Walt Disney – A Magical Life

[JohnD]

Laughing Place has shared more details from an early preview of Walt Disney – A Magical Life:

How Imagineers Made Walt Disney – A Magical Life a Reality

It's clear that great care and consideration went into creating the upcoming Disneyland attraction.

www.laughingplace.com

“Walt Disney – A Magical Life” to Feature Tweaked Version of “One Man’s Dream” and Disneyland History Exhibit Upon Opening

We found out plenty of new details about the brand-new show, which debuts on July 17th, 2025.

www.laughingplace.com

This would be awesome to bring to the One Man's Dream exhibit in HS. They said the DLP shows begins with a tweaked version of the show from DHS. In DHS, they would need to add the Walt AA which presumably would be shown after the screen for the short movie is lifted and curtains are parted. One can "dream", right?

 

[luv house of the mouse]

So my question is why they didn't go with a Hologram? The ones I have seen in person look like the person is right in front of you.

 

[Phroobar]

So my question is why they didn't go with a Hologram? The ones I have seen in person look like the person is right in front of you.

Disney likes to do things the hard way I guess.

Any idea if Walt will be walking around like the Frankenstein monster does at Epic Universe?

 

[SuddenStorm]

So my question is why they didn't go with a Hologram? The ones I have seen in person look like the person is right in front of you.

Part of Disneyland is marvelling at the technology. A state of the art animatronic will be far cooler to witness then a CGI generated Walt hologram.

Assuming this one isn't built by the people that built Finale Tiana....

 

[TheCoasterNerd]

So my question is why they didn't go with a Hologram? The ones I have seen in person look like the person is right in front of you.

Because an animatronic (3d, opaque, full range of motion, etc) will always look more realistic than a hologram (usually 2d or less detailed 3d, often translucent, etc). Plus it’s actually probably cheaper

 

[D.Silentu]

I think a part of it is that it would seem incongruent with the Lincoln figure that has been there so long. Especially apparent once the old and new shows go into rotation

 

[J2B]

Had a feeling the opening date would be July 17th.
Very befitting, and makes sense.

Still have mixed feelings about this…Walt AA.
But also admit I am curious to see how lifelike a figure they construct.
Just hard to know how to feel when I know this is something he never wanted to see happen.
Hopefully this will be done tastefully.

We shall find out in a few months…

-

it's a heated debate over on MiceChat.com As I understood it, Walt did-not-want an animatronic of himself. That would be all I needed to hear to not push forward

 

[Parteecia]

it's a heated debate over on MiceChat.com As I understood it, Walt did-not-want an animatronic of himself. That would be all I needed to hear to not push forward

Walt should've thought of that before he created a theme park that did it to others without their permission.

 

[Comped]

it's a heated debate over on MiceChat.com As I understood it, Walt did-not-want an animatronic of himself. That would be all I needed to hear to not push forward

A couple of people I've known who worked with Walt have confirmed this.

Theme Park Insider had a very interesting quote from a high level Imagineer I'd not seen elsewhere:

"We have a whole generation of guests and cast who don't know about Walt Disney, the man. They know the name and Disneyland, but to be able to keep his story as a permanent story at Disneyland - the only park that he ever walked in - is extremely important to us," Walt Disney Imagineering Executive Producer Jeff Shaver-Moskowitz said.

Did those CMs fall asleep during the part of Traditions when they talked about Walt and the company's history?

 

[D.Silentu]

Regarding cast members knowing little about Walt, I can see how they got there. Sure, they got a history lesson when they started the job. Yet, however many hours that training course was, it is pitted against a wider public perception of the man that is really soup to nuts. On the one hand you have the company's 'Uncle Walt' who wavered from saccharine patriarch to genius depending on the day. Then there's that public 'too good to be true' version, where he is the poster boy for virtually every politically incorrect fault of his generation and occasionally a Third Reich sympathizer, depending on who you ask. Edgy animated comedies have had a role in perpetuating that Walt, which for many adolescents is probably their first education on him. As I understand it, Disney was somewhat mythic in his own day, so it seems understandable that there are so many iterations of him in public consciousness. Undoubtedly 'Walt Disney: A Magical Life' has at least a partial aim to ground these perceptions by presenting a tangible version of the man. If the comment section on an article I read recently about this project is any indication, they have their work cut out for them.

 

[PiratesMansion]

A couple of people I've known who worked with Walt have confirmed this.

Did those CMs fall asleep during the part of Traditions when they talked about Walt and the company's history?

It was very clear that Walt didn't want himself represented in the parks, but let's be real here, very few people are getting a solid education on who Walt Disney was as a person, what he stood for, what he did, and so on. If anything, they're getting the patently false narratives (he was an antisemite, etc) second or thirdhand from the internet.

Times have changed, and the narratives currently filling the internet are largely inaccurate. If the company wants to address that, this is about the best way they could do it IMO.

RE: the cast, unless anyone here has been through traditions recently, we have no way of knowing how much they were actually taught about Walt Disney, the man. The consensus seems to be that the entire program is a shell of what it once was, so it wouldn't surprise me if the company just isn't delivering the info that it used to. Even when there was more thorough training involved, they probably didn't need as much info on Walt himself because it hadn't been as long since he had been alive and a lot of it was likely common knowledge.