowland is such a popular land from a guest foot traffic perspective. Space Mountain is a headliner for good reason, and while it could maybe benefit from a plussing or other seasonal variations utilizing the Hyperspace Mountain features, it doesn’t need any major changes.

Autopia is a rite of passage attraction that’s a must ride for small children, and while it needs help (and could probably have its track shortened to free up space), there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. There’s an easy fix for Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, which is simply just bringing over the upgrades from Walt Disney World. Star Tours, while still excellent, is now thematically stranded; maybe it’s time for a brand-new concept using that platform, a la the Iron Man Experience in Hong Kong.

Ultimately, I’m optimistic about the future of Tomorrowland at Disneyland. Zero caveats to that. No “cautious” or “nervous” or whatever mixed emotions fans often feel when something we’ve been so familiar with for so many years is finally going to change.

I am genuinely, unreservedly excited. Disneyland’s Tomorrowland has been coasting on the fumes of a 1998 vision that didn’t even work in 1998, propped up by a few top-tier, fan-favorite attractions doing the heavy lifting. From a thematic perspective, Tomorrowland has been terrible for decades. That has just been masked by the popularity of Space Mountain, Star Tours, Buzz, etc.

In reality, there’s nowhere for Tomorrowland to go but up. This announcement calls for nothing but unfettered optimism. Cliche and trite as it is as an ending, this announcement promises “a great big beautiful tomorrow” for Tomorrowland at Disneyland.

The only minor hesitations I have are that this doesn’t end up being a big enough swing, but it seems pretty clear that leadership from top to bottom at Imagineering, Disney Experiences, and Disneyland Resort are all on the same page.

They understand the stakes and legacy of this being the only Tomorrowland that Walt Disney himself ever walked, and know this needs to have the budget and ambition worthy of this project. This should be the biggest project on the slate for Disneyland Resort, and I’m incredibly optimistic that the teams behind the Tomorrowland transformation “get it.”

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Your Thoughts

What do you think of Disney announced a reimagining of Tomorrowland at Disneyland? Are you optimistic for the future of this tired and outdated land? What would you like to see in a reimagined Tomorrowland? Any particular rides, restaurants, IPs or anything else? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions? Hearing your feedback—even when you disagree with us—is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!