The 1970′s heyday of Apollo 11 and Tomorrowland

With all of of the coverage the past two weeks of the anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission it got me reminiscing about the early 70’s. I was in grade school and the Apollo Program was in full swing at that time. I was so into everything having to do with the space program. I’d memorized everything I could about the space program and the solar system in general.

During that time my family started taking annual vacations to Florida for spring break. We’d spend the time visiting relatives in the Cocoa area and going to the beach, but the highlights of the trip for me would be our visits to Kennedy Space Center and Walt Disney World! I loved going to KSC and seeing all the spacecraft and facilities, they even had a moon rock! During our day at Disney World my favorite land was of course Tomorrowland, the theming and rides just tied right in with my passion for space.

I loved Mission to the Moon (Later Mission to Mars, then the ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, and finaly Stitches Great Escape), the Carousel of Progress, the WEDway People Mover and of course Space Mountain. I’d just soak it all up imagining that it was all real. We always ate lunch at the Tomorrowland Terrace restaurant. it was ironic that when I went to work at WDW later in life that I worked at the Tomorrowland Terrace (Now Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe).

Here’s a YouTube video of the Tomorrowland Terrace restaurant

It’s been fun thinking of those times, so much has changed, Apollo’s long gone and the shuttle program is about to end, Tomorrowland had it’s makeover in the 90’s when the name of the TLT changed. And now there’s the awesome Mission Space at EPCOT. But after all these years and all the changes, I still love going to Disney, and my favorite land at Walt Disney World is still Tomorrowland!

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