Anaheim, California
CNN
—
For the first time since Walt Disney’s death in 1966, guests at Disneyland can get a lifelike glimpse of the man who started the first animation studios in California, planting the seed that would grow into an international media and entertainment empire.
Disney has recreated its founder in its most realistic Audio-Animatronics figure to date, as part of a theater attraction about the humble beginnings and sometimes challenging periods of Walt Disney’s life.
This marks the first-ever representation of Walt Disney in the medium that he helped pioneer. Disney was fascinated with the technology behind robotic puppets that move and talk in a fluid way. In the 1960s, Disney and his team trademarked Audio-Animatronics as they applied the technology in Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room attraction and made Abraham Lincoln talk and move in a 1964 World’s Fair attraction.
Using audio clips of interviews from Disney’s lifetime, the creative team spent seven years from concept to creation of the new Walt Disney figure, using the most advanced technology available. The figure debuts in a new show, “Walt Disney – A Magical Life,” on July 17, the 70th anniversary of the park’s opening.
The show featuring Lincoln, which occupied space in Disneyland’s Main Street Opera House for decades, will be temporarily replaced by this new show and eventually be shown again in rotation.
While Imagineers and many fans have been excited about honoring their hero this way, the concept was not embraced by all of Disney’s family. One of Walt Disney’s granddaughters expressed concern that this robotic form of her grandfather would be “dehumanizing.”
CNN was invited to preview the final result, alongside the biggest Disney fans-turned-content creators and influencers. They generally loved the advancement of technology to allow lifelike features and endorsed having this way of introducing the story of Walt Disney to new generations who have had little exposure to the company’s founder.
The show features a 15-minute film narrated by Disney CEO Bob Iger about Walt Disney’s life through the early development of his Florida resort. After the film, the curtains rise to reveal a recreation of Disney’s office in Burbank, California, with the man himself leaning back on the edge of his desk.
The portion of the show featuring the Audio-Animatronics figure lasts only about 90 seconds, during which it moves, at one point going from leaning to standing up, then putting one hand on his hip as Disney often did in television appearances.
“We really want to convey the quiet stillness of Walt in his office and that feeling that you’re there with him. It’s personal, and it’s intimate,” said Jeff Shaver-Moskowitz, portfolio executive creative producer at Walt Disney Imagineering.
Easter eggs are peppered throughout the set, with a replica of Disney’s briefcase, books on urban development, a map of Disneyland with upcoming attractions, and a photo of Abraham Lincoln, all of which were in Disney’s office in the early ‘60s.
Shaver-Moskowitz, one of the lead creatives on the project, noted that newer generations of Disney fans never had the experience of watching Walt Disney appear on television every week. They may know the company he built, but not the man who struggled to get it off the ground.
For example, the film goes through setbacks like Disney losing the rights to his early character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
“We really wanted to sort of bring that connection of what we felt growing up with Walt to an audience today,” Tom Fitzgerald, senior creative executive at Walt Disney Imagineering, told a group of journalists. “The life lessons that he learned are really amazing ones and important ones. Follow your dreams. Never give up, turn setbacks into success and give the world your very best. I mean, those are messages that are as valid today as in Walt’s time.”
Artifacts in the lobby area of the theater show Walt Disney’s early creations, including Audio-Animatronics from attractions like Pirates of the Caribbean and Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room.
Another room shows the original furniture he and his wife had in their apartment inside Disneyland, above the fire station.
The show will initially use a virtual queue, where guests can use the Disneyland app to reserve a spot.
While early Audio-Animatronics were pneumatic or hydraulic, modern ones are electric. Shaver-Moskowitz said the older technology has the power to make a character stand up more easily on their own. An electric figure doesn’t move the entire weight as smoothly, even if the performance is more fluid and quieter, without loud puffs of air.
“But the team did such amazing work on establishing new technologies in this figure that we now have our first all-electric figure that has that lean-to-stand motion,” Shaver-Moskowitz said.
Disney said their creative team achieved many innovations never done before in a humanoid figure, including new methods to create more realistic skin and an actual “twinkle” in his eye.
Disney Imagineers also studied muscle structure and nuances of speaking and gesturing, to mimic Walt Disney’s mannerisms and movements.
CLICK TO HEAR: One of Walt Disney’s famous quotes as he comes alive in front of an audience
One of Walt Disney’s granddaughters, Joanna Miller, strongly objected to the project in a post on Facebook in November. In that post, she said that her grandfather never wanted to be in robotic form.
“They are dehumanizing him,” she wrote. “People are not replaceable. You could never get the casualness of his talking, interacting with the camera, his excitement to show and tell people about what is new at the park,” she wrote, referring to his weekly show about Disneyland.
Miller shared with the Los Angeles Times a letter that she wrote to Iger: “I strongly feel the last two minutes with the robot will do much more harm than good to Grampa’s legacy …They will remember the robot, and not the man.”
But during a media preview of the show, Kirsten Komoroske, executive director of the nonprofit Walt Disney Family Museum founded by one of Disney’s daughters, said three generations of Walt and Lillian Disney’s family saw the attraction and were “so moved and so touched.”
When asked about her own reaction to seeing the final project, Komoroske said, “I was absolutely gobsmacked. The expertise and care that has gone into this is exceptional …Sitting in the audience, it looked like Walt was looking right at me, and I felt the impulse to smile back at him.”
