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I recently read an article detailing the plans for a house of the future to open at Disneyland this summer. Parents and grandparents might remember the original “House of the Future,” which opened in 1957, but, with electric toothbrushes and razers, big TVs, and hands-free phones, soon became obsolete. This time, though, the house’s features are meant to appear accessible and prepare consumers for technologies that could be available in as little as five years. Walt Disney is partnering with Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, LifeWare, and Taylor Morrison to create the house, meant to be highly responsive to its inhabitants.
It will include lights and thermostats that automatically adjust to the preferences of the family member who enters a room, a TV remote that not only starts a movie with the push of a button, but dims lights and draws shades in preparation of the show, and countertops that recognize groceries and use them to suggest menus. Music and photos can also be easily shared across rooms, and touch-screens are expected to run rampant in what will amount to a 5,000 square-foot, $15 million home. Unlike the original futuristic house, this one is meant to incorporate both technologies that are familiar to families as well as some that will likely become actual features in our homes before another decade has passed.
Visitors to the park will be able to watch actors play a family of four who live in the house and are preparing for a trip, familiarizing them with the home’s many innovations. The house will look like a typical suburban home on the outside, thus seeming much more realistic than the plastic, spaceship-like house of the 50’s. So not only will this house make an exciting attraction, it’s going to get visitors interested in the products that may soon be changing all of our lives. The house opens in May – which means you’d better start booking your trip now!