RCA's
Home of Future Living
The Home of Future Living experience began with guests stepping onto the
same Speedramp (the long black moving belt) that still shuffles people out of
Space Mountain today. But what a different show they were getting in those early
years! This original post-show spectacle combined "cutting-edge" technology,
voyeurism and out-of-this-world 1970's visuals to create a view of tomorrow's home
that was irresistible.
Once guests were on the moving sidewalk, their attention was drawn to their
right, where the first scene of future life unfolded. Here, on the home's outdoor
patio, the father figure reclined on a lounge chair. He wore the latest in blue
polyester jumpsuits, and his hair looked a little blue too. In front of him was a
small briefcase-size TV screen propped up on a pedestal. He was in the middle of
a two-way closed circuit business meeting with a female associate...from the
comfort of his own relaxing home terrace! In the display's later years the father
switched over to a videodisc player.
The next scene took guests "into" the house itself, via a convenient cross-section
view that put everything in plain sight. The house was a series of elongated white
hexagonal modules that rested against each other and were joined together by
stairways. Each room was done up in vibrant designer color schemes, most of
which employed a lot of white, with putrid yellows, oranges and browns and other
combinations that my family had on its furniture by 1978, so this truly was ahead of
its time by three or four years. The side walls of all the rooms were sharply
angled, hence there was a wide variety of custom-built cabinetry and other
fixtures that fit into the home's unique contours.
 The first room in the house
was the nursery, where a toy
clown held a camera pointed
directly at a baby, which stood
up in its plexiglass crib just
across the room. The signal
from the clown's camera was
broadcast to other parts of the
house so the family could keep
a constant eye on the child.
In the adjoining family room,
an unidentified female* was
taking a two-way TV pottery
lesson. She sat on a bench
with her creation in front of her, while her instructor and his work appeared on a
large screen across the room. She lamented to her teacher, "I'm afraid I've done
something wrong. I made my handle like yours but somehow it looks different on
my pitcher. What's wrong?" The teacher inspected her piece on his own TV screen
and responded, "I'm afraid you've made your handle too small for the pitcher."
Above the family room was a recreation room, where a teenage boy practiced
snowskiing on a "SelectaVision" simulator, and his younger brother sat at a desk
and assembled a rocket model kit via televised instructions. This room was better
viewed via the WEDway Peoplemover than from the Speedramp. The
Peoplemover afforded guests a glimpse into several sections of the Home of
Future Living, much as it still allows guests to peer down into the current
post-show. The main difference would seem to be that earlier Tomorrowland
attractions, Space Mountain's post-show included, took the Peoplemover's vantage
point into consideration moreso than later versions.
The next scene took place outside the home, with a view of the front door. A
young boy in an orange jumpsuit stood here with a frog in one hand and his dog
behind him. A camera, protected by a transparent glass bubble, hung from the
ceiling near the door. The boy was talking to the mother, inside the house, through
the use of another two-way communications system. "Don't you like frogs, Mrs.
Brown?" he asked. "Sorry Billy," the mother responded, "Your dog and that frog
will have to wait outside."
Then guests passed by the kitchen, where the mother and a neighbor sat in front
of another large TV wall unit. On the screen were several different images, the
largest of which was a dishware set. The mother was sitting at a floor-mounted
control console, where she negotiated a series of buttons to communicate with the
onscreen catalog system (this was the pre-history of home shopping channels). A
voice in the background intoned, "If you wish to order the settingware in red, push
button number one, push two for white or three for yellow." In the upper right
hand corner of the TV screen was a view of Billy at the front door, where he
persisted in his effort to get inside with the frog and dog.
 On to the teenage
daughter's bedroom, done in
a wide variety of greens. Her
orange hair contrasted nicely
with the decor. As she lie on
her bed, she also chatted on
the phone with her friend
Judy and watched her new
SelectaVision videodisc on a
large screen across the
room. Over the years she
perused several different
"classic" discs, from Elvis to
Kurt Russell (performing an
Archies song with the
Disneyland group Sound
Castle) to Blondie. The teenage girl seemed to enjoy it all equally, telling Judy to
come right over and check it out with her.
Finally guests moved on to the last room in this incredible house, the home
entertainment center. Here a young girl and boy watched a football game on a
"wall-sized" screen. The girl was sitting at a console from which she could record
the game so the rest of the family could watch it later. After several years of
football the kids switched over to a videodisc of "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea."
And you thought your family was TV-dependent? This was a house full of
cathode ray drones with test patterns for eyes. Not a window in the whole place,
not a room without at least one piece of video hardware, and all of them
constantly ON. Now you know how Bill Gates grew up.
From this point the guests' attention was drawn forward with the direction of the
moving belt. The belt was now descending at a gentle angle. Above guests' heads
were a series of RCA product promotions highlighted against starfield
backdrops. And here was that crazy RCA song again, but this time there were
words! An excerpt:
"Here's to the future, here's to the future,
Here's to the future and you
It's a world full of color, of perfect harmony,
A world full of music, a living melody,
The dreams of tomorrow are beginning today
It's a world of discovery, the world of RCA"
This catchy tune, sung by a chorus and accented with brass and strings, would
follow guests from this point until the end of their Speedramp run some distance
ahead.
Soon the Speedramp began to bank upward again, and the attraction's final
presentation could be seen to the right. Here were Billy and his dog again, having
traded in the frog for a video camera, filming guests as they passed by. Beyond
Billy was a selection of nine different TVs (in 1975 only the actual screens were
visible against a black backdrop, but in 1980 this changed to full sets). Guests
would soon see themselves on these sets, as their images were captured by
cameras concealed in the background. Try to remember that in 1975, seeing one's
self on TV was not an everyday, "hey, they have that in the mall" experience. For
many guests this was truly a high point of Space Mountain.
Now guests would step off the Speedramp and exit the attraction, straight back
out into Tomorrowland and the sunlight (not today's arcade) to meet those
members of their party who didn't care to see any portion of Space Mountain. If
only they had known how much fun was to be had inside that big white cone aside
from the rocket race. Their loss, indeed.
Many other elements of Space Mountain described above did change from
1975-1985. Especially within the Home of Future Living, where at least one
upgrade came along circa 1982 and prompted a change in several of the
on-screen elements. The kitchen's home shopping channel was replaced by Julia
Child giving some cooking instructions and, as noted above, the kids switched to
other programs as well. The overhead product displays right after the house were
replaced with yet more TV monitors, where a continuously running plug for RCA's
SelectaVision video discs showcased scenes from films like "Saturday Night
Fever," "The Godfather" and "The Ten Commandments." The voice-over for this
section pre-empted the main RCA song with another tune, "Bring the Magic Home
with RCA."
By the time Space Mountain reopened from its Fall 1985 rehab, most of the
things talked about here were modified drastically or removed. The Home of
Future Living was gutted and replaced with RYCA-1: Dream of a New World. This
tableau, which is still around in a slightly altered format, was a somewhat more
sparse vision of someone else's future on a planet other than earth. The majority of
the pre-show images, and many of the sounds, were also scrapped in favor of
updated presentations. Some of these things lingered on into the early 1990s, like
the Zig-Zag Corridor voice-overs and the original pylon sign at the entrance, but bit
the dust prior to or concurrent with the arrival of FedEx's sponsorship in 1993.
In spite of all the disappearances, two descendants of RCA's Home of
Future Living can still be found lingering about the post-show. They are the robot
boy (formerly Billy) and dog who, from 1985 to 1995, continued to film guests for
their TV "appearances." Now they're messing around with bones in the lab scene.
Here's to the Future and You!
* This lady in the family room was evidently not the mother, according to a 1975
press release which identified the mother as being in the kitchen scene. She had
about the same figure as the mother, but wore a different outfit and hairstyle.
Perhaps, in keeping with some other Disney visions of the future, this was a
grandmother who had merely aged well.
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