There’s One Thing Disneyland Can’t Afford to Get Wrong on This Next Park Project

Disneyland is close to a perfect park. There is one spot where that breaks down.

Adventureland works. New Orleans Square might be the best themed area Disney has ever built. Critter Country, Frontierland, Fantasyland, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, all solid. The park is dense and walkable in a way Walt Disney World never managed.

Then you hit Tomorrowland.

Fans have said the same thing for a decade. It looks like the future as imagined in 1998. Empty track overhead. Half-used buildings. A Star Wars ride in a park that already has a Star Wars land. Too many overlays since 1955, and now the place says nothing coherent about tomorrow.

D23 came to California this month, and it was what everyone had been waiting for.

Disney delivered. Sort of.

Neil Patrick Harris and Disney Experiences Chairman Thomas Mazloum announced during the Horizons: Disney Experiences Showcase that Tomorrowland will be reimagined around the theme “Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Today.”

Now the catch.

They Announced Almost Nothing

The presentation was philosophical. Honor Walt’s vision. Restore the optimism. Encouraging as a mission statement.

No concept art. No confirmed closures. No timeline.

Nobody knows if Astro Orbiter moves. Nobody knows what replaces Star Wars Launch Bay. Nobody knows if the PeopleMover returns.

That means this is early. It also means fans still have room to push, and three things matter most.

1. The PeopleMover

Biggest one by far.

If the entire reimagining were just the PeopleMover coming back, most fans would call it a win.

Its Walt Disney World counterpart, the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover, is still one of Magic Kingdom’s most beloved rides. Calm, continuously loading, genuinely relaxing.

Disneyland’s version had an arguably better track layout.

And that track is still up there. Empty since Rocket Rods closed in 2000. Guests walk under it every day, 26 years running.

Losing it was one thing. Never replacing it and leaving the bones hanging overhead is what stings.

Skip it now, and this becomes one of the great missed opportunities in Disneyland history.

2. Star Tours Needs a New Job

It made sense once. A motion simulator felt like the future in 1987, and it belonged in a land about the future.

Different park now.

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge takes up a huge footprint on the other side of Disneyland. A second Star Wars attraction across the park does not follow the same logic, and it feeds into the bigger issue: Tomorrowland has become a place where IP gets parked instead of a land with its own identity.

The ride system can stay. Star Tours could get a whole new identity without starting from scratch.

Better outcome? Something original. An attraction built on Tomorrowland’s optimistic future instead of another IP swap. Harder, pricier, and the only version that actually fixes anything.

3. Leave the Green Space Alone

Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage and Autopia cover roughly 302,580 square feet combined.

Huge canvas. Not quite Toy Story Land, but close.

Not all of it is free. The Monorail runs through there, and a revived PeopleMover would need some of it.

Here is what worries Disney fans, though.

That lagoon, those trees, and that greenery are the only visual breaks in the land. Everything else in Tomorrowland is concrete and has hard edges. The green is what stops it from reading like a parking garage with rides.

Level it and drop in more buildings, and you have made it worse. Build around the landscape instead.

Already Happening at Disneyland

Autopia is being modernized. Gas engines will retire early next year, with fully electric vehicles in development. An obvious call for a land about the future, though Disney has not said it is formally part of the reimagining.

Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters was refurbished starting in April 2026 and reopened in June with new exterior paint and interior lighting. Magic Kingdom and Disneyland Paris got bigger upgrades to their versions recently, so more could come.

Rumors are running on a Space Mountain systems refresh and a Carousel of Progress return. Neither announced.

What Actually Matters at Disneyland

Tomorrowland cannot just look new when this wraps.

It has to feel like a vision of tomorrow again, which is a far bigger ask than paint and an IP overlay.

Disney has the space, the track, and the stated intention. The next round of announcements tells us whether they have the nerve.