Located in the popular Pandora – The World of Avatar at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Na’vi River Journey takes you into Pandora’s glowing bioluminescent rainforest. The boat ride features Shaman of Song, Disney’s “most-advanced audio-animatronic,” as she sends positive energy out into the forest through the power of her music. However, the Shaman hasn’t been quite … Read more
The Michelangelo audio-animatronic on Spaceship Earth in EPCOT has not been functioning since before the park closure. After many months, “Immobilangelo”—as we so lovingly referred to him—is once again painting from his laid back position in the Sistine Chapel. As we move into The Renaissance (thanks to Arab and Jewish scholars), Michelangelo Buonarroti is seen … Read more
Disney Research Hub has released a video introducing an animatronic with realistic and interactive eye movements. Here’s what Disney said in the video’s description: “This video describes the development of a system for lifelike gaze in human-robot interactions using a humanoid animatronic bust. We present a general architecture that seeks not only to create gaze … Read more
Here at WDWNT, we’ve been monitoring the progress of Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy nearly feverishly. Well, today is the day! Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy has officially opened for rookie trainees and we were there to get a first look. Racers, start your engines! For its grand opening season, Disney’s Hollywood Studios has made Lightning McQueen the … Read more
As part of their press package released earlier this morning, we got a few stills of Lightning McQueen making his big debut onstage at Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy in Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Little did we know that there was also this short video of B-roll that was collected during show testing earlier this week. You … Read more
Ask any Star Tours fan and they’ll tell you that one of their favorite parts of Star Tours is the queue. Well, it appears that C-3PO is in need of some droid maintenance and is scheduled to be taken out for a quick refurbishment (tune up?) on February 17. While he won’t be in the … Read more