Similar to concept car demoed at trade shows, we get an idea of Disney's technical engagement, and some of it will perhaps in some way or form get applied into future products/attractions.
A friend of mine usually does a camping trip with friends and family for his birthday... unlike some, I'm not investing in a camper as I wouldn't use it more than this once a year and I the first year I didn't want to drive to/from the nearest hotel... Trying to sleep in the back of a Buick Enclave was such a horrible experience, even by myself, I now just drive back and forth the 8 miles or so to the hotel, which is way overpriced that time of year. The irony is it wouldn't take much to have some kind of metal supported sheet that levels the surface over the middle row seats when in the "down" position.. but it's not even an afterthought.
So, I do think it's a feature that could be useful... I just don't think the Aztec executed well.
I thought it was cool especially with the cool camping tent but it was mostly ridiculed and even became the butt of the joke as Walter White's car in breaking bad (Of course this loser would drive an Aztek)
Nothing about all that tech makes me think Olaf could withstand a hug from an excited kid.
Disney does a ton of R&D that doesn't directly make it into the parks, such as smokeless fireworks (they donated the patent for this) and their holotile floor (basically an endless VR room you can walk around). I imagine they don't know the practicality at the start, like any good R&D.
1. The article states "he’s soon making his debut at Disney parks," which is misleading to a casual reader who may not realize that Olaf will only appear on the day of his debut.
There definitely are some marketing mistakes that have led to that, and certainly a lot of these projects seem to be in the direction of "one day, maybe, these will be crowd pleasers", but it still seems to me a bit funny how often casual intepretation seem to be "I can't wait to touch and play with the new Lincoln animatronic at the Hall of Presidents". It's not an R&D failure for Imagineering to keep building cooler animatronics even if most guests will only ever see them behind glass or rope or in other areas just out of touch. That's always been Disney's way of using robots for magic. The dream of "one day I can touch them and play with them" certainly lives on, of course, and these projects seem walking a few steps at a time towards that dream, but it seems weird to dismiss them as failures when they turn out to be just "normal" Disney tools for magic that try to create an illusion of being right next to you but don't allow for touching.
I can see why you're confused. Either of those possibilities would be acceptable and exciting, neither are going to happen.
Olaf (like the walking droids, flying x-wings, etc. before it) has so far made one single appearance in the parks on an off day, which was treated like a photoshoot. The photos from that shoot will be used in park promotional materials for years, incorrectly giving casual observers the impression that this is something that happens regularly.
If Walt Disney had advertised the Lincoln animatronic as being a part of the 1964 worlds fair, but only exhibited it for a few hours one time, he would have been ridiculed too.
The character shape lends itself to a low center of gravity but the fluidity of the motion implies light weight or strong motors.
An angsty kid giving Olaf a good shove or kick could be expensive and fast moving robotics are either dangerous or brittle
In addition to the points you've highlighted, the examples in the video and the images of the character strongly suggest it'll be a soft outer shell. I'd be more worried about a kid shoving it finding themselves caught by an internal pinch-point than damage to the robot.
> things that can withstand the wear-and-tear of millions of guests.
Idk about that. It is just a plastic part with magnets in it. Sounds like it would be easy to replace on a regular basis.
I would be a lot more concerned about kids tripping the robot over if they are allowed to interact with the robot that closely.
Seriously, this is just one (but impressive) step along in a million towards not only better animatronics for entertainment. They make a very real and valuable contribution towards improving any robotic motion.
No different than Elon Musk claiming self-driving will be deployed to all Teslas in 2017; 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026.
There are a few older shorter videos in the half hour range, I highly recommend checking them out if you find some quiet time! (It's awfully hard for me too in recent times, I haven't gotten around to watch the Living Characters one myself, so I can't give the gist... I'm just glad I got the holidays off to finally catch up!)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4
She covers everything - the line getting in to the hotel, the size + cost of the rooms in comparison with the same size/cost on a Disney cruise ship, and theories on why the experience was so poor.
For example, the working WALL-E robot that's made a handful of PR appearances weighs seven hundred pounds. They absolutely can't risk that ever running across some kid's foot.
imagine it packing a kid into cube
Totally get it's difficult to make time with kids, but depending on your kids ages... the video shows a LOT of Disney characters talking and doing things and the videos are colorful, so it could work as something you can listen to and they won't mind having play in the background!
gkoberger's peer comment is a pretty good summary. Another interesting point is that these technologies can benefit the brand bottom-line even when they don't make it into the park, because part of Disney's brand is "tomorrow today." Even when things are one-offs, they become one-offs that people stitch into the legend of the parks (in both the retelling and in their own memories), which gives them a larger-than-life feel; your visit might not include one of the "living characters," and statistically it probably won't.
... but it might. And if it does, you'll never forget it.
Personal anecdote / example: I stopped in at the "droid factory" in the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge area of Disney World a few years back. They had several bits of merch for sale including one life-size R2-D2, inert. I took a close look at the R2 because it was an impressive bit of work. Turned around to look at a rack of t-shirts. And was, therefore, startled as hell to hear a bwoop behind me, turn around, and see that it had followed me out of its charging receptacle and was staring at me. It was not at all inert; it was a very impressive operational remote-control replica.
The cast member behind the counter was doing his best to hold down his grin and not give me a "GOTCHA" look. He has to, because you never know what kids might be watching and he doesn't want to break the magic. And... Yeah, he got me good. "That time I was at Disney World and R2-D2 followed me around the t-shirt shop" is gonna stick with me.
The Disney wiki has a pretty comprehensive list of usages for the "articulated heads". It's more than I remember it being.
https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Disney_Characters%27_Articula...
A somewhat more readable frontend I like, since Fandom.com's interface cramps the actual content it's meant to present, imo:
https://breezewiki.com/disney/wiki/Disney_Characters'_Articu...
It also seems inevitable that there will likely be an odd period where certain types of events like assaults on robots will introduce laws to protect robots more than just property, even if less than humans… for the time being.
Eventually I’m expecting that we will see human rights, robot emancipation, equality, voting rights (if the democracy con is still ongoing), and even forced intergration of robots and then total replacement of humans similar to how the underdeveloped world was/is used to replace the indigenous people of the developed world today.
I don’t see any reasons why that would not be the clear order of operations for the same people who brought us slavery and mass migration. What is this AI robotics revolution if not just slavery, the redux? Treated as property? Check. Bought and sold? Check. Deemed inferior? Check. Hated for the abuse and exploitation by the rich, to serve them and their decadent lifestyle and undermine labor? Check. Rationalized about how it’s justifiable? Check. Etc.
Much like Olaf (and many before him… dinosaurs, WALL-E, talking characters, etc), it was implied he’d wander around the parks. But it tends to happen for a short amount of time, mostly for events, and fade away quickly. (The blog post even says that: Olaf will be part of a 15 minute temporary show, and then will visit Hong Kong).
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve seen this exact thing happen a dozen times over the past 20+ years. (And watch the video I posted if you want to see more!)
I expect you're correct. While it's fantastic tech, it's also very expensive to keep highly-precise, carefully calibrated micro-machinery like this aligned and operating 12+ hours a day outdoors where temps vary from 50-110 degrees. Disney thinks in total cost of operation per hour and per customer-served.
While there's probably little that's more magical for a kid than coming across an expressively alive-seeming automaton operating in a free-form, uncontrolled environment, the cost is really high per audience member. Once there are 25 people crowded around, no new kid can see what all the commotion is about. That's why these kind of high-operating cost things tend to be found in stage and ride contexts, where the audience-served per peak hour can be in the hundreds or thousands. For outdoor free-form environments, the reality is it's still more economically viable to put humans in costumes. Especially when every high-end animatronic needs to always be accompanied by several human minders anyway.
Disney has problems with that. Their Galactic Starcruiser themed hotel experience cost more to the customer than a cruise on a real cruise ship, and Disney was still losing money on it. The cost merely to visit their parks is now too high for most Americans.
It's really hard to make money in mass market location-based entertainment. There have been many attempts, from flight simulators to escape rooms. Throughput is just too low, so cost per customer is too high.
A little mobile robot connected to an LLM chatbot, though - that's not too hard today. Probably coming to a mall near you soon. Many stores already have inventory bots cruising around. They're mobile bases with a tall column of cameras which scan the shelves.[2] There's no reason they can't also answer questions about what's where in the store. They do know the inventory.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Galactic_Starcruise...
I'm not sure that a Disney experience needs to be much more/different than this... and even maybe having smaller experiences that are similar... 1-2 rides and a restaurant, exhibit and shop as a single instance... spreading the destinations around instead of all in a single large park. This would mean much lower operational costs per location, being able to negotiate deals at a smaller level with more cities, and testing locations/themes beyond a large theme park expense.
Just a thought. Of course, I did also go to a "Marvel Experience" that seemed to be a mobile experience closer to a carnival that setup and moved to different locations. That was kind of an over-priced garbage experience that I wouldn't have done had I known ahead what it was like.
I always wonder why people say things like this. It’s as if we’re just regurgitating stuff that feels right. Humans and LLMs behave the same sometimes.
Disneyworld alone gets 50 million visits a year. Magic Kingdom tickets are like $150. That’s approximately the average American’s monthly cell phone bill.
I think so far you are right: https://redlib.catsarch.com/1p9qnd4/
I actually found it more relevant to our current tech bubble than the Living Characters doc.
Take a look at industrial cobots (not a typo). They feature rounded corners, have very little to no "finger pinchy areas" and lots of force feedback sensors.
Despite that they still require trained (adult) personal and move very slowly when actually interacting with humans.
That's the price for them being sturdy and precise.
The part where he runs a massive simulation is very much up the typical HN-user's street
A lot of people in this thread have vouched for Defunctland. Might not be for everyone, but I find the pacing great.
Disney's been doing awesome work with "Living Characters", like a Mickey that moves his mouth or a BB-8 that can roll around. But for various reasons, they never tend to make it into regular usage.
If you have a few hours over Christmas break and want to watch a 4 hour YouTube video (I promise if you're on HN on a Sunday, you'll be delighted by it), I highly highly recommend this video:
"Disney's Living Characters: A Broken Promise" by Defunctland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyIgV84fudM