A Tomorrowland Icon

The Astro Orbiter anchors the entrance into Tomorrowland.

The rocket ship ride at Disneyland's Tomorrowland has called more than one location home over the years, but ever since the 1998 "New Tomorrowland" makeover, the Astro Orbiter has called the front of Tomorrowland home.  This towering structure, with its swirling model of the planets akin to Discoveryland's Orbitron: Machines Volantes, might be a bit of a bottleneck at the entrance to Disneyland's Land of the Future, but it definitely makes for a photogenic subject.  With its gleaming golds and reds and neon accents, it is an interesting and dynamic subject, even when it is still at the end of the night.  It doesn't hurt that the structures behind it are also aglow in colorful illumination, with the blue and green neon of Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters and Star Tours adding a gleaming backdrop to the scene.  And although it may have been a controversial move to have the Orbitron occupy the entrance to Tomorrowland at the time, the attraction has transitioned in time into an accustomed fixture off The Hub.  Most guests these days probably can't imagine the entry to Tomorrowland without the spinning attraction.  I guess that's part of the magic of how time works.  It turns the new and unique into the habitual and expected.