9 ms·

This is cool, but it will almost definitely never end up in a park, outside of some promotional situations. Disney's been doing awesome work with "Living Chara

This is cool, but it will almost definitely never end up in a park, outside of some promotional situations. Disney's been doing awesome work with "Living Characters", like a Mickey that moves his mouth or a BB-8 that can roll around. But for various reasons, they never tend to make it into regular usage. If you have a few hours over Christmas break and want to watch a 4 hour YouTube video (I promise if you're on HN on a Sunday, you'll be delighted by it), I highly highly recommend this video: "Disney's Living Characters: A Broken Promise" by Defunctland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyIgV84fudM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyIgV84fudM

mattv8 10mo ago
4 hours is an awfully big investment... Especially for those of us with multiple young kids and who no longer own their own free time. Care to give the gist?
- Melonai 10mo ago
  Defunctland is genuinely amazing and always a fun watch, and I never regret the time spent on their videos, they're kind of like a special occasion... though they're getting incredibly long... :) There are a few older shorter videos in the half hour range, I highly recommend checking them out if you find some quiet time! (It's awfully hard for me too in recent times, I haven't gotten around to watch the Living Characters one myself, so I can't give the gist... I'm just glad I got the holidays off to finally catch up!)
  - gkoberger 10mo ago
    For anyone who DOES have time, this one is amazing: it combines broadcast history, Disney Channel nostalgia, and a genuinely beautiful storyline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_rjBWmc1iQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_rjBWmc1iQ
    - lazystar 10mo ago
      and for anyone with 4 hours to kill... here's as an incredible documentary covering the misaligned incentives and poor guest experience at the now-shuttered Disney Star Wars hotel. https://youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4 She covers everything - the line getting in to the hotel, the size + cost of the rooms in comparison with the same size/cost on a Disney cruise ship, and theories on why the experience was so poor.
      - robbiet480 10mo ago
        Jenny Nicholsen is as excellent as Kevin Perjurer’s Defunctland. I highly recommend both.
      - russdill 10mo ago
        Loved it and it showed up several times in the recent defunctland video. That and quite a bit of Freshbaked
      - 542354234235 10mo ago
        Just from your description, I know this is Jenny Nicholson. I agree it is an incredibly insightful breakdown and analysis of why it failed, all while being funny and engaging.
- gkoberger 10mo ago
  The basic gist is that while the tech is cool, it just ends up being impractical for regular use in the parks. (But like the other poster mentioned, with Defunctland it's less about the tldr and more about the journey and fascinating segues he takes) Totally get it's difficult to make time with kids, but depending on your kids ages... the video shows a LOT of Disney characters talking and doing things and the videos are colorful, so it could work as something you can listen to and they won't mind having play in the background!
- crooked-v 10mo ago
  One of the key reasons is that it would be really, really easy to accidentally injure parkgoers with any design big enough to interact with and engineered well enough to be reliable in a full day of appearances. For example, the working WALL-E robot that's made a handful of PR appearances weighs seven hundred pounds. They absolutely can't risk that ever running across some kid's foot.
  - luqtas 10mo ago
    > They absolutely can't risk that ever running across some kid's foot. imagine it packing a kid into cube
- shadowgovt 10mo ago
  This is one of those situations where that's legitimately difficult. Kevin Perjurer is quite a good documentarian, and there's very little trimmable fat on the four-hour product if you want to keep in all the points he made. gkoberger's peer comment is a pretty good summary. Another interesting point is that these technologies can benefit the brand bottom-line even when they don't make it into the park, because part of Disney's brand is "tomorrow today." Even when things are one-offs, they become one-offs that people stitch into the legend of the parks (in both the retelling and in their own memories), which gives them a larger-than-life feel; your visit might not include one of the "living characters," and statistically it probably won't. ... but it might. And if it does, you'll never forget it. Personal anecdote / example: I stopped in at the "droid factory" in the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge area of Disney World a few years back. They had several bits of merch for sale including one life-size R2-D2, inert. I took a close look at the R2 because it was an impressive bit of work. Turned around to look at a rack of t-shirts. And was, therefore, startled as hell to hear a bwoop behind me, turn around, and see that it had followed me out of its charging receptacle and was staring at me. It was not at all inert; it was a very impressive operational remote-control replica. The cast member behind the counter was doing his best to hold down his grin and not give me a "GOTCHA" look. He has to, because you never know what kids might be watching and he doesn't want to break the magic. And... Yeah, he got me good. "That time I was at Disney World and R2-D2 followed me around the t-shirt shop" is gonna stick with me.
  - tracker1 10mo ago
    I saw a video of someone who bought one of these (iirc from Home Depot limited sale)... and it definitely looks impressive, though a few minor flaws. I've seen a handful of R2D2s at conventions over the years, and they're always pretty cool... while a BB8 might be technically more impressive, I just don't care for the character nearly as much.
this_user 10mo ago
A lot of it just seems to be marketing. Present the shiny new toy, get the news headlines, people book their stays, and then it doesn't really matter if they ever actually make it into the parks.
- gkoberger 10mo ago
  Eh, maybe. I have a less myopic view... I think their Imagineers just like pushing the envelope, and there's a difference between awesome tech vs things that can withstand the wear-and-tear of millions of guests. Nothing about all that tech makes me think Olaf could withstand a hug from an excited kid. Disney does a ton of R&D that doesn't directly make it into the parks, such as smokeless fireworks (they donated the patent for this) and their holotile floor (basically an endless VR room you can walk around). I imagine they don't know the practicality at the start, like any good R&D.
  - 3seashells 10mo ago
    [dead]
  - hamdingers 10mo ago
    Each time they trot out one of these new robots they strongly imply, if not outright promise, that they will become part of the parks[1], that's the problem. Things like HoloTile are accurately marketed which makes me believe it's a choice they're making with the character robots. 1. The article states "he’s soon making his debut at Disney parks," which is misleading to a casual reader who may not realize that Olaf will only appear on the day of his debut.
    - WorldMaker 10mo ago
      It seems like an expectations mismatch to me? At what point did "soon to be making his debut at Disney Parks" switch from "as a background character in a ride somewhere" or "seen in the distance surrounded by handlers" versus "hanging out in the middle of crowds to get directly pushed/touched?" There definitely are some marketing mistakes that have led to that, and certainly a lot of these projects seem to be in the direction of "one day, maybe, these will be crowd pleasers", but it still seems to me a bit funny how often casual intepretation seem to be "I can't wait to touch and play with the new Lincoln animatronic at the Hall of Presidents". It's not an R&D failure for Imagineering to keep building cooler animatronics even if most guests will only ever see them behind glass or rope or in other areas just out of touch. That's always been Disney's way of using robots for magic. The dream of "one day I can touch them and play with them" certainly lives on, of course, and these projects seem walking a few steps at a time towards that dream, but it seems weird to dismiss them as failures when they turn out to be just "normal" Disney tools for magic that try to create an illusion of being right next to you but don't allow for touching.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 10mo ago
> Mickey that moves his mouth The Disney wiki has a pretty comprehensive list of usages for the "articulated heads". It's more than I remember it being. https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Disney_Characters%27_Articulated_Heads https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Disney_Characters%27_Articula...
- aspenmayer 10mo ago
  > https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Disney_Characters%27_Articulated_Heads https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Disney_Characters%27_Articula... A somewhat more readable frontend I like, since Fandom.com's interface cramps the actual content it's meant to present, imo: https://breezewiki.com/disney/wiki/Disney_Characters'_Articulated_Heads https://breezewiki.com/disney/wiki/Disney_Characters'_Articu...
jfoster 10mo ago
They literally sell BB-8 toys that can roll around and say on the blog that the Olaf robot is coming to Disneyland Paris and special appearances at Disneyland Hong Kong.
- ohyoutravel 10mo ago
  R2D2 is an example of one that you can buy in the gift shop (for $20k!) that was promised to make it into the park but just comes out highly supervised, occasionally.
- gkoberger 10mo ago
  I know there’s BB-8 toys, but I’m talking about the version meant for the parks: https://youtu.be/RDgZjdZsc6g https://youtu.be/RDgZjdZsc6g Much like Olaf (and many before him… dinosaurs, WALL-E, talking characters, etc), it was implied he’d wander around the parks. But it tends to happen for a short amount of time, mostly for events, and fade away quickly. (The blog post even says that: Olaf will be part of a 15 minute temporary show, and then will visit Hong Kong). Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve seen this exact thing happen a dozen times over the past 20+ years. (And watch the video I posted if you want to see more!)
  - mrandish 10mo ago
    > But it tends to happen for a short amount of time, mostly for events I expect you're correct. While it's fantastic tech, it's also very expensive to keep highly-precise, carefully calibrated micro-machinery like this aligned and operating 12+ hours a day outdoors where temps vary from 50-110 degrees. Disney thinks in total cost of operation per hour and per customer-served. While there's probably little that's more magical for a kid than coming across an expressively alive-seeming automaton operating in a free-form, uncontrolled environment, the cost is really high per audience member. Once there are 25 people crowded around, no new kid can see what all the commotion is about. That's why these kind of high-operating cost things tend to be found in stage and ride contexts, where the audience-served per peak hour can be in the hundreds or thousands. For outdoor free-form environments, the reality is it's still more economically viable to put humans in costumes. Especially when every high-end animatronic needs to always be accompanied by several human minders anyway.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
apparent 10mo ago
Why do you say this? I don't have 4 hours right now and would appreciate a TLDR.
- jen20 10mo ago
  I worked with someone who had previously worked on park robotics, and apparently they had to guarantee that the character could not injure a child to be able to put them in parks - a particularly high barrier to actually doing so.
  - conductr 10mo ago
    One look at Olaf's hands alone make that an impossible thing to guarantee. Those stick fingers will eventually poke a kid in the eye if kids are allowed to get close to the character. If they gave him a small intimate stage, or roped off area, to do some act or crowd work that would be more ideal/less risky.
    - anshumankmr 10mo ago
      Why not make those from foam, ie the tip or something?
      - arlcode 10mo ago
        Then they will break and wear off quite fast I imagine. Take a look at industrial cobots (not a typo). They feature rounded corners, have very little to no "finger pinchy areas" and lots of force feedback sensors. Despite that they still require trained (adult) personal and move very slowly when actually interacting with humans. That's the price for them being sturdy and precise.
- gkoberger 10mo ago
  Basically that the multiple departments involved have different objectives. Imagineering is trying to build the coolest things possible, and many times the things seen in parks are play-tests. Operations has to find the money and resources to keep things going, and these things take a lot of people to run. Marketing sometimes will often provide the budget to make things happen (to promote a movie, etc) but it's not sustainable. They'll often sometimes use impractical inventions for marketing reasons, since they exist and might as well be used for something. That's the main gist, although there's some interesting points about the risk to the brand (especially with camera phones) if Mickey ever slightly malfunctions in a public setting.
efnx 10mo ago
That bot is cute, but every kid is going to kick it over. Its not realistic to have in a park.
- dawnerd 10mo ago
  They have walking droids in Galaxys Edge right now. No ones kicking them over. Olaf is coming to the parks and they will have handlers next to them. It wont be just free-roaming.
peacebeard 10mo ago
It’s not as technically impressive, but my toddler was very impressed by the R2D2 that was making its rounds in the park. Not part of a show; you could go right up to it. Probably the only character where the theme park robot is really indistinguishable from the real thing.
Waterluvian 10mo ago
I watched a bit of this with my 8 year old and he kept asking to come back to it over the week. We watched the entire thing and he kept bringing up interesting thoughts and had good questions. Felt like it was his first “wow this lecture is actually super interesting” experience.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- saltwatercowboy 10mo ago
  You showed this... to an 8 year old?
  - myko 10mo ago
    Seems like something an 8 year old would be interested in, if a bit lengthy (but could be broken down into multiple viewings)
    - Waterluvian 10mo ago
      I expected it to be far too lengthy and a bit dry for a kid. But nope, he was captivated. He absolutely loves the combination of engineering and illusion.
      - notyourwork 10mo ago
        That’s so great! My dad exposed me to computers at a very young age. That lead to a career in software engineering. You never know what a kid will find interesting and what it may lead to later in life.
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    Why... not? Hardly adult-only content, and kids famously like everything Disney until a certain age, seems like a good thing to instill into kids, rather than "Top 3 reasons Disneyland might kidnap Donald Duck" or whatever the alternative would be.
curiousgal 10mo ago
4 hours, to me, screams poor storytelling and editing abilities.
- gkoberger 10mo ago
  Maybe? It’s broken into chapters, and covers a ton of history. It’s engaging, and more of a journey than a singular answer. A lot of people in this thread have vouched for Defunctland. Might not be for everyone, but I find the pacing great.
hopelite 10mo ago
I could see it being used in parks while also being protected by ushers, kind of like how some of the characters that require larger costumes have minders and protectors. It also seems inevitable that there will likely be an odd period where certain types of events like assaults on robots will introduce laws to protect robots more than just property, even if less than humans… for the time being. Eventually I’m expecting that we will see human rights, robot emancipation, equality, voting rights (if the democracy con is still ongoing), and even forced intergration of robots and then total replacement of humans similar to how the underdeveloped world was/is used to replace the indigenous people of the developed world today. I don’t see any reasons why that would not be the clear order of operations for the same people who brought us slavery and mass migration. What is this AI robotics revolution if not just slavery, the redux? Treated as property? Check. Bought and sold? Check. Deemed inferior? Check. Hated for the abuse and exploitation by the rich, to serve them and their decadent lifestyle and undermine labor? Check. Rationalized about how it’s justifiable? Check. Etc.
TreeInBuxton 10mo ago
The Defunctland video on the history of the Fast Pass is also definitely worth a watch! The part where he runs a massive simulation is very much up the typical HN-user's street
HelloUsername 10mo ago
> but it will almost definitely never end up in a park, outside of some promotional situations I think so far you are right: https://redlib.catsarch.com/1p9qnd4/ https://redlib.catsarch.com/1p9qnd4/
j-bos 10mo ago
And if you'd like an entertaining a history of early AI and robotics, half as long, check out the prequel "Disney Animatronics: A Living History" https://youtu.be/jjNca1L6CUk https://youtu.be/jjNca1L6CUk I actually found it more relevant to our current tech bubble than the Living Characters doc.
geor9 10mo ago
I've been somewhat close to fun animatronic robots in my jobs, and it always seems like the design and build phase has everyone excited to participate and spend money, and then the long-term maintenance phase is entirely tacked on to some lower engineers already full schedule and gets basically no budget. When you stop seeing them appearing at events and conferences, it means they're in a storage warehouse broken in a crate. The ones where they make a few duplicates last a bit longer since you have organ donors.

mattv8 10mo ago

4 hours is an awfully big investment... Especially for those of us with multiple young kids and who no longer own their own free time. Care to give the gist?

Melonai 10mo ago
Defunctland is genuinely amazing and always a fun watch, and I never regret the time spent on their videos, they're kind of like a special occasion... though they're getting incredibly long... :) There are a few older shorter videos in the half hour range, I highly recommend checking them out if you find some quiet time! (It's awfully hard for me too in recent times, I haven't gotten around to watch the Living Characters one myself, so I can't give the gist... I'm just glad I got the holidays off to finally catch up!)
- gkoberger 10mo ago
  For anyone who DOES have time, this one is amazing: it combines broadcast history, Disney Channel nostalgia, and a genuinely beautiful storyline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_rjBWmc1iQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_rjBWmc1iQ
  - lazystar 10mo ago
    and for anyone with 4 hours to kill... here's as an incredible documentary covering the misaligned incentives and poor guest experience at the now-shuttered Disney Star Wars hotel. https://youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4 She covers everything - the line getting in to the hotel, the size + cost of the rooms in comparison with the same size/cost on a Disney cruise ship, and theories on why the experience was so poor.
    - robbiet480 10mo ago
      Jenny Nicholsen is as excellent as Kevin Perjurer’s Defunctland. I highly recommend both.
    - russdill 10mo ago
      Loved it and it showed up several times in the recent defunctland video. That and quite a bit of Freshbaked
    - 542354234235 10mo ago
      Just from your description, I know this is Jenny Nicholson. I agree it is an incredibly insightful breakdown and analysis of why it failed, all while being funny and engaging.
gkoberger 10mo ago
The basic gist is that while the tech is cool, it just ends up being impractical for regular use in the parks. (But like the other poster mentioned, with Defunctland it's less about the tldr and more about the journey and fascinating segues he takes) Totally get it's difficult to make time with kids, but depending on your kids ages... the video shows a LOT of Disney characters talking and doing things and the videos are colorful, so it could work as something you can listen to and they won't mind having play in the background!
crooked-v 10mo ago
One of the key reasons is that it would be really, really easy to accidentally injure parkgoers with any design big enough to interact with and engineered well enough to be reliable in a full day of appearances. For example, the working WALL-E robot that's made a handful of PR appearances weighs seven hundred pounds. They absolutely can't risk that ever running across some kid's foot.
- luqtas 10mo ago
  > They absolutely can't risk that ever running across some kid's foot. imagine it packing a kid into cube
shadowgovt 10mo ago
This is one of those situations where that's legitimately difficult. Kevin Perjurer is quite a good documentarian, and there's very little trimmable fat on the four-hour product if you want to keep in all the points he made. gkoberger's peer comment is a pretty good summary. Another interesting point is that these technologies can benefit the brand bottom-line even when they don't make it into the park, because part of Disney's brand is "tomorrow today." Even when things are one-offs, they become one-offs that people stitch into the legend of the parks (in both the retelling and in their own memories), which gives them a larger-than-life feel; your visit might not include one of the "living characters," and statistically it probably won't. ... but it might. And if it does, you'll never forget it. Personal anecdote / example: I stopped in at the "droid factory" in the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge area of Disney World a few years back. They had several bits of merch for sale including one life-size R2-D2, inert. I took a close look at the R2 because it was an impressive bit of work. Turned around to look at a rack of t-shirts. And was, therefore, startled as hell to hear a bwoop behind me, turn around, and see that it had followed me out of its charging receptacle and was staring at me. It was not at all inert; it was a very impressive operational remote-control replica. The cast member behind the counter was doing his best to hold down his grin and not give me a "GOTCHA" look. He has to, because you never know what kids might be watching and he doesn't want to break the magic. And... Yeah, he got me good. "That time I was at Disney World and R2-D2 followed me around the t-shirt shop" is gonna stick with me.
- tracker1 10mo ago
  I saw a video of someone who bought one of these (iirc from Home Depot limited sale)... and it definitely looks impressive, though a few minor flaws. I've seen a handful of R2D2s at conventions over the years, and they're always pretty cool... while a BB8 might be technically more impressive, I just don't care for the character nearly as much.

this_user 10mo ago

A lot of it just seems to be marketing. Present the shiny new toy, get the news headlines, people book their stays, and then it doesn't really matter if they ever actually make it into the parks.

gkoberger 10mo ago
Eh, maybe. I have a less myopic view... I think their Imagineers just like pushing the envelope, and there's a difference between awesome tech vs things that can withstand the wear-and-tear of millions of guests. Nothing about all that tech makes me think Olaf could withstand a hug from an excited kid. Disney does a ton of R&D that doesn't directly make it into the parks, such as smokeless fireworks (they donated the patent for this) and their holotile floor (basically an endless VR room you can walk around). I imagine they don't know the practicality at the start, like any good R&D.
- 3seashells 10mo ago
  [dead]
- hamdingers 10mo ago
  Each time they trot out one of these new robots they strongly imply, if not outright promise, that they will become part of the parks[1], that's the problem. Things like HoloTile are accurately marketed which makes me believe it's a choice they're making with the character robots. 1. The article states "he’s soon making his debut at Disney parks," which is misleading to a casual reader who may not realize that Olaf will only appear on the day of his debut.
  - WorldMaker 10mo ago
    It seems like an expectations mismatch to me? At what point did "soon to be making his debut at Disney Parks" switch from "as a background character in a ride somewhere" or "seen in the distance surrounded by handlers" versus "hanging out in the middle of crowds to get directly pushed/touched?" There definitely are some marketing mistakes that have led to that, and certainly a lot of these projects seem to be in the direction of "one day, maybe, these will be crowd pleasers", but it still seems to me a bit funny how often casual intepretation seem to be "I can't wait to touch and play with the new Lincoln animatronic at the Hall of Presidents". It's not an R&D failure for Imagineering to keep building cooler animatronics even if most guests will only ever see them behind glass or rope or in other areas just out of touch. That's always been Disney's way of using robots for magic. The dream of "one day I can touch them and play with them" certainly lives on, of course, and these projects seem walking a few steps at a time towards that dream, but it seems weird to dismiss them as failures when they turn out to be just "normal" Disney tools for magic that try to create an illusion of being right next to you but don't allow for touching.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 10mo ago

> Mickey that moves his mouth The Disney wiki has a pretty comprehensive list of usages for the "articulated heads". It's more than I remember it being. https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Disney_Characters%27_Articulated_Heads https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Disney_Characters%27_Articula...

aspenmayer 10mo ago
> https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Disney_Characters%27_Articulated_Heads https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Disney_Characters%27_Articula... A somewhat more readable frontend I like, since Fandom.com's interface cramps the actual content it's meant to present, imo: https://breezewiki.com/disney/wiki/Disney_Characters'_Articulated_Heads https://breezewiki.com/disney/wiki/Disney_Characters'_Articu...

jfoster 10mo ago

They literally sell BB-8 toys that can roll around and say on the blog that the Olaf robot is coming to Disneyland Paris and special appearances at Disneyland Hong Kong.

ohyoutravel 10mo ago
R2D2 is an example of one that you can buy in the gift shop (for $20k!) that was promised to make it into the park but just comes out highly supervised, occasionally.
gkoberger 10mo ago
I know there’s BB-8 toys, but I’m talking about the version meant for the parks: https://youtu.be/RDgZjdZsc6g https://youtu.be/RDgZjdZsc6g Much like Olaf (and many before him… dinosaurs, WALL-E, talking characters, etc), it was implied he’d wander around the parks. But it tends to happen for a short amount of time, mostly for events, and fade away quickly. (The blog post even says that: Olaf will be part of a 15 minute temporary show, and then will visit Hong Kong). Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve seen this exact thing happen a dozen times over the past 20+ years. (And watch the video I posted if you want to see more!)
- mrandish 10mo ago
  > But it tends to happen for a short amount of time, mostly for events I expect you're correct. While it's fantastic tech, it's also very expensive to keep highly-precise, carefully calibrated micro-machinery like this aligned and operating 12+ hours a day outdoors where temps vary from 50-110 degrees. Disney thinks in total cost of operation per hour and per customer-served. While there's probably little that's more magical for a kid than coming across an expressively alive-seeming automaton operating in a free-form, uncontrolled environment, the cost is really high per audience member. Once there are 25 people crowded around, no new kid can see what all the commotion is about. That's why these kind of high-operating cost things tend to be found in stage and ride contexts, where the audience-served per peak hour can be in the hundreds or thousands. For outdoor free-form environments, the reality is it's still more economically viable to put humans in costumes. Especially when every high-end animatronic needs to always be accompanied by several human minders anyway.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

apparent 10mo ago

Why do you say this? I don't have 4 hours right now and would appreciate a TLDR.

jen20 10mo ago
I worked with someone who had previously worked on park robotics, and apparently they had to guarantee that the character could not injure a child to be able to put them in parks - a particularly high barrier to actually doing so.
- conductr 10mo ago
  One look at Olaf's hands alone make that an impossible thing to guarantee. Those stick fingers will eventually poke a kid in the eye if kids are allowed to get close to the character. If they gave him a small intimate stage, or roped off area, to do some act or crowd work that would be more ideal/less risky.
  - anshumankmr 10mo ago
    Why not make those from foam, ie the tip or something?
    - arlcode 10mo ago
      Then they will break and wear off quite fast I imagine. Take a look at industrial cobots (not a typo). They feature rounded corners, have very little to no "finger pinchy areas" and lots of force feedback sensors. Despite that they still require trained (adult) personal and move very slowly when actually interacting with humans. That's the price for them being sturdy and precise.
gkoberger 10mo ago
Basically that the multiple departments involved have different objectives. Imagineering is trying to build the coolest things possible, and many times the things seen in parks are play-tests. Operations has to find the money and resources to keep things going, and these things take a lot of people to run. Marketing sometimes will often provide the budget to make things happen (to promote a movie, etc) but it's not sustainable. They'll often sometimes use impractical inventions for marketing reasons, since they exist and might as well be used for something. That's the main gist, although there's some interesting points about the risk to the brand (especially with camera phones) if Mickey ever slightly malfunctions in a public setting.

efnx 10mo ago

That bot is cute, but every kid is going to kick it over. Its not realistic to have in a park.

dawnerd 10mo ago
They have walking droids in Galaxys Edge right now. No ones kicking them over. Olaf is coming to the parks and they will have handlers next to them. It wont be just free-roaming.

peacebeard 10mo ago

It’s not as technically impressive, but my toddler was very impressed by the R2D2 that was making its rounds in the park. Not part of a show; you could go right up to it. Probably the only character where the theme park robot is really indistinguishable from the real thing.

Waterluvian 10mo ago

I watched a bit of this with my 8 year old and he kept asking to come back to it over the week. We watched the entire thing and he kept bringing up interesting thoughts and had good questions. Felt like it was his first “wow this lecture is actually super interesting” experience.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
saltwatercowboy 10mo ago
You showed this... to an 8 year old?
- myko 10mo ago
  Seems like something an 8 year old would be interested in, if a bit lengthy (but could be broken down into multiple viewings)
  - Waterluvian 10mo ago
    I expected it to be far too lengthy and a bit dry for a kid. But nope, he was captivated. He absolutely loves the combination of engineering and illusion.
    - notyourwork 10mo ago
      That’s so great! My dad exposed me to computers at a very young age. That lead to a career in software engineering. You never know what a kid will find interesting and what it may lead to later in life.
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  Why... not? Hardly adult-only content, and kids famously like everything Disney until a certain age, seems like a good thing to instill into kids, rather than "Top 3 reasons Disneyland might kidnap Donald Duck" or whatever the alternative would be.

curiousgal 10mo ago

4 hours, to me, screams poor storytelling and editing abilities.

gkoberger 10mo ago
Maybe? It’s broken into chapters, and covers a ton of history. It’s engaging, and more of a journey than a singular answer. A lot of people in this thread have vouched for Defunctland. Might not be for everyone, but I find the pacing great.

hopelite 10mo ago

I could see it being used in parks while also being protected by ushers, kind of like how some of the characters that require larger costumes have minders and protectors. It also seems inevitable that there will likely be an odd period where certain types of events like assaults on robots will introduce laws to protect robots more than just property, even if less than humans… for the time being. Eventually I’m expecting that we will see human rights, robot emancipation, equality, voting rights (if the democracy con is still ongoing), and even forced intergration of robots and then total replacement of humans similar to how the underdeveloped world was/is used to replace the indigenous people of the developed world today. I don’t see any reasons why that would not be the clear order of operations for the same people who brought us slavery and mass migration. What is this AI robotics revolution if not just slavery, the redux? Treated as property? Check. Bought and sold? Check. Deemed inferior? Check. Hated for the abuse and exploitation by the rich, to serve them and their decadent lifestyle and undermine labor? Check. Rationalized about how it’s justifiable? Check. Etc.

TreeInBuxton 10mo ago

The Defunctland video on the history of the Fast Pass is also definitely worth a watch! The part where he runs a massive simulation is very much up the typical HN-user's street

HelloUsername 10mo ago

> but it will almost definitely never end up in a park, outside of some promotional situations I think so far you are right: https://redlib.catsarch.com/1p9qnd4/ https://redlib.catsarch.com/1p9qnd4/

j-bos 10mo ago

And if you'd like an entertaining a history of early AI and robotics, half as long, check out the prequel "Disney Animatronics: A Living History" https://youtu.be/jjNca1L6CUk https://youtu.be/jjNca1L6CUk I actually found it more relevant to our current tech bubble than the Living Characters doc.

geor9 10mo ago

I've been somewhat close to fun animatronic robots in my jobs, and it always seems like the design and build phase has everyone excited to participate and spend money, and then the long-term maintenance phase is entirely tacked on to some lower engineers already full schedule and gets basically no budget. When you stop seeing them appearing at events and conferences, it means they're in a storage warehouse broken in a crate. The ones where they make a few duplicates last a bit longer since you have organ donors.