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DAK “Zootopia” is being created for the Tree of Life theater

FigmentsBrightIdeas

Well-Known Member
If it’s all servo controlled, similar to how the Tiana’s Bayou Adventure figures are, my guess it’s possibly a show controller/software glitch rather than the figure himself, seeing as it was specifically all his facial movements out, not just one or two movements out. Also to take into account with him of course is he’s not surrounded by water, which, servos typically don’t do well in wet environments. So we can rule that out of being the issue. But if it’s hydraulics, could be that there was no fluid/air being pumped in by the compressor/fluid distributor
 
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Nottamus

Well-Known Member
we saw the show two weeks back and I am just not sure.

Bug has been there for awhile and I am always up for a change - but I guess the message of Zootopia was lost on me. The Bug message was, “hey, we’re insects and down here doing things - don’t step on us”

I did have the worst seats - like 6th row back all the way near the exit doors, so some effects were lost on us. And I liked the Zootopia movie !

Anyway- most likely a one and done for us.

Unless someone spotted a message- and I will try again. Or not.
 

flyerjab

Well-Known Member
This is what angers me more than anything about this company. Reliability and inflated costs. If Disney considers these parks to be top tier entertainment experiences, then the attractions should be working far more than not. It has been years since the canons and Kylo figure have worked on RotR…YEARS!! Why am I paying for single lane prices to jump the line to get in a ride where most effects are working, to eventually build up to the penultimate moment with Kylo, to have none of that big sequence work? INFURIATING!

Now, I think that the Zootopia show is the worst attraction they have made in WDW for quite some time. That being said, it should still be working. They love statistics. They must track show ready effects. If they aren’t they should be. It would help highlight issues and hopefully spotlight problems that NEED to be fixed. This attraction has ONE main AA, so you’d think they should do what they can to make it reliable. Or, what was talked about above, maybe look at the AA development process, and figure out why they seem to break down so soon on new attractions. Frustrating.
 

jah4955

Well-Known Member
This is what angers me more than anything about this company. Reliability and inflated costs. If Disney considers these parks to be top tier entertainment experiences, then the attractions should be working far more than not. It has been years since the canons and Kylo figure have worked on RotR…YEARS!! Why am I paying for single lane prices to jump the line to get in a ride where most effects are working, to eventually build up to the penultimate moment with Kylo, to have none of that big sequence work? INFURIATING!

Now, I think that the Zootopia show is the worst attraction they have made in WDW for quite some time. That being said, it should still be working. They love statistics. They must track show ready effects. If they aren’t they should be. It would help highlight issues and hopefully spotlight problems that NEED to be fixed. This attraction has ONE main AA, so you’d think they should do what they can to make it reliable. Or, what was talked about above, maybe look at the AA development process, and figure out why they seem to break down so soon on new attractions. Frustrating.
If only they could easily bring back "Bug"
 

monothingie

Dynamically Raising Prices Excites Me
Premium Member
Statler: Well, you know what that makes him...
Waldorf, Statler: SMARTER THAN US!
1763995903592.png
 

MrPromey

Well-Known Member
...
Edit - the rise preshow might be the closest?

Did you ever experience JII? I'm guessing from your comments, you didn't.

How this worked was nothing remotely like the Rise preshow or MF.

You were on a continuously moving single-tracked ride the entire time.

Most people would have thought it was an Omnimover in the sense that HM or SE, or WOM were but it wasn't.

It looked like it though since you loaded from a conveyor belt into the vehicles that were all a part of a never-ending chain until they sped up in groups of four to head for the carousel segment after going around a corner.

In the picture below, you can see the circular part. The walls (shown as thick blue blocks) were fixed to the center and would prevent bleed over from the scene to the left and right and you seeing the people ahead and behind your group during this segment.

It wasn't about efficiency but creating a segment of the ride where the character could directly address you for about three and a half minutes with a complete set of dialog and show-like animation rather than the repeating stuff you pass by for the rest of the attraction where you catch whatever it is in progress and go by it roughly fast enough to se a complete cycle and hear whatever's being said - similar to the talking animatronics on Spaceship Earth.

JIYI uses part of it's track and ride vehicles but unlike JIYI, it was not a stop and go ride for either loading or for various scenes. It had omnimover capacity. Fortunately, I guess, nobody likes JIYI enough for it to need to push as many guests through hourly.


Screenshot 2025-11-24 at 9.57.17 AM.png
 
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jah4955

Well-Known Member
Did you ever experience JII? I'm guessing from your comments, you didn't.

I'm talking about the whole shebang. JII did it with vehicles on an existing track keeping total sync with the "stage" after people loaded in the front on a moving conveyor belt and before going into the more traditional dark-ride portion of the attraction. It lasted for roughly three and a half minutes of the total track time of the ride. The ride vehicles were always on an independent track and turned, omnimover-style to look inward for this segment. For the Rise pre-show and MF, the whole thing is a single fixed turntable. In both of those cases, the whole thing starts and then the whole thing stops. Under normal operation, this always kept moving. It was a continuously moving ride like FJ and Monsters Unchained but back before the tech for anything at all like those rides existed to manage all of that (obviously, the vehicles weren't on arms, either).

From an experience standpoint, imagine when first going into the ball of Spaceship Earth, if the vehicles turned inward where a scene with animatronics kept pace following the position of the ride vehicles while characters talked to the riders with a linear narrative that lasted a couple minutes until they'd made the full rotation and were ready to go up to the next level and then the vehicles turned away and peeled off on upward towards the rest of the attraction.

This wasn't an "efficiency thing", it was the only way for them to do this kind of thing with a tracked ride system where the scene would follow you rather than you just passing by it. I guess the alternative would have been shuffling people into a room for a preshow before they boarded the actual ride like is common now but this was entirely integrated into the tracked ride system.

JII was not quite a traditional Omnimover chain but it acted like it for the majority of the ride. It didn't stop and go except for the same reasons an Omnimover would with the exception of sometimes having to pause briefly at the start in order to get the timing right for that carousel at the beginning. Once in that segment, it kept perfect pace.

View attachment 894014

See that circle in the middle of the layout? That was the carousel where five copies of the same animatronics delivered their same scene to the ride vehicles as they passed by in groups of four, nonstop. When the vehicles had done the full rotation, they moved on and the animatronics went straight into welcoming the next group. If you were in the front vehicle, you could catch a glimpse of the the end of the last train turning away from the "stage" and exiting as you first started to go into that room.

That illustration makes it look like the majority of the ride, it's just your four cars but normally, you caught up to the train ahead of you much earlier on than that.

If you'd asked most people if it was an Omnimover, using rides like HM, SE, COP as examples, almost any casual guest would have said yes.

The projection stuff was also an innovation someone else pointed out (what was happening behind them wasn't a move on a loop) but that's not the heart of what I was focused on.
Just imagine if Disney continued (thru today) on the trajectory that lead to this!

Of course they have done many mind-blowing extraordinary things since 1983, but I think 2025 Disney would have been even more mind-blowing if not for their lesser-beloved eras.
 

MrPromey

Well-Known Member
Just imagine if Disney continued (thru today) on the trajectory that lead to this!

Of course they have done many mind-blowing extraordinary things since 1983, but I think 2025 Disney would have been even more mind-blowing if not for their lesser-beloved eras.

Hah! You caught this before I edited it down a little.

I realized after posting that, we're in the Zootopia thread and I needed to shorten my essay on JII. 🤣
 

Homemade Imagineering

Well-Known Member
Do we know if the figure is servo or hydraulic controlled or a hybrid? Was just curious on maybe what his face is controlled by (servos or hydraulics), or if the body perhaps is controlled by different style parts than the face.
I’d imagine fully electric. These are the motors in his face;

All the A1000s use Harmonic Drive, but I’d imagine there might be some hydraulics involved in the heavier/larger figures, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility
 

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