A Journey Into MY Imagination: Could Figment Be Getting a Redo?
D23 is coming! Nothing gets the old armchair imagineering neurons firing quite like the possibility of new D23 announcements on upcoming rides and refreshes. For me, the biggest possible win would finally be a refresh and redo of the Imagination Pavilion. I am a huge fan of Figment and the Dreamfinder, and would love for Disney to finally provide a ride worthy of them once more. Is such a thing likely, though? And what might a new Imagination ride look like? Journey into MY imagination with me and let’s explore!
As always, a reminder that I have no inside knowledge here. I’m just a theme park fan trying to read the D23 tea leaves and explore what might be coming. We’re here to have some fun together and imagine what could be – so let’s get started!
A quick history of how we got here
Journey Into Imagination opened at EPCOT Center on March 5, 1983, five months after the park itself. Tony Baxter designed it, and it introduced two characters who’d define the pavilion for decades. Dreamfinder was an eccentric explorer who flew the Dream Mobile, an idea-collecting contraption that looked like a blimp crossed with a vacuum cleaner. Figment was the small purple dragon he conjured out of pure imagination.
Riders followed the pair through rooms built around art, literature, the performing arts, and science. Along the way, they filled an “idea bag” with sparks of creativity. The Sherman Brothers wrote “One Little Spark” for the ride. It became one of EPCOT’s most beloved songs almost overnight.
None of that survived the first retheme. The original closed in October 1998. Journey Into YOUR Imagination opened a year later with Dreamfinder erased and Figment reduced to a couple of blink-and-miss cameos.
The new premise had Dr. Nigel Channing running guests through an “Imagination Institute.” It started with a scanner that informed guests, bluntly, that they had no imagination. The runtime got cut nearly in half, and “One Little Spark” disappeared. The backlash was furious enough that Disney pulled the plug after just two years.
Journey Into Imagination with Figment opened in June 2002 as damage control. Figment came back as a primary character, appearing in every scene, and “One Little Spark” returned with new verses. Dreamfinder did not come back.
That’s still the version running today, over two decades later. Fans generally treat it as a well-meaning patch rather than a real fix, and it’s well past time for this ride to get a major overhaul. With the increased popularity of Figment in recent years (the popcorn buckets, you guys, oh my gosh!), it seems more likely than not that a refresh is coming at some point in the future – I hope.
Is 2026 actually Figment’s year?
The honest answer, per most people who track this closely, is probably not. A huge EPCOT refresh was just completed, and Disney has large projects currently ongoing in its other three Orlando parks. If anything, the thinking is that Spaceship Earth is much more likely to get its once-cancelled overhaul rather than anything happening in the Imagination Pavilion.
But Disney just did something that gives me hope. It named Neil Patrick Harris as host of the marquee Horizons: Disney Experiences Showcase at the upcoming D23. That’s the first time the panel has ever had a celebrity host instead of a Disney Experiences executive.
Harris is a documented, longtime Figment superfan who has worn vintage “Save Figment” merchandise and narrated a Disney short built entirely around the character. That resume is exactly why a theory caught fire online. What if Harris isn’t just hosting, but stepping into the role of a brand-new Dreamfinder as part of a real Journey Into Imagination overhaul?
The theory would put Figment’s ride in direct competition with Spaceship Earth for EPCOT’s one big moment this year. Most coverage still leans toward Spaceship Earth as the safer bet. But it’s the most real hope Figment fans have had in years, and it’s the reason I let myself dream of what could be if Figment finally gets the love he deserves.
My pitch: Dreamfinder comes home
Here’s what I’d build if I were the one making that call. First, I’d move this ride off its aging Omnimover-style system and into a trackless dark ride. That’s the same category of ride system now running rides like Rise of the Resistance and, most relevant to this pitch, Symbolica in Efteling in the Netherlands. Trackless vehicles can peel off, regroup, and wander in ways a fixed track never could, and that flexibility is the backbone of everything else in this pitch.
The ride opens the way the original did: Dreamfinder’s Idea Machine descending through the clouds. Except this time, he’s not just back from a routine dream-collecting trip. He’s been gone a long time, off exploring the realm of imagination itself. Figment has been holding down the pavilion solo for more than twenty years. Their reunion is the emotional centerpiece of the whole attraction. It’s warm, a little silly, and exactly the fan-service payoff longtime fans have been waiting decades for.
Dreamfinder didn’t come back alone, though. He introduces guests to some new friends he picked up on his travels: the Emotions, straight out of Inside Out! And they tracked him down for a reason.
Enter the emotions
The Emotions explain why they went looking for the two foremost experts on imagination in the universe. Across countless children’s minds, imagination is dimming. Heavy screen time is crowding out daydreaming, unstructured play, and creative boredom. The sparks that used to light up so easily are starting to go dark. It’s the same argument psychologists and worried parents have been having for a decade, and was just explored in Toy Story 5 to mixed results. Hearing it from Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust is another Disney way to make the point.
Dreamfinder and Figment are the obvious ones to call. They’ve spent forty years literally embodying imagination. The Emotions need their help reaching kids before the sparks go out for good.
Inside a child’s mind, room by room
This is where the trackless system shines. Instead of one continuous hallway, ride vehicles branch off into a series of rooms, with a different two or three rooms chosen on each ride. That increases re-rideability. Fans will want to experience all of the rooms.
Each one is staged inside a different child’s mind, mirroring the mind-worlds concept from Inside Out itself. The structure echoes the original ride’s art, literature, science, and music-adjacent rooms. Now, though, each room belongs to a specific kid whose passion defines it.
One room drops guests into a young artist’s imagination, rendered as a half-finished canvas going gray at the edges. The job is to help her Emotions rediscover color together with Figment, a direct callback to the original ride’s beloved Coloring Book interactive. Another room is built like a living library for a kid who used to devour books. Its shelves keep dimming until Dreamfinder and the Emotions coax the stories back to life.
A third is a fizzing, over-caffeinated science lab for a budding inventor, chaotic in exactly the way Figment himself has always been chaotic. A fourth is shaped like a giant, glowing instrument for a musically minded kid. It builds toward a callback to the ride’s old “Electronic Philharmagic” scene.
Each room ends the same way: a spark relit, color returned, one more child’s Emotions back in business. Ride vehicles spin and twirl between the rooms on a madcap romp to save imagination, with Dreamfinder, Figment, and Emotion animatronics in each room, along with projection effects and screens to provide the dynamic changes needed as imagination is restored.
The finale pulls every vehicle back together. All those recovered sparks pour into one enormous idea bag. Dreamfinder and Figment empty it in a triumphant, full-cast reprise of “One Little Spark,” the Emotions included. Guests exit through a fully revamped version of the old ImageWorks play area, with activities featuring new technology and how it can be used to explore imagination in new ways.
Overall, it’s a bit high-concept and perhaps too much information and story to provide on the ride itself. The return of Dreamfinder and introduction of the Emotions could possibly be handled in a pre-show. Guests could be brought along as imagination experts, in a reverse of the Journey Into YOUR Imagination premise that riders had no imagination. Perhaps an interactive element could even be worked in, and guests could be given choices in each child’s mind to help rekindle imagination. They could choose colors in the art brain, songs in the music brain, etc. Those choices could have a direct effect on the ride-through and outcome through different projections and physical props in the scene. I think it’s a fun idea with a lot of possible directions!
Why this could actually work
The whole pitch is built to solve the exact problem that’s dogged every Figment rumor for years. Fans don’t want Inside Out to replace Figment. They want it to share the stage with him. Dreamfinder gets his reunion. Figment stays the emotional center of the ride, not a mascot pushed to the side for newer IP.
Inside Out becomes the reason Disney can justify a nine-figure overhaul in the first place. It’s a lot to ask for from one ride refresh. It’s also, I think, exactly what would bring people back to a pavilion that’s been running on fumes since 2002.
I don’t truly expect much Figment news coming out of the Honda Center this August. But if Neil Patrick Harris walks on that stage and the lights actually go purple, I’ll be the first one rewatching the “How NOT to Draw Figment” short and celebrating a return to OUR imagination!
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