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seacastlexstech:

Strange as it is to think, these murals will look bizarrely alien/foreign as being part of Disneyland to some Disney fans here - admittedly, they seemed even to me not to have much to do with Tomorrowland, where they once lived, but I always enjoyed them all the same.

Collectively titled ‘The Spirit of Creative Energies Among Children’,
these two murals were designed (of course) by Mary Blair, the artist responsible for the look of It’s A Small World and designer of the giant Grand Canyon/Southwest tile mural at the Contemporary at Walt Disney World. They debuted in 1967, gracing (top image) the Circlevision 360 building and (lower image) the Adventure Thru Inner Space building.

The Inner Space mural lasted till 1986, when it was replaced with a scene of deep space and Starspeeders and the Death Star, to herald the opening of Star Tours. Circlevision’s mural vanished in 1997, with the advent of Disneyland’s not very successful ‘New Tomorrowland’.

It is unknown if any portion of these murals remain intact at Disneyland, though it seems rather unlikely - sadly, all too easy to imagine the tiles being carelessly ripped down rather than left in place beneath exterior of the new artistic piece or removed with care to preserve them. These were eras before Disney park fans were both versed in much obscure company history as an overall group and were able to quickly and collectively compare notes/organize and speak out in defense of historical elements being saved, which came into being via the Internet: there were Disneyland news and update sites in ‘98, but they were just getting started with more organized fan-based message forums and the like when the second mural was already removed or covered over.

Source: Daveland

Before I knew who Mary Blair was, I used to think of these as the “It’s a Small World” murals. And the narrator on the PeopleMover would say “As we near the PeopleMover station, you can see colorful murals celebrating the joyous spirit of children everywhere — a reminder that Tomorrow will be built by our youth.”

Now our Tomorrow will be built by StarSpeeders,

(photo source)

…Buzz Lightyear action figure boxes,

(photo sources: Mural | Buzz Lightyear box that I shopped in)

…and flying Space Mountain buildings, apparently.

(photo source)