I feel the tease about the Animatronic total being impressive is the actual exciting thing here. That is something that truly gets me excited knowing how loved the Animatronics were in Splash.
I was told very early on (not long after D23 2022) that the ride would have a very impressive number of AA's. Uncharacterstic for anything they've built in a very very long time. They were the first person who mentioned this. I was never given an exact amount, but it was said that it would not disappoint people who appreciated that aspect of Splash.
I was concerned when Splash Archive came onto the scene and seemed to throw some cold water onto things. But when I saw the renders he got ahold of, I suspected he may have been working off of incomplete information given all of the blatant empty spaces that don't seem to exist for any reason other than to house AA's. Though for the record, Archive has remained adament on their prior claims of these being representative of the final roster of figures. So if he ends up being correct, then i'll owe him an apology.
All that said, again my source now claims they've seen finalized mockups and the ride is very well populated. Especially the finale which again was described as having "easily as many" AA's as Splash. So i'm feeling some relief at the moment. It will be a very easy claim to debunk, and it shouldn't be too awfully long before we get to see ourselves.
It appears we have two different sources saying two very different things. My source heard from a close friend actively working on the project in Orlando that the Iger tour DID happen. I didn't believe it had until I heard from my source.
It's one of those things that we'll probably never know for sure, given that Disney isn't ever going to make a public comment.
My source claimed they know with 100% certainty that Iger has never visited the ride and made no comments on it. And again, given their already negative opinion of Iger, I don't think they'd make such a claim without good reason and evidence. Whether the evidence they were given is true or not, no clue.
I myself err on the side of doubting the tour story. Iger is well known to not be someone who visits the parks to tour in progress projects like these. If he paid any attention to the project at all, it's likely just to watch a CGI mockup or some other storyboard in the comfort of his office. The idea of his opinions being leaked publicly is also pretty far fetched to me. Unless he's being a stupid dolt and blurting it out for a large number of people to hear. There wouldn't likely be many people in an entourage of a ride tour, and it would be insanely easy to trace whoever it was who heard the comment and leaked it, heads would roll.
I don't know who the true origin of the Iger tour claim is. But my source believes it's someone with a malicious agenda against the project and perhaps WDI as a whole. Apparently Brayden in particular has made himself a lot of enemies at WDI over spreading a number of lies. TBA included. He has seemingly yet to retract that "only 17 AA's" bit he propagated. He's also been promoting the Peltz drama lately, which should provide some clarity as to the sort of agenda he has.
Not saying that you're getting your own info from Brayden. Just figured i'd mention this so other people know not to put any stock in his commentary in general.
There’s always the chance Iger toured and jokingly remarked “this looks boring” in response to the fact there were cardboard cutouts of AAs everywhere. We know not a single figure was in place at the time of this alleged tour. That with skepticism from other sources on this alleged event makes me less concerned. I’m happy enough to hear there is a likelier chance we’ll get a healthy AA population, especially for the finale which Splasharchive had claimed no additional figures would be added, save for some very static critters.
I get the sense that Archive was making assumptions based on what the renders he got ahold of showed, or rather didn't show. I do think the renders are almost certainly real and came from a Disney source, but to me they clearly look extremely incomplete. Far moreso than even those virtual ride throughs Disney has released of some of their other attractions like 7DMT and Tokyos' BATB ride. So I don't believe you can extrapolate how many figures will be present in the final version based on what is missing in them. He initially claimed there would only be 6 figures in this scene (which is still in the original tweet), but changed that to 9 in a post here after I noted that the render was missing three characters confirmed to appear in the ride (and probably won't be present in any scenes outside of the finale).
If he actually received explicit confirmation directly from someone working on the ride for his claims, then that's another matter and muddies the waters a bit. And we'll see what ends up being true, again i'll apologize to him and anyone else if it turns out i'm wrong. But having seen his renders myself, there are way too many suspiciously placed empty platforms for me to assume no other characters are going to be included. Along with again the different screenshots showing different combinations of the characters (or even zero characters in one of them).
Again I'm not trying to step on any toes here. Ultimately only the final product will prove whose sources ended up being correct. Just sharing what was said on my end. I do hope for the sake of all of us that the claims I was told about the AA population are true.
