15. Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress

Back in 1958, Disney's Imagineers drew up plans for a new Disneyland area, dubbed Edison Square. It pitched these in a 1958 proposal to General Electric. The entire area would celebrate the discovery of electricity, and the main attraction, Harnessing the Lightning, would be a show presented in four distinct parts in an equal number of separate theaters.The host for each segment would be Mr. Wilbur K. Watt, billed as "an incredible electro-mechanical man…It is almost as though Mr. Watt were alive, for his movements are synchronized and life-like as he describes the play." At the time, Disney didn't actually have the technology to create this stunning, human-like character. But come the 1964 World's Fair, it had - and it employed it to create Father, the lead character in the Carousel of Progress. This was the main attraction in General Electric's pavilion at the fair, and was an evolution of the proposed Harnessing the Lightning show.

It featured a circular center stage, divided into six scenes. This was surrounded by six 240-seat sections of theatre seats. After loading in the first scene, guests remained in their seats as the theatre revolved around the stage, enabling them to watch four scenes set in different time periods. The final scene was used as an unloading area. Again, the storyline revolved around how the development of electricity and related technologies had enhanced the lives of ordinary families. After the World's Fair ended, the ride was shipped to Disneyland, before later being moved to Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, where it remains to this day. The influence of the talking figures within can be seen in dozens of later Disney rides, as well as those from rival operators.

14. Soarin' Over California

Located in the rusted aviatian hanger of Condor Flats, this high tech attraction at Disney California Adventure places guests on a hang-gliding adventure over the incredible sights (and smells) of California, from mountains and seas to orange groves, and finally to Disneyland Park. The real step forward in Soarin' Over California was the creation of the incredible hang-glider-style ride system, which lifts guests up into the air and does a great job of convincing them that they are really flying over California. This is achieved by lifting the seats into the air using a cantilever system, leaving guests' legs dangling freely. Some 37 tons are lifted in this way during each ride cycle. There's room for future evolution of the Soarin' system - particularly improving the on-screen footage, which currently features jarring cuts. However, the ride has also spawned a clone at Epcot, and lower-budget copies such as Europe in the Air at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. An updated version of Soarin' is on its way to Shanghai Disneyland, Disney California Adventure and Epcot, featuring footage of landmarks all over the world. We're also intrigued to see how Disney evolves its flying experience with the introduction of a new ride as part of Pandora - The World of Avatar, due to open at Disney's Animal Kingdom in 2017.

13. Pooh's Hunny Hunt

Pooh's Hunny Hunt is a groundbreaking "trackless" dark ride at Tokyo Disneyland, and not to be confused with the more basic Winnie the Pooh-themed attractions at other Disney parks. Costing more than $130 million to create, the ride dispenses with the traditional OmniMover system used by rides such as the Haunted Mansion. Instead, it uses a unique local positioning system (LPS), enabling computers to control the movement of each individual car. The cars can appear to have a mind of their own as they zip in and out of various iconic scenes from Pooh stories. As the wheels are hidden, they seem to glide seamlessly from one area to another, and the system was so successful that it was reused for the Aquatopia ride at neighbouring Tokyo DisneySea.

Other companies had implemented trackless ride systems before, including as part of Disney's own Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Disney's patented system, though, uses an array of sensors, instead of a wire embedded in the floor. This allows the vehicles to be steered down a random path, rather than along a pre-defined fixed route. Trackless rides are all the rage these days. Disney has followed-up with Mystic Manor at Hong Kong Disneyland and the soon-to-open Ratatouille: L'Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy at Walt Disney Studios, Paris. Elsewhere, SeaWorld Orlando employed similar technology to create Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin.

12. Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

Back in the early 1990s, Disney-MGM Studios was facing criticism from the press and some visitors. The park had debuted in 1989 to huge crowds, but only offered a handful of attractions. This was by design - Disney CEO Michael Eisner had deliberately opted to make it a "half-day park", keeping the cost low but still encouraging Walt Disney World guests to stay for an extra day. By 1991, rival Universal Studios Florida was firing on all cylinders after its disastrous debut a year earlier. Attendance at the park would eventually surpass that at Disney-MGM Studios, and Disney put into place rapid expansion plans. This included the addition of a Muppets-themed area and several smaller attractions. The vast majority of Disney's budget, however, would be spent on a thrill ride to match those over at Universal's park.

While it is primarily a drop tower ride, the Tower of Terror actually employs more than one type of vehicle in order to enable riders to leave the elevator shaft and pass through the Fifth Dimension. Guests sit in Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs), which rise up to the corridor scene in a Vertical Vehicle Conveyance (VVC). When they reach the Fifth Dimension corridor, the AGVs come into their own. Rather than riding on a track, the AGVs are guided by wires under the floor. When they reach the far end of the corridor, they lock into another vertical motion cab, which handles the actual drop sequence. Perhaps the real innovation here, though, is the incredible ride building that hosts the Tower of Terror. Standing at 199-feet-tall, the Hollywood Tower Hotel looks for all the world like a realhotel. Disney has always lead the way on theming, but the Tower of Terror raised the game.

11. Circarama / Circle-Vision 360

In 1955, Disney introduced a new, innovative type of movie, which he eventually dubbed Circle-Vision 360. The first screen was installed in Disneyland's Tomorrowland and opened in 1955. The first movie, A Tour of the West, offered visitors a documentary tour of the western United States, surrounding them completely with a 360-degree image. Walt wanted to place viewers directly into the thick of the on-screen action, but he didn't want to rely on the flimsy, uncomfortable glasses employed by the 3-D movies that were flooding cinemas during the 1950s. Instead, he wanted to completely surround them with the movies, so that they could look in front of them, to the side and even behind them to get a different viewpoint.

The answer was a system developed in-house, primarily by Disney legend Ub Iwerks - a man who had earlier pioneered 3-D films in the 1930s using a makeshift camera set up in the back of Studebaker vehicle. Iwerks devised a system that employed 11 different screens arrayed in a circle. There was a small gap between each screen, allowing an equal number of projectors to project the images. The system was initially named Circarama. Walt Disney hoped to introduce a chain of Circle-Vision 360 theaters across the US, but died before he got the chance. However, Circle-Vision movies were shown at the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels and the American National Exhibition in Moscow the following year. The travelogue-style movies that Walt envisioned are a perfect fit with Epcot's World Showcase. Reflections of China and O Canada! continue to be presented in the format, playing to millions of guests every year.