The future is always changing.
And now, one of Walt Disney World’s most recognizable attractions is preparing to change right along with it.
For generations of Disney Parks fans, there are few sights that immediately say EPCOT quite like Spaceship Earth. The massive geodesic sphere has welcomed guests since the park first opened its gates in 1982, taking riders through thousands of years of human history and exploring how our ability to communicate has continued to evolve.
From cave paintings and ancient civilizations to the printing press, computers and beyond, Spaceship Earth has always looked backward to help us imagine what might be waiting ahead.
But the future presented inside the attraction has started to become our present.
So, naturally, it’s time to invent the future once again.
During D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, Disney confirmed that Spaceship Earth will receive its first major update in nearly 20 years, reimagining the classic EPCOT attraction for the internet age and whatever might come next.
Spaceship Earth Is Entering Its Next Chapter
Don’t worry.
Disney isn’t throwing away everything that has made Spaceship Earth such an important piece of EPCOT.
Instead, Imagineers are evolving its central idea.
Currently, the attraction largely follows the development of human communication, tracing how our methods of sharing information have changed across thousands of years.
The reimagined Spaceship Earth will broaden that idea to focus on something even larger:
Human connection.
It’s a theme that feels incredibly fitting for the modern world.
The ways we communicate have transformed dramatically since Spaceship Earth’s last update. Smartphones, social media, video calls, streaming, artificial intelligence and countless other technologies have changed how people can connect across cities, countries and even continents almost instantly.
Things that once would have felt like the future inside EPCOT have become pieces of everyday life.
Now Spaceship Earth has an opportunity to ask the same question it has posed to generations of guests:
Where do we go from here?
Updating an EPCOT Original
Spaceship Earth isn’t simply another Disney attraction getting refreshed.
It is part of EPCOT’s identity.
Standing 180 feet tall, the geodesic sphere houses an elaborate continuously moving ride system that carries guests upward through the structure before eventually turning around for the journey back toward Earth.
And its story has evolved several times alongside the world outside.
Since opening, Spaceship Earth has featured four different narrators, including Walter Cronkite beginning in 1986, while updates to its scenes and storytelling have helped keep its journey through human innovation moving forward.
Now another generation is about to leave its mark.
While Disney hasn’t revealed exactly which scenes will change, what technology will be incorporated or how far into our modern age the attraction will travel, we do know Imagineers intend to bring the story into the internet age and beyond.
And that “beyond” might be the most exciting part.
Tomorrow Is Waiting
EPCOT has always worked best when it doesn’t simply attempt to predict what tomorrow will look like.
It makes us excited to discover it.
Spaceship Earth has spent decades showing families that nearly every massive leap forward started with someone finding a new way to create, communicate, share an idea or connect with another person.
Technology changes.
The tools change.
But that desire to connect never really does.
After nearly 20 years, Spaceship Earth is finally getting ready to tell that story for another generation.
So here’s to the next 30,000 years of human connection — because at EPCOT, the present has always only been the beginning.