On July 17, 1955, a new theme park called Disneyland finally opened to the public for the first time after years of anticipation. In fact, the opening aired on ABC as Walt Disney himself helped viewers take a mini-tour through the theme park.
The next day, a kid named George Lucas — who just turned 11 years old — visited the park with his parents and offered a critique. Little did he know at the time, his imagination would help create one of the most popular areas the park has ever had.
In the “Star Tours” episode of Behind the Attraction, a Disney Plus series often overlooked by Star Wars fans (it was released in 2021), it’s explained how Star Tours came to fruition. It’s also pointed out that Lucas was a very early visitor of the theme park.
“I was there the second day it opened,” Lucas told an interviewer in the 1980s footage shown during the episode. Lucas was discussing the 1987 opening of the first-ever Star Wars-themed ride, which also happens to be the first time Disney ever created a ride based on a film that was not a Disney movie. Of course, decades later, Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney for more than $4 billion in 2012.
The narrator of the episode — incorrectly referring to Lucas as 10 years old then — explains during one segment, “Being the young 10-year-old perfectionist that he was, he wasn’t without his criticisms, especially when it came to one area of the park.”
“Tomorrowland,” George Lucas is then seen saying — in that same 1980s footage briefly shown earlier in the episode. He adds, “I thought that was a portion of the park that had always been a little less than it could’ve been.”
The narrator then makes fun of Lucas, saying, “What does this kid know?”
Lucas’ childhood criticism of Tomorrowland was almost prophetic, considering that Star Wars significantly upgraded Tomorrowland.
Now, Tomorrowland is fondly remembered for the Under the Sea exhibit, for debuting North America’s first monorail (which actually ran through the whole park), and for the Flying Saucers ride. However, none of those existed in the park when Disneyland first opened.
The Tomorrowland that little Lucas visited was very dry. In fact, it was the only part of the park that was not expected to be open at all in 1955. In order to please the public, Walt Disney pushed to get at least a portion of Tomorrowland open. Of course, the joke is that they can always say, “We’re open tomorrow!”
Most of the changes started to happen over the next four years, but at the time of its opening, there were two exhibition halls (one of which was closed), a life-size model of a spaceship that was not a ride, and some other odd fill-ins that would be replaced.
The other available area was Autopia, which is the only Tomorrowland attraction that was opened on Disneyland’s first day that still exists. It was really just kids riding in small cars, almost like bumper cars without the bumper. Autopia was described by the park as, “The future of highway transportation.” That’s not exactly the most exciting thing, and one understands, despite the odd explanation, that it wasn’t meant to claim that the future is kids driving cars but much of the area was a work in progress.
George Lucas would go on to have a fondness for cars and make a hit movie called American Graffiti in 1973, which was based on his teenage years spent cruising in Modesto, California, and not based on him riding a car in Autopia.
Although Star Tours opened in 1987 inside of Tomorrowland, Lucas’ first involvement with Disney was as a producer in the 1986 short film Captain EO starring Michael Jackson, which was a 3D science fiction experience exclusively at Disney theme parks.
Coincidentally, 1986 is the very year that the original Tomorrowland was attempting to depict as Walt Disney himself noted during the televised opening of the park. In 1955, 11-year-old Lucas thus visited Disney’s version of 1986. Then, over three decades later in the real 1986, he became involved with Disney. After the opening of Star Tours in 1987, and after criticizing Tomorrowland as a kid, it was clear he turned Tomorrowland into a better tomorrow.
It seems that 11-year-old George Lucas was right.