Description And Comments

Innoventions is housed in the large circular building last occupied by the audio-animatronic musical America Sings. Modeled after a similar attraction at Epcot in Walt Disney World, Innoventions was part of the 1996-2000 Tomorrowland renovation. In 2008 Disney borrowed a page from the park's ancient past. One of the most beloved and often remembered attractions of Disneyland's early years was the Monsanto House of the Future, a stand-alone building with a curved spaceship-style exterior and rooms outfitted with furniture and appliances forecast to be in everyone's home before the millennium.

This time around, sans Monsanto, it's the Dream Home, located in the middle of the ground floor of Innoventions. Surrounding the Dream Home are rooms from equally futuristic "neighbors'" homes, complete with actors playing the neighbors. Between the neighbors and a member of the Dream Home family, you are guided on a tour of the home's wondrous rooms and the technology within them. A grand piano in the great room is networked to a music teacher across the country. In the dining room, touch screens in the dinner table allow the family to assemble a scrapbook. A 100-inch television dominates the family room. The kitchen, which will remind you of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, is of course the mother lode: among its many amazements is a computer that reads RFID (radio-frequency identification) “smart” labels on food packages and warns you if you're about to chug a glass of milk past its expiration date; the same computer will alert you if you don't have an ingredient on hand for a recipe you're making. A story line concerning the Dream home family, the Eliases, sort of ties everything together.

A reader from Washington state likes the Dream Home but sees it as a Band-Aid:

Innoventions seems a little more coherent than it was, now that the model house was installed, but I don't get the whole point. It still strikes me as filling up room until the Disney people figure out what "real attraction" they're going to put in there.

On the second floor you'll find an entertaining 15-minute show demonstrating Honda's ASIMO, an impressive humanoid robot capable of walking autonomously, climbing stairs, and kicking soccer balls. Also upstairs are some Xbox Kinect video game consoles, Siemens's "Project Tomorrow" simulations (as also seen at Epcot's Spaceship Earth), and St. John's Hospital's interactive health-living play area. Also, a "Iron Man Tech Presented by Stark Industries" premiered on April 13, 2013. It includes interactive displays and set pieces, including Tony Stark's Hall of Armor.

Touring Tips

The Dream Home creates order and continuity at Innoventions, where previously there was an almost random assemblage of games, gadgets, and imponderables. It also provides structure, with the house tour regimenting the way you view the exhibit and probably extending the amount of time you would have spent there otherwise. Crowds are rarely an issue at this attraction. Puzzlingly, Disney recently reversed this attraction's crowd flow, eliminating the "Tom Morrow" animatronic introduction and forcing guests to climb the former exit ramp and enter on the second story.

We recommend that you spend time at Innoventions on your second day. If you have only 1 day, visit sometime during the evening if you have the time and endurance. Be forewarned that when you return home, your wife will want to remodel the kitchen.

Incidentally, Innoventions is a great place to hide out during inclement weather. Be aware that this attraction usually opens 1 hour after the rest of the park and shuts its doors to new entrants 2 hours before the official closing time.

Special Comments

Most exhibits demand time and participation to be rewarding; not much gained here by a quick walk-through; very commercial, but well presented.

Special Needs

Other Attractions in Tomorrowland

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