Robot Olaf Walks While Orlando Waits Its Turn

Greetings fellow Rope Droppers,  

Happy Thanksgiving. We hope you have a delightful day ahead, no matter your plans. We’re thankful you’re taking a few minutes out of your day to be with us!

We know it may be a busy day ahead for you, so we packed a lot into this week’s three-minute recap.

Gabe

This was a big week for “how did they even build that” news, just not in Orlando. In the latest “We Call It Imagineering” episode, Disney pulled back the curtain on two pieces of character tech that feel straight out of a blue-sky pitch meeting: a free roaming Olaf who actually walks, and new projection based faces that can cry, blush, and emote in real time.

Olaf is the headline act. He is a fully robotic snowman built with AI-powered reinforcement learning so he can walk, balance, and gesture like the animated version, right down to a snow-like shimmer and a nose that can pop off. He will debut in World of Frozen at Hong Kong Disneyland and at Disney Adventure World in Paris, not at Epcot’s Norway pavilion, where guests still float past the current generation of Frozen figures.

The new face system is just as wild. Imagineering showed off Audio Animatronics that use front projection and streamlined mechanics so characters can do things like tear up, blush, or change expression mid sentence, with examples like Mike Wazowski, Lightning McQueen, and Hades called out as perfect fits. 

If this feels familiar, it is because Walt Disney World has been here before. The Spider Man “Stuntronic” that backflips over Avengers Campus has been flying above Disney California Adventure since 2021. Frozen Ever After got its first run at Epcot with older projection faces, then newer, more detailed figures showed up in Hong Kong and Tokyo before Disney announced an upgrade pass for the original ride that should arrive in early 2026. 

For now, Olaf will waddle through Paris and Hong Kong before he ever waves at guests in Orlando, and Spider Man will keep doing his acrobatics over in California. It can be frustrating to watch the tests happen somewhere else, but when the curtain rises in Orlando, the expectation is simple, this tech has to work every hour from rope drop to closing kiss goodnight.

With the parks decked out, a lot of focus turned to resorts this week for holiday decor. Everywhere from Animal Kingdom Lodge to Port Orleans got a holiday makeover. (Also, who knew these trees came together from the top down?!)

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Finally this week, “these are a few of my favorite things”... ICYMI, Mickey took center stage on the Vegas Strip for a special F1 show. If Fantasmic! music gives you all the feels like it does for us, this is a must watch.

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