Disneyland’s new audio-animatronic Walt Disney shocked me. Here’s what it’s really like.
Walt Disney, is that really you?
I know it's not. And yet, inside "Walt Disney – A Magical Life" at Disneyland, I can't help but suspend my disbelief as I watch the first-ever audio-animatronic figure of the Disney mastermind himself discussing his humble origins from a recreation of his office. He gesticulates with his hands. His eyes twinkle. At one point, he even takes a step forward. I sit up in my seat, half-wondering if Disney has really come back from the dead – and, if he ever actually did, what he would think of this.
Debuting during Disneyland Resort's 70th anniversary celebration, "Walt Disney – A Magical Life" doesn't open to the public at Main Street Opera House until July 17, the park's exact 70th anniversary. At an exclusive media preview on July 14, however, I got to be a part of the attraction's first real audience.
The experience wasn't something I'm going to forget any time soon.
Walt Disney's audio-animatronic figure is uncanny, down to his 'corneal bulge'
Disney getting immortalized as an audio-animatronic figure is a big deal − and a long time coming.
After all, it was Disney who helped pioneer audio-animatronic technology, with figures like the tiki birds of the classic attraction Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room and the original President Abraham Lincoln in "The Disneyland Story presenting Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.” (An updated Lincoln audio-animatronic figure anchors the current version, which will eventually play in rotation with "Magical Life," thanks to a revolving turntable on the stage for both attractions.)
“We're at a moment in time, 70 years after Disneyland opened, where we feel that the technology has caught up with our ambition to tell Walt's story and to let the newest generation of Disney fans experience what it felt like to be in a room with Walt,” Disney Experiences Chairman Josh D’Amaro told Paste BN during last year’s D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, where the attraction was announced.
Seeing Disney in audio-animatronics form is an uncanny experience, one that came about through meticulous design.
In a panel as part of the media preview, Tom Fitzgerald, senior creative executive with Walt Disney Imagineering, said imagineers poured over many hours of archival footage to get Disney's audio-animatronic figure just right. They studied everything − his mannerisms, his facial muscles, even his slightest eyebrow movements.
"It's the small, gentle movements that I think bring so much heart and humanity," Jeff Shaver-Moskowitz, portfolio executive creative producer with Walt Disney Imagineering, added.
Imagineers even made sure to do justice to Disney's "corneal bulge," something Fitzgerald described as key to capturing that "glint in the eye."
As a result, when the audio-animatronic Disney surveys the crowd, it feels like he's really looking at you. When Kirsten Komoroske, executive director of The Walt Disney Family Museum, saw it for the first time, she said she "felt the impulse to smile back at him."
I did, too.
The audio-animatronic Walt Disney captures something special
Now, is this audio-animatronic figure a perfect copy of Disney? Not quite − though it's close. In my view, however, this question misses the point. I did not go into this show expecting, nor wanting, to see a mere physical replica of Disney. I wanted to experience his essence, to get a sense of how people felt in the legend's presence. This is something "A Magical Life" undoubtedly delivers on.
Combine that with all the Disney history that gets recapped in a delightful, approximately 15-minute short film, "One Man's Dream," that screens before the audio-animatronic's unveiling, and you have a must-do for any Disney history nerd who wants to learn more about the park while feeling more connected to Disney's legacy.
"What are the things that make Walt Disney Walt?" Fitzgerald asked. "These are the things that we asked our animation team to create."
I'm sure the audio-animatronic Lincoln waiting backstage would tip a top hat to that, if he could.