ROBOTS MAY BE “MORE BELIEVABLE”
Disney hopes new technology can keep visitors interested in its theme parks.
GLENDALE, CALIF.» I was en route to meet Groot.
Not an imitation Groot conjured with video or those clunky virtual reality goggles. The Walt Disney Co.’s secretive research and development division, Imagineering, had promised a walking, talking, emoting Groot, as if the arboreal “Avengers” character had jumped off the screen and was living among us.
But first I had to find him. GPS had guided me to a warehouse on a dead-end street in Glendale, a Los Angeles suburb. The place seemed deserted. As soon as I parked, however, a man warily appeared from behind a jacaranda tree. Yes, I had an appointment. No, I was not hiding any recording devices. He made a phone call, and I was escorted into the warehouse through an unmarked door behind a dumpster.
In the back near a black curtain, a little wrinkled hand waved hello.
It was Groot.
He was about 3 feet tall and ambled toward me with wide eyes, as if he had discovered a mysterious new life-form. He looked me up and down and introduced himself.
When I remained silent, his demeanor changed. His shoulders slumped, and he seemed to look at me with puppy dog eyes. “Don’t be sad,” I blurted out. He grinned and broke into a little dance before balancing on one foot with outstretched arms.
I wanted to hug him. And take him home.
“A new trend that is coming into our animatronics is a level of intelligence,” said Jon Snoddy, a senior Imagineering executive. “More believable. More outrageous.”
He looked at Groot adoringly. “This guy represents our future,” he said. “It’s part of how we stay relevant.”
Robots have been part of Disney’s special theme park sauce since the 1960s, when Walt Disney introduced “audio-animatronics,” his word for mechanical figures with choreographed movements. There were endlessly harmonizing
Small World dolls, marauding Caribbean pirates (“yo-ho!”), Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address. The technology was a runaway hit, mesmerizing generations of children and helping to turn Disneyland in California and Walt Disney World in Florida into cultural touchstones and colossal businesses.
Disney’s 14 theme parks around the world attracted 156 million visitors in 2019, and the Disney Parks, Experiences and Products division generated $26 billion in revenue. The coronavirus pandemic severely disrupted operations for a year, but the masses have returned.
Still, Disney has a long-term predicament. The quickening pace of daily living, advances in personal technology
the rapidly changing media landscape are reshaping what visitors want from a theme park. Disney knows it has to devise a new generation of spectacular attractions rooted in technology if it wants to continue to vacuum up family vacation dollars.
“We think a lot about relevancy,” Josh D’amaro, chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, said in April during a virtual event to promote the opening of an interactive Spider-man ride and immersive “land” dedicated to Marvel’s Avengers. “We have an obligation to our fans, to our guests, to continue to evolve, to continue to create experiences that look new and different and pull them in. To make sure the experience is fresh and relevant.
“And all of that is risk,” D’amaro acknowledged. “There is legacy here. People like the way things are. But we’re going to keep pushing, keep making it better.”
In early June, Disney’s animatronic technology took a sonic leap forward. Disneyland Resort’s newest ride, WEB Slingers: A Spider-man Adventure, features a “stuntronic” robot (outfitted in Spidey spandex) that performs elaborate aerial tricks, just like a stunt person.
“It’s thrilling because it can be hard to tell whether it’s a robot or a person — the stuntronic Spider-man, it’s that good,” Wade
Heath said as he joined the line to reride WEB Slingers in early August. Heath, 32, a recruiter for security company Pinkerton, described himself as “a major Disney nerd” who has, at times, been surprised that the company’s parks have not evolved faster.
“The older animatronics have a wonderful degree of nostalgia,” he said. “But I was maybe 10 or 11 when I stopped believing they are real. For kids today, the cutoff is probably even younger.”
The Spider-man robot — 95 pounds of microprocessors, 3-D-printed plastic, gyroscopes, accelerometers, aluminum and other materials — took more than three years to develop.
Disney declined to discuss the cost of the stuntronics endeavor, but the company easily invested millions of dollars. Now that the technology has been perfected, Disney plans to roll it out at other parks. WEB Slingers, for instance, has been greenlighted for Disneyland Paris.
Code name: Project Kiwi
Lots of people have aband solute faith in Disney as a corporate citizen. Others view Disney as a villainous empire that dreams up ways to manipulate young minds for profit.
Disney said it had no plans to replace human performers. Winnie the Pooh, Princess Jasmine and other beloved “walkaround characters” will continue to be played by people wearing costumes. Rather, Disney’s newest robotics initiative is about extreme Marvel and “Star Wars” characters — huge ones such as the Incredible Hulk, tiny ones such as Baby Yoda and swinging ones such as Spider-man — that are challenging to bring to life in a realistic way, especially outdoors.
About 6,000 animatronics are in use at Disney parks worldwide, and almost all are bolted to the floor inside ride buildings.
It’s part of the magic trick: By controlling the lighting and sight angles, Disney can make its animatronics seem more alive.
For a long time, however, Disney has been enamored with robotics as an opportunity to make the walkways between rides more thrilling.
“We want to create incredible experiences outside of a show box,” said Leslie Evans, a senior Imagineering executive, referring to ride buildings. “To me, that’s going to be next level. These aren’t just parks. They are inhabited places.”
It’s part of an evolution. Disney parks traditionally offered passive experiences — sit back in your swiveling Doom Buggy and enjoy those Haunted Mansion ghosts. New attractions have been increasingly about role play.
Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, unveiled in 2019, asks groups of riders to work together to steer the ship.
The ride’s queuing area features an impressive Hondo Ohnaka animatronic. (He’s a miscreant from the “Clone Wars” animated series.)
In 2003, Disney tested a free-roving animatronic dinosaur named Lucky; he pulled a flower cart, which concealed a puppeteer. In 2007, the company experimented with wireless animatronic Muppets that rode around in a remotecontrolled vehicle and chatted with guests. (A technician operated the rig from afar.) Lucky and the Muppet Mobile Lab have since been retired.
The development of Groot — code-named Project Kiwi — is the latest example. He is a prototype for a small-scale, freeroaming robotic actor that can take on the role of any similarly sized Disney character.
In other words, Disney does not want a one-off. It wants a technology platform for a new class of animatronics.
Cameras and sensors will give these robots the ability to make on-the-fly choices about what to do and say. Custom software allows animators and engineers to design behaviors (happy, sad, sneaky) and convey emotion.
“And all of this technology must disappear, which takes a crazy amount of engineering,” Evans said. “We don’t want anyone thinking, ‘That’s the most sophisticated robot I have ever encountered.’ It has to be: ‘Look! It’s Groot!’ ”
Project Kiwi will next advance to the “play test” stage — a short, low-profile dry run at a theme park to gather guest feedback. Disney declined to say when or where.