Barack Obama is Going to WDW — And Maybe Disneyland Too
According our friends over at the LA Times Travel Blog:
President-elect Barack Obama will soon take his place among the 43 previous commanders-in-chief at Walt Disney World and may join Abraham Lincoln and George Washington at Disneyland. (Story updated below.)
Disney hopes to entice Obama to record an address for his animatronic likeness, which will be added to the Hall of Presidents show at the Magic Kingdom by the Fourth of July 2009. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush lent their voices to their Disney doppelgangers.
The revamped show in Florida will include speaking parts by Washington, Lincoln and Obama, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
Mice Age columnist Al Lutz reports that Obama and Washington may join Lincoln at the Disneyland Opera House in time for the Anaheim theme park’s 55th anniversary in 2010.
Disneyland’s “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” closed in 2005 to make way for the 50th anniversary movie, “Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years.”
Walt Disney Imagineering officials said that while discussions have been ongoing to bring back “Mr. Lincoln” at Disneyland, no such plans are currently in the works.
UPDATE: Walt Disney Imagineering officials now emphatically say a Barack Obama animatronic figure will NOT be added to the “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” show at Disneyland, calling the Al Lutz story “patently false.”