Our slow-moving queue curves around a two-story wooden boathouse filled with props from explorations through distant lands. At the front of the line, a Disney cast member dressed in khaki helps us step onto a quaint little boat for a tour around the jungle.
This is Disneyland's world-famous Jungle Cruise, filled with animatronic animals and painful puns from your skipper, and old-world set pieces depicting scenes straight out of the Amazon, Congo, Mekong and Nile rivers. It's a ride that Walt Disney himself had a hand in developing, but something new is coming that separates it from its 1950s origins: a 3D-printed prop.
You may have seen small-scale 3D printing being done by hobbyists at home. But that's child's play compared to what industrial-scale 3D-printing workshops can do.
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Haddy, a 3D-printing business based in Florida, says it can build worlds. More specifically, Jay Rogers, co-founder and CEO, tells me the company is installing its first boat in a Disney park.
"It's in the Jungle Cruise ride," he says during Disney Demo Day at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, last month.
3D printing burst onto the scene in the mid-2010s. These printers take little pellets or strands of polymer or liquid resin and turn them into fully fleshed-out designs, like the purple toy octopus and Prada purse that my 3-year-old daughter got from her Uncle Zach for her recent birthday. Using a digital file, you can send a project to the printer to produce -- whether it's a small octopus or an armchair.
The lit-up Mickey shape hanging from the tree at Walt Disney Studios was 3D-printed by Haddy. Corinne Reichert/CNET
You can buy small 3D printers, priced between $180 and $400, for home projects, while larger operations require enormous machines that churn out items as big as cafe counters and even houses.
And, yes, boats.
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