"If we can dream it, we can do it." ~Tom Fitzgerald
I’m not going to pretend I didn’t get a little bit emotional working on this one.
Talk to EPCOT fans of a certain age, and there is one attraction sure to make their passions flow. Watching a ride through video won't quite cut it, because what Horizons meant for us was more than its animated figures, its ride system, or its music. Horizons struck a nerve and stayed with us for the rest of our lives because of its theme, and without experiencing it first hand, that theme cannot be easily conveyed.
It was the theme at the very heart of Futureworld itself. This was the thesis statement for an entire park, essentially.
We'll get back to that and focus, first, on what Horizons did that's easy to talk about, though. As with most of Futureworld, Horizons is typically called an omnimover -- and by now you should know I love omnimovers -- though if we get technical it was not quite the same as other omnimovers. Yes, the vehicles were right next to one another, continuously moving along a track, and you loaded and unloaded on a moving belt.
However, typical omnimovers have stationary drive motors beneath the track that move the collection of vehicles along, like a bike gear moving a chain. In the case of Horizons, the motors were individual to each vehicle, located above the seats.
Yes, I said above. The other big difference between Horizons and the rest of the omnimovers on this list was that it was suspended from an overhead track. You and up to three loved ones faced out, almost like you were in your own personal theater, floating up and down through the show scenes. Think Peter Pan's Flight meets Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey.
The argument about whether or not Horizons should count as an omnimover isn't that important (to you, it is to me. . .). Rather, what's important is that it was unique. It was a system not seen anywhere else. Like Spaceship Earth it consumed large amounts of Guests to keep the line moving, and like Peter Pan it gave you an unparalleled sensation of floating and unusual perspectives on the show scenes. It didn't have to be different, but it was, and it was better for that.
That ride system then took you through some glorious locations in an intensely long dark ride. You'll notice the ride through video at the bottom is 24 minutes. While Horizons wasn't that long, it was well over 15 minutes. When you stood in line for the ride, you were going to get your money's worth. It was never a drag, though; it was simply a massive collection of gorgeous scenery, and you got to spend the whole time in the air conditioning.
You entered through something called "The Future Port" to see examples of future living, though first your hosts showed you what people of the past thought future living was going to be, start with screens playing retro sci-fi films. That led to a wonderful retro-future apartment complete with a robot butler, in a scene that was simply charming in the same way the Jetsons -- or current Tomorrowland -- is, though it was not meant to be taken seriously. This was fantasy-future, not real future, complete with a tongue-in-cheek delivery of Great, Big, Beautiful Tomorrow. (Remember that.)
The trip through the retro future finished with, in my opinion, one of the most enjoyable show scenes anywhere: a high-energy neon-obsessed massive cityscape meant to evoke futurism of the 1950s. The rounded, wing and saucer shapes you think of with a retro diner -- or with various décor in The Sims -- filled the room, and was absolutely beautiful. It wasn't even really the point of the attraction, the whole scene just existed to be a look, and it excelled.
The vehicles flew past massive Omnimax screens showing the present of technology -- a show almost on the scale of Soarin' years latter -- before reaching the important part. The heart of the attraction that was the heart of Futureworld followed that, though. After our hosts finished making fun of what we thought the future would be, we took a trip past four homes of the future, telling us what advancements had been made in their locations. Disney is at its best when it's designing three dimensional, physical spaces full of detail, and Horizons may well have been the peak of that. George McGinnis, Bob Gurr, Tom Fitzgerald, John Hench, and their team put together models that were absolutely amazing, full of rich texture, Audio Animatronic actors, and colorful, evocative painted backgrounds.
First, you toured a future city -- worthy of Progress City itself -- with an older couple -- our hosts -- talking about how they like living where the fun and the excitement are. Rather than Hench's whimsical sci-fi designs, this was meant to feel like a real home you may live in some day.
From there, you visited a home in the desert, where our hosts' daughter worked on advancing agriculture in the once barren wasteland. Long before Soarin', scent machines sprayed you with orange smell. The scenery here was on par with the Grand Canyon Concourse in the Disneyland Railroad, and background paint and lighting conveyed a coming thunderstorm. A bobcat played in a rushing waterfall, while a roadrunner sat on the rocks close to the riders.
After the desert, riders took a trip to an ocean home and a school trip. The ride vehicles snaked down through the house, below the level of the waves, and out into the water for stellar atmospheric effects on an undersea restaurant. Last -- but absolutely not least -- you took a tour of space, with a family living on a space station.
The entire trip was scored by the incredible, iconic theme for the attraction, which changed to fit each scene. Space has the legendary status, with its sweeping, epic arrangement of the melody, but the ocean (distant and slow), desert (upbeat and peppy), and city (energetic and synthetic) each played their parts perfectly.
The finale of the attraction was what a lot of riders remember, and was something absolutely out of this world at the time. You were told to pick one of these futuristic worlds to travel through on your way back to the future port, and all four riders got to vote. Whichever choice won, your vehicle would soar -- or float -- back home through a realistic recreation of what you just saw.
This was accomplished by projectors following along with your ride vehicle, a computer sending it your vote, and your vehicle becoming a flight simulator. You had actual control over your ending, and a personalized experience the next vehicle didn't necessarily have (depending on their choice). Because the shots were accomplished via filming on models -- before CG was even really a thing -- it looked like reality, and hammered home the possibilities of what you'd just seen.
(Oh, and then you got to exit through colorful, rainbow hallways.)
It was long, it was efficient, and it was beautiful, but that's just scratching the surface of what made Horizons so special. What the ride actually did was tie all of Futureworld together; it told you, the rider: "this is what we are talking about." The farms in the desert and hydroponics in the city directly referenced The Land. The technology in the ocean home was straight from The Living Seas. The futuristic communication and orbiting satellite homes were right out of Spaceship Earth.
It was more than just sharing of models, though. Horizons brought home the very theme of Futureworld: optimism. The entire idea here was to make you hopeful about the future, to show you how things -- real evolutions of technology we already know about -- could soon make the world better for you and for me.
That message was timeless, too. I mentioned that early scene with Great, Big, Beautiful Tomorrow playing. Gorgeous as it was, it was sort of mocking the Carousel of Progress itself as being somewhat quaint; more like fantasy than reality. Absolutely the style and wardrobe in Horizons would age, but the actual nuts and bolts of what you saw -- real technology and positive outlooks -- would not. It was often called Carousel of Progress 2.0, but it saw things even more holistically, even more realistically, and even more optimistically to simply be that. It was so much more.
We -- and our children especially -- deserve to get to see hope. Horizons presented a future that was warm and friendly, and told you that you would be the reason it was so. It reassured you that if you could dream it, you could do it. What you could do was be excited for the years to come, because you had the tools to make a difference, and you could live somewhere awfully exciting while you did. The future was going to be amazing and it was going to be because you made it like that!
It conveyed that message perfectly. Is it any wonder that it sticks in the hearts and minds of so many who got to experience it all these years later?
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