Disney and the Future It Promised: A Living Page
ARTS & CULTURE · OCTOBER 7, 2026 · updated October 7, 2026
This is a living page. I will keep adding to it as I come across interesting pieces of Disney history, old films, and news worth keeping. Disneyland is one of my favorite places on Earth, albeit expensive, and a place that lovingly engineers a version of the future is worth keeping a running file on.
The Video That Started It
Brian Roemmele posted this on October 7, 2026. It is a 48-minute video, 4:3 and grainy in the way old television transfers are, and it opens on a dark Sleeping Beauty Castle.
This was the way the future was presented and promised.
— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) October 7, 2026
Disney no longer cares about this and most tech companies could not be bothered.
WE ALL SUFFER FROM THIS.
The is 1968 and we have regressed in optimism and forward thinking. Today it is a grind of “what’s next now?” with drudge.
WE need to change this and it starts with the tech companies.
We need a new World’s Fair.
What it probably is. The post doesn’t name the film. The 48-minute runtime and the 1968 date match Disneyland: From the Pirates of the Caribbean to the World of Tomorrow, an episode of Disney’s weekly television series that aired January 21, 1968. By the accounts I found, it takes viewers inside WED Enterprises (the Imagineering workshop) to see how Pirates of the Caribbean and the brand-new Tomorrowland were designed, then shows both opening. Rex Allen narrates. I have not watched this particular upload start to finish, so treat the match as likely, not confirmed. If you watch it and it turns out to be something else, I will fix this section.
Roemmele’s claim versus the record. His argument is an opinion, and a fair one to argue about: that 1968 corporate America presented the future with optimism, and that today’s tech and entertainment companies have swapped that for a grind of incremental releases. The part that is checkable is the history, which the next section lays out.
Why 1966 to 1968 Matters
The film lands at the end of an unusual run. These are widely documented dates, and I will tighten the sourcing as this page grows:
- July 17, 1955: Disneyland opens in Anaheim.
- 1964–65: Disney builds four attractions for the New York World’s Fair, including it’s a small world and the Carousel of Progress. The Fair is the “World’s Fair” Roemmele is asking for again.
- December 15, 1966: Walt Disney dies. His last big idea, a planned city of the future (EPCOT), is left to be reinterpreted.
- 1967: Pirates of the Caribbean opens in New Orleans Square, the last attraction Walt personally oversaw, and Tomorrowland is rebuilt as the “New Tomorrowland.”
- January 21, 1968: the television tour above airs.
Things To Add
- Primary sources for the dates above (D23, newspaper archives, Disney films themselves).
- What happened to the New Tomorrowland, and what the park’s idea of “the future” looks like now.
- The EPCOT story: what Walt proposed, what opened in 1982, and what it became.
- Prices, then and now. Disneyland’s 1955 admission against today’s tickets, adjusted for inflation.
- Any news worth keeping: parks, films, Imagineering, anniversaries.
Update Log
- October 7, 2026: page created with Roemmele’s video and a tentative identification of the film.
Sources
- Brian Roemmele on X, October 7, 2026 (the video and the opinion quoted above).
- Disneyland: From the Pirates of the Caribbean to the World of Tomorrow, 1968 television episode: summarized from jaced.com and the IMDb Pro listing.
