Addressing the Animatronic in the Room

Honestly, I hemmed and hawed about touching upon this subject, but, over the last three days it became clearer and clearer that I just HAD to put my thoughts down on paper…err…SubStack.

On July 14^th Disneyland hosted a special media review of “Walt Disney – A Magical Life” at Disneyland. This attraction…I guess you can call it an attraction…opens to the public on July 17^th which is exactly 70 years from Disneyland’s opening day back in 1955.

Of course, prior to this public opening and with the media event, you knew that there would be leaks and advanced video of this attraction and unless you have been hiding under a rock, exploring a cave or two, or circling the planet in the International Space Station you have probably seen something on this revelation.

So let’s talk about this new Disneyland attraction. Guests will be able to visit the attraction…boy I can’t wait to hear about the crowds…on July 17^th at the Main Street Opera House on Disneyland’s Main Street USA. Guests will be able to see Walt Disney himself on stage talking a bit about his life and dreams and how it all began. He will be situated in a recreation of his office and will sit up, gesture with his hands, move his head, take a step forward and of course tell us in his own words all about his life.

The total run time of “Walt Disney – A Magical Life” is approximately 17 minutes, with the bulk of that being “One Man’s Dream.” (About 14 minutes for the film and 3 minutes for the Audio Animatronics.) Disneyland has revealed that “Walt Disney – A Magical Life” will use a virtual queue at first, which is mostly due to limited seating in the theater.

After its initial run, the Main Street Opera House will welcome back “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln,” which will play in rotation with “Walt Disney – A Magical Life.” Walt Disney Imagineering redesigned the stage inside the theater to accommodate a rotating turntable allowing for both productions to play in rotation. There are no show, story, or script changes to “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.” Aside from a modified set to fit on the rotating turntable back-to-back with “Walt Disney – A Magical Life,” the Lincoln presentation remains unchanged.

Sound good?

When I first heard about this attraction being planned and such I thought “finally” all those Disney fans who, unlike the baby boomers, never got to see Walt Disney will finally get a chance to see “Uncle Walt” in person.

I’m still waiting.

Watching something on a YouTube video is certainly not the same as seeing it in person and a video representation of said subject may not do it justice.

So, I searched for every piece of video I could find but still found myself saying, “Huh?”

We all know how Disney Imagineering takes pride in authenticity…let’s face it…they set the standard in the making of a Moment with Mr. Lincoln, using Lincoln’s death mask to create Lincoln’s Countenance for the eventual attraction. We’ve also heard that research was done to determine what his voice box produced but I’m a “Doubting Thomas” on that aspect of the attraction.

So, one would think that the sacred image of Walt Disney would call for the imagineers to go to great lengths to create a true representation of probably one of the most influential dreamers in history.

But they struck out.

What struck me as sort of funny is that when I first saw the video, I said to myself, “Is that Walt Disney or Walter Cronkite?”

And then the floodgates opened…as names such as “Floyd from The Andy Griffith Show”, Tom Hanks as Walt Disney, and my favorite…the Pillow Guy Mike Lindell were some of the names to date.

The audioanimatron certainly could be described as portraying all these individuals…plus Walt’s face looks a little pudgy. Check out this YouTube video.

I guess if you are about 50-60 feet from the stage you really cannot judge how well or how poorly Walt’s face was put together.

This may help.

So, I am puzzled by all this. As long time Disney fans we have been conditioned to expect far better results than we are seeing with this attraction. For those of you who remember Disney’s Hollywood Studios Great Movie Ride attraction you may recall that practically every audio animatron appearing in that attraction was pretty much spot on…from Judy Garland to Humphrey Bogart. So how could they whiff on Walt Disney?

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.

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."

In New York Post article by Caroline Cubbin, mentions when the news was initially announced, Joanna Miller, Walt Disney’s granddaughter, publicly criticized the franchise for recreating his likeness in the animatronic tribute.

“People are not replaceable. You could never get the casualness of his talking,” wrote Miller in her initial Facebook post.

“I think I started crying,” she told the Los Angeles Times after she saw robo-Disney for the first time. “It didn’t look like him, to me.”

After the animatronic’s appearance was finally revealed to the public on July 14, many fans seemed to share the sentiment and took to the comments of the franchise’s Instagram announcement with their thoughts.

Aside from the fact that, in the opinion of Miller and many others, the animatronic didn’t resemble the man himself, she also criticized the company’s move because she says her grandfather didn’t want to be remembered as a robot.

Imagineer Jeff Shaver-Moskowitz rebuffed Miller in an April statement: “In all our research, we never found any documentation of Walt saying that. We know that it’s anecdotal and we can’t speak to what was told to people in private.”

Huh?

So how can the Imagineers be so off the mark? More importantly, how did this get final approval?

Let’s see there is Bob Iger for one who should have been part of the “signing off” crew.

However, maybe the onus was on Bob Weis, President of Walt Disney Imagineering, responsible for the design and development of Disney's theme parks and attractions, who should be a primary culprit in the okaying of this project and giving the go ahead.

The response in social media has been an overwhelming cry of disappointment from the hordes of Disney fans and it tells me something that I sort of known over the years, but it has certainly come to the surface again.

Disney fans have come to put Walt Disney on a pedestal. In his own words “It all Started with a Mouse!” but it certainly took off from there. Of course, his decision to build an amusement park or theme park that the entire family could enjoy together was a huge decision that has resulted in bring joy and I guess magic to all of us.

So, he’s held in high reverence by his fans…I am one of them.

Thus, this undertaking was viewed as something everyone looked forward to but unfortunately perhaps expectations were too high.

Still the big question is how did this happen?

This will be interesting to watch as we all know that the high offices in Anaheim will be listening to the “noise.”

So why was Abraham Lincoln’s countenance spot on yet Walt Disney’s likeness falls way short?

I have the answer.

Who had to give final approval to Abraham Lincoln before the curtain would go up?

Walt himself.

Unfortunately he is not around to say “Yay”, or more importantly “Nay” to this effort.

Sometimes you just cannot ignore the animatronic in the room!

See you next time.