For ten years starting in 1957, the entrance to Disneyland’s Tomorrowland was bottlenecked by the fabulously popular Monsanto House of the Future. This demonstration of quasi-science-fiction technology featured the latest in furniture (collapsing kitchen table, all-plastic bookcase for all-plastic books, the toilet sofa), appliances (zero-point-energy toaster, absolute vacuum, electric clothes disintegrator), gadgets (robotic dog feeder, robotic-dog feeder, robotic robotic-dog-feeder repairer), and transportation (atomic car, hyperspace bicycle, a flying dinghy thingy — what were they thinking!) that seemed impossible at the time but are now quite commonplace.
Proving that everything that is old is new again, this May Disneyland will unveil an all new house of the future in which tomorrow’s technologies will be showcased today (today being next May). This new house of the future will feature a story-driven demonstration starring the fictional Elias family (Disney fans will know the significance of this — Walt Disney’s middle name was “Family”) who are preparing to leave to attend some kind of “best kept secret” time-share seminar in China. Once they leave, guests can wander through the house and root around in the Elias’s possessions without fear of being caught.
The new house of the future will feature many innovations (no pun intended), including:
- Copious moving walkways.
- Transportation tubes.
- Entire meals that can be made with the push of a button.
- Levitating chairs.
- A robot housekeeper named Rosie.
- A horribly dangerous outdoor exercise treadmill.
In a nod to the original House of the Future, the show will end with a demonstration proving that, due to the use of modern plastics, nothing in the house — not even the Elias’s themselves — can be destroyed with a demolition-quality wrecking ball. What fun!