CREATE and design a New York World's Fair show that will interpret in an educational and entertaining way, the role electricity has played in bettering man's living conditions, and dramatize where man's work with electrical power may go from here." Walt Disney accepted this challenge posed in 1959 by General Electric Company. The result is Progressland.
WED Enterprises, Inc., Disney's planning and design firm, has created a buoyant, informative show that couples high audience interest with efficiency. It is a 5-part presentation that entertains several different audiences, simultaneously. The parts are the Carousel Of Progress, a 6-act Audio-Animatronic show dramatizing electricity's contributions to living: the Corridor Of Mirrors, where General Electric's present research and engineering work is depicted; the Skydome Spectacular, where man's quest for energy sources is told in a story that spans from early history far into the future; a demonstration of controlled nuclear fusion; and Medallion City, a "community" of displays that show the countless meanings of all-electric living today.
Visitors enter the building by a moving ramp that takes them to the second-floor theater. This Carousel Of Progress features a unique arrangement of satellite auditoriums, each seating 250, revolving around a stationary hub of six stages. As the people are seated, they "see" and hear a specially composed overture through the medium of Kaleidophonics. A transparent Kaleidophonic screen, 12 x 40 feet, stretching the entire length and height of the first stage, presents constantly changing constellations of shimmering colors. Stereophonic music and the narrator's voice electronically determine the illuminated colors and light intensities.
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