Disney Says It Made Its Walt Disney Robot to Remind Fans He Was an Actual Person

When Disneyland turns 70 this July, Main Street’s Opera House will play host to the return of Walt Disney, who will sit down with audiences to tell his story in robot form. The response to the announcement at D23 Expo 2024 that Walt Disney Imagineering was working on a way to bring an animatronic, lifelike Walt into the parks to greet guests in Walt Disney – A Magical Life has been mixed, even among members of the Disney family. At the expo Disney’s grandnephew, Roy P. Disney, was present in support of the announcement. Meanwhile Walt’s granddaughter Johanna Miller wrote a Facebook post stressing that he would not have wanted to be turned into an animatronic: “The idea of a Robotic Grampa to give the public a feeling of who the living man was just makes no sense. It would be an imposter.” The LA Times recently reported on the discourse after previewing some of the show’s concepts without the animatronic present. Disney Imagineering’s Tom Fitzgerald posits that the choice to create t ... Read full article.