I mean absolutely no offense to DisneyConstruction23 if you're actually telling the truth (you may be or you may not be), but to put things into perspective if you ARE on the level- most people here are numb at this point to all the people who have joined this site pretending to be insiders to get attention. If you're the real deal then don't take offense and just wait it out till we've got some confirmation, then everyone will give you the proper respect (and i'll be apologizing for doubting you along with others i'm sure). But until then, if you're not trolling, at least try to look at it from the perspective of regular forum goers here and realize we've gone through way too many fakes to put any blind faith in a new guy making claims. And I say that potential trolls as well who are in this to get a rise out of people here- don't waste your time, people here aren't open to being fooled easily. Or even from the random Disney shill who try to convince people an attraction is more than it is.
There's always the slight chance even a well respected long time insider can be wrong about something (though not in a trolling way of course), but it doesn't bode well when a guy like Lee tells people to be wary of your info about the mine train.
@Lee as I recall was one of the couple of people who knew about this ride and its details from the beginning, including showing us a sketch of the finalized track layout (which ended up being 100% accurate) and told people there wouldn't be as many show scenes as originally planned. His info about the entire FLE project has been consistently solid throughout. I recall last year another user (Pixiedustmaker I believe, a known antagonistic user here) tried to get into an argument with Lee and insisted that a log bridge from the artwork would make it into the final track layout. This was before a lot of the show details were there and there was still a lot of dirt and steel showing. Lee said it wouldn't be present and he was correct once again (the other guy either left or was banned not long after). Lee also posted in a thread the other day that as of about a year ago, the ride's "animatronics" were nothing special whatsoever (after someone showed him this thread and asked him about it). Year old information COULD be wrong, but I doubt that they'd make such major show element changes so late into development. The truth will arrive quite soon. We may even have an answer in a few days with that podcast. But as of now, we don't know and we have no way to know.
We also should remember that it seems unlike modern Disney to ADD more value to something (they're all about mutilating budgets now and are far more likely to make cuts than additions). They also dislike having to maintain animatronics heavy attractions to begin with, maintenance is a mess in many such rides around WDW. Even the newest FLE animatronics have issues working consistently as reported here (the wardrobe had issues almost since it opened and people have continually reported issues with many of the Mermaid ones). They were no doubt over the moon when they were given the opportunity to destroy Horizons, Imagination 1.0 and World of Motion due to their large quantities of maintenance heavy show elements.
I will mention that if we don't get any info in the podcast about the figures- everyone should probably just expect to be disappointed and take some heed to Lee's words. Historically Disney has never missed a chance to hype the hell out of even the tiniest details in their imagineering blogs (it was a big deal when those vultures were installed from the original ride). In the past we've seen huge segments of videos dedicated to animatronic figures alone whenever they had one ready to show. Even if it's just a hypothetical display like the Hatbox Ghost from D23. They hyped the hell out of the higher tier animatronics in the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast attractions even long before the areas were very near completion. They even did video specials hyping the cheap plastic moving figures all over the Mermaid ride. The pragmatic part of me is suspicious that if the Mine Train figures were actually anything close to the quality of the animatronics in FLE's other attractions, we'd already have seen huge specials about them from Disney. The only explanation as to why we haven't is that they're trying to keep the inside of the mine a surprise, though it's rather unlike Disney to hold back on hyping something worth talking about.
I hope you are absolutely right though and will be extremely happy if they go with some nice animatronics.
