How Disney Imagineers are using AI and robotics to reshape the company’s theme parks
With last weekend s opening of World of Frozen in the renamed Disney Adventure World park, Paris became the new leader in advanced technology among the company s theme parks. It s a title that shifts hands frequently, but with its robotic Olaf and a new nighttime show that blends airborne and water drones with fountains, fire, and water walls, Adventure World is a technological marvel. Disney tends to downplay the focus on technology in its park attractions. Workers and executives at Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) see the technology as a way to evoke emotion, their primary goal. And with a growing arsenal of tools at their disposal, from AI to powerful game engines (along with plenty of homegrown methods), all of the parks have a lot of ways to summon feelings from guests. Disneyland Paris
With last weekend’s opening of World of Frozen in the renamed Disney Adventure World park, Paris became the new leader in advanced technology among the company’s theme parks. It’s a title that shifts hands frequently, but with its robotic Olaf and a new nighttime show that blends airborne and water drones with fountains, fire, and water walls, Adventure World is a technological marvel.
Disney tends to downplay the focus on technology in its park attractions. Workers and executives at Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) see the technology as a way to evoke emotion, their primary goal. And with a growing arsenal of tools at their disposal, from AI to powerful game engines (along with plenty of homegrown methods), all of the parks have a lot of ways to summon feelings from guests.
Disneyland Paris has an additional advantage up its sleeve: It sits just a few hours from Disney’s R&D hub in Zurich, where much of the company’s robotics work is happening.
That proximity helped shape the new Olaf. The project began with StellaLou, a theme-park-exclusive character popular in Asia, whose ballerina persona led the team to build a robot capable of a full pirouette. But Imagineers decided she wouldn’t resonate as broadly as Olaf, so they shifted the work onto a more widely recognized character and kept pushing the technology forward.
Homecoming
The Olaf robot shares the same distinctive walk and mannerisms as he does in the Frozen films. He’s the latest advance from the division that was the birthplace of the BDX droids that debuted two years ago (and now are appearing at most of the company’s parks) and the real-world Herbie robot inspired by Fantastic Four.
He represents more than a shift from the audio animatronics the company is famous for. He’s also emblematic of a new type of thinking at Disney Imagineering.
That shift starts at the top. Bruce Vaughn was named president and chief creative officer of Walt Disney Imagineering three years ago. Before that, he spent 22 years as an Imagineer, taking a seven-year break between stints with the company to explore the entrepreneurial world. Once he was lured back to Disney, he says, he brought the startup culture with him.
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