Long before people could ask a smart speaker to turn down the lights, check the weather, adjust the thermostat, or remind them what was on the calendar, visitors to Kissimmee could step inside a house that promised much of the same thing. It looked less like a suburban home and more like something that had landed from another planet, with rounded white walls, interconnected domes, unusual windows, and a futuristic interior filled with computers and electronic gadgets.
This was Xanadu: Home of the Future, one of Central Florida’s most unusual roadside attractions. Located along U.S. Highway 192 near Lake Cecile, Xanadu invited visitors to walk through a vision of how its creators believed families might live in the not-so-distant future. It opened in 1983, when personal computers were still unfamiliar to much of the public and the idea of a computerized house sounded more like science fiction than everyday life.
Today, the computers that once made Xanadu seem extraordinary would be hopelessly primitive. Yet some of the ideas demonstrated inside that strange white house were remarkably close to the connected homes we live in today. That may be what makes Xanadu so fascinating decades later. It was an attraction built to predict the future, only to eventually become obsolete because parts of that future actually arrived.
Building a House for Tomorrow
Xanadu was not originally conceived as a traditional theme park attraction. The project grew from experiments with alternative architecture, energy efficiency, new construction methods, and the growing belief that computers would eventually become part of everyday home life.
Builder and inventor Bob Masters had experimented with constructing houses by inflating large balloon-like vinyl forms and spraying them with layers of polyurethane foam. Once the foam hardened, the temporary form could be removed, leaving behind a lightweight, self-supporting shell. The technique created buildings without conventional straight walls, wooden framing, or the familiar box-like shape of most American houses.
The first Xanadu experiment appeared in Wisconsin Dells in 1979. Eventually, three Xanadu houses would exist in major tourist destinations: Wisconsin Dells, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and Kissimmee, Florida. The Florida version, designed by futurist architect Roy Mason with Masters involved in the project, became the largest and best remembered of the three. At roughly 6,000 square feet, the Kissimmee house was intended not simply to show an unusual way of building a home, but to demonstrate how technology might fundamentally change the way people lived inside one.
Kissimmee was an almost perfect place to try it. Walt Disney World had already transformed Central Florida tourism, EPCOT Center had opened in October 1982 with its own optimistic vision of technology and the future, and U.S. 192 was developing into a colorful collection of attractions, hotels, restaurants, gift shops, dinner shows, and roadside curiosities. Xanadu opened in the summer of 1983 and fit comfortably into that strange and wonderfully experimental period of Central Florida tourism.
Walking Into the Future
From the road, Xanadu was difficult to mistake for anything else. Its collection of smooth white domes looked somewhere between an alien settlement, an enormous igloo, and a movie set. Curved walls flowed into one another, conventional corners were almost nonexistent, and the unusual building immediately communicated that visitors were about to see something very different from the homes they knew.
Inside, the experience was designed around the idea of a computerized household. Commodore microcomputers were incorporated into demonstrations throughout the home, helping control or illustrate systems involving security, climate, entertainment, household management, and other everyday tasks. What seems ordinary now was a startling concept in 1983, when even owning a personal computer was still a novelty for many families.
One of Xanadu's most talked-about concepts was AutoChef, a computerized kitchen system designed around the idea that a computer could help plan meals and manage food preparation. Elsewhere, visitors encountered concepts for automated environmental controls, computerized security, home entertainment systems, electronic household scheduling, and video displays that could transform the appearance of windows and interior spaces. The house even explored concepts involving computer-monitored gardening and health and relaxation systems.
Some ideas were more practical than others, and not everything presented inside Xanadu represented technology that was ready to become part of the average American home. That was part of the attraction. Visitors were being asked to imagine what could happen. The house was essentially an architectural version of a world's fair exhibit, combining real technology, prototypes, predictions, and a healthy amount of 1980s optimism.
When Computers Still Felt Like Science Fiction
It is difficult to recreate just how futuristic Xanadu must have seemed in the early 1980s. There were no smartphones sitting in people's pockets. Streaming television did not exist. The World Wide Web was still years away. Home Wi-Fi, smart thermostats, video doorbells, voice assistants, cloud-connected security cameras, and app-controlled appliances were not part of everyday life.
Against that backdrop, the idea that computers might control the environment inside your house was genuinely fascinating.
Xanadu's creators imagined a home where technology faded into the background and helped manage everyday life. Computers might oversee household schedules, prepare information, control entertainment, manage energy consumption, assist with cooking, monitor security, and allow people to work or learn without leaving home. Several of those predictions sound far less exotic today.
The technology itself may have aged badly, but the larger idea behind it did not.
Perhaps that is one reason the Kissimmee Xanadu became the most successful of the three houses. At its peak during the 1980s, reports indicate the attraction was drawing around 1,000 visitors a day. People were not necessarily touring Xanadu because they wanted to purchase a foam dome house. They came because they wanted to see tomorrow.
The Problem With Predicting the Future
There was an unavoidable problem with operating an attraction called the Home of the Future: eventually, the future showed up.
By the early 1990s, personal computers were rapidly becoming more powerful and commonplace. Consumer electronics were improving at a remarkable pace. Technology that had once seemed incredible inside Xanadu either became available to ordinary consumers or was replaced by something far more advanced.
Instead of appearing futuristic, parts of Xanadu began to look dated.
That transition happened surprisingly quickly. A computer installation that could amaze someone in 1983 might seem ancient only a decade later. Maintaining an attraction built around cutting-edge technology meant constantly replacing the very thing that made it special, and Xanadu struggled to keep up. The two other Xanadu houses disappeared during the early 1990s, leaving Kissimmee as the final survivor.
The Kissimmee attraction managed to hang on until 1996. By then, Central Florida tourism had changed dramatically as well. Universal Studios Florida had opened, Disney had expanded considerably, large-scale themed attractions dominated the market, and the U.S. 192 tourist corridor was becoming increasingly competitive. The little roadside attraction that once promised a glimpse into tomorrow had become a relic of yesterday's idea of tomorrow.
From the Home of the Future to an Abandoned Landmark
After Xanadu closed, the unusual structure remained standing along U.S. 192 for nearly another decade. It was offered for sale and was reportedly used at different times for office and storage purposes, but without the constant maintenance required by the unusual building, deterioration began to take its toll.
For people driving through Kissimmee during the late 1990s and early 2000s, the abandoned Xanadu became almost as memorable as the attraction had been while it was open. The once-bright white exterior became stained by Florida weather. Windows were damaged, vegetation crept around the property, and mold and mildew spread through portions of the interior. Photographers and urban explorers documented the increasingly strange sight of a deteriorating futuristic house sitting alongside one of Central Florida's busiest tourist highways.
There was something almost poetic about it. A building created to show people what life might look like decades into the future had survived long enough to become an abandoned artifact from the past.
In October 2005, the last Xanadu finally disappeared. Bulldozers demolished the Kissimmee structure, more than twenty years after visitors first walked through its doors. Plans at the time called for redevelopment of the property, bringing an end to the final surviving example of the Xanadu Home of the Future attractions.
Xanadu Got More Right Than We Might Remember
It would be easy to look back at Xanadu's bulbous foam walls, primitive computers, oversized electronics, and very 1980s vision of technology and laugh at how wrong the future looked.
But that probably misses the most interesting part of the story.
Homes did not become giant white polyurethane bubbles. We did not abandon traditional architecture for clusters of interconnected domes. Many of the specific devices displayed inside Xanadu disappeared almost as quickly as they arrived.
The basic concept of the computerized home, however, was remarkably accurate.
Today, a homeowner can remotely adjust the thermostat, watch a live security camera, lock the front door, turn lights on and off, start appliances, play music in different rooms, check who is standing outside, monitor energy consumption, schedule deliveries, order groceries, work from a home office, attend school remotely, and ask a computer to perform dozens of everyday tasks.
The hardware is very different from what Xanadu's designers imagined, but the underlying idea is familiar.
In that sense, the Home of the Future did not completely fail to predict the future. Parts of the future simply arrived in a much more conventional-looking house.
Remembering One of Kissimmee's Strangest Attractions
Xanadu belonged to a version of Central Florida that has slowly disappeared. It was an era when visitors traveling toward Walt Disney World might encounter an enormous orange, an alligator attraction, a medieval castle, a roadside museum, an unusual dinner show, or a bizarre white dome promising to show them how their family might live twenty years from now.
Not every attraction needed roller coasters, massive budgets, or internationally recognized characters. Sometimes curiosity was enough.
For those who toured Xanadu during the 1980s and 1990s, the attraction has become another piece of Central Florida history that exists primarily through old photographs, home videos, brochures, postcards, and memories. For everyone who never had the chance to step inside, its story provides a fascinating snapshot of a time when people were beginning to understand just how dramatically computers might change everyday life.
The funny thing is that Xanadu was ultimately remembered as an outdated Home of the Future.
Yet all these years later, some of its predictions do not seem outdated at all.
Share Your Xanadu Memories
Did you ever tour Xanadu: Home of the Future in Kissimmee, or do you remember seeing those strange white domes while driving along U.S. 192? We would love to hear what you remember. If you have photographs, brochures, tickets, advertisements, home videos, or other pieces of Xanadu history, share your memories with Retrolando and help us preserve another piece of Central Florida's past.
There is always more Orlando history waiting to be rediscovered. Head to Retrolando.com for more stories, photographs, videos, and memories from the Orlando area we grew up with.