Exclusive: I watched Disney’s next-gen audio-animatronic transform from a pirate to a skeleton — and the ‘deeply impressive’ tech debuts at Disneyland today
You could say Walt Disney Imagineering has been on a decades-long journey with audio-animatronics, which is essentially the tech underneath iconic characters at parks worldwide. What started with Tiki Birds has since grown to give us legendary looks at other characters, and in recent years, Walt Disney himself.
Just like the walking, talking Olaf roaming character, BDX Droids, or the Walt Disney animatronic, that innovation comes from a specific part of Walt Disney Imagineering, and that's the R&D (Research and Development) lab.
In late November of 2025, Imagineering gave us an early first look at next-generation audio-animatronic technology, one that could be expressive in brand-new ways due to the fact it was using front-based projection.
As Leslie Evans, Executive R&D Imagineer at Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development, told me, "We're really going after more tools to just tell stories in an incredible way."
Now, just seven months...
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