Fountain at Tomorrowland Getting the Pool Treatment

At New Tomorrowland, the future smells of chlorine.

Oh, not everywhere. The landscaping at the updated Disneyland section is edible, after all. So keen noses may well detect a whiff of basil near Astro Orbiter, the old “rocket ships” ride now adorned with earth-toned, Leonardo da Vinci-style whirligigs.

But continue past the all-new, misfiring, closed-for-repairs Rocket Rods ride and the odor of pool chemicals fills the air. The source: Tomorrowland’s central fountain, Cosmic Waves.

It seems that in scanning the future, Walt Disney Co. planners failed to foresee that so many parents would strip small children down to shorts or swimsuits and send them off to frolic in the pulsing jets. The result: sanitation problems more common to public pools than the Magic Kingdom.

Officials at the Anaheim theme park first reacted by checking for contamination several times a day and fine-tuning the chemicals in the water, according to Disney spokesman Ray Gomez. But the best solution soon was deemed to be more drastic. Says Gomez: “If we’re going to have that many people, the decision was made to chlorinate it up to the level of a swimming pool.”

E. Scott Reckard covers tourism for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7407 and at scott.reckard@latimes.com.