Friday, December 07, 2018
Disney's New Beauty and the Beast Ride Is Amazingly Lifelike
io9.gizmodo.com: Disney’s Imagineers—the company’s term for the artists, designers, and engineers who create its theme park attractions—are about to revolutionize the art of turning the studio’s animated films into rides that bring visitors right into the movie. Tokyo Disneyland is in the process of building a Beauty and the Beast ride with animatronic characters that are like nothing we’ve ever seen before.
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9 comments:
I am booking a trip to Tokyo as soon as this is up. This animatronics are stunning! Really this article has me in awe and just incredibly excited and geeking out about how amazing it looks. However, while reading it and watching the video I had a little voice in my head (let’s say it was my grandmothers) griping about humans getting replaced with robots. “What about actors who need the money?” she would gripe, but in this instance I think what I love the most about the video is the highlighting of the different people you get to see working on the project. It’s a small team in this video, but when you look at what they’re doing and they talk about who they worked with to get to this point, you start to get a picture of how many people making something this stunning really takes. Also, three cheers for the excellent fabrication of the castle and the “environmental” elements they were working on. Those are some good theater folk right there.
I love dark rides, they are my dream to design and the more you can twist the traditional ride and vehicle the more magical the ride. Also Beauty and the Beast is my favorite Disney film and now it is finally getting the ride it deserves, because I think all oscar noms and/or wins should at least have an attraction, I am looking at you Mary Poppins. But what is my favorite part about this is that they stopped using those projected faces to appear more “life like” and went back to simply advancing the audio-animatronic technology. They are very careful not to show to much but when Belle first enters the castle with the lantern she seems to be actually walking around, a sticking point since the beginning of animatronics. I do not quite understand the free roaming nature of the ride vehicles, I understand their trackless, but how to you tell a consistent story if the cars do not follow a consistent path? Nevertheless I better start saving my pennies for a trip to visit this one of a kind attraction.
I think that this is super interesting because it will be one of a kind and something that draws people to this park. When I was younger I used to love the "Its a Small World" attraction in the Disney Parks, which has some animation to its people but not much. This is far more advanced. There is a lot of advancement in animatronics and robotics lately and that is because the entire scientific and engineering community is growing and learning more as they question more things. I love seeing new technology and the new capabilities that humans possess but I also a believer that robots will take over the world and do everything that people do now. I think that there will be less human jobs in the future and most things will be done with robots which is sad because people need jobs and there are already a lot of people that are suffering.
When I opened this article, I was fully expecting the animatronics to look like the ones in the semi-new Little Mermaid ride in the Magic Kingdom, but I was very pleasantly surprised. In the sequence they show of Belle discovering the castle, it truly looks like she is the cartoon character come to life. She looks like her, moves like her, and emotes like her. She also seems to be actually walking around, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen in Disney animatronics ever, and seems like it’s the first time it’s ever been done. I hope that if this ride is a success in Tokyo, they decide to eventually bring it over here, because this looks like a really incredible ride. I’m always a little bored by rides that literally just take you through the story, without any added elements but it seems like the teacups in this have an extra twist and you explore the ride in a more interesting way. If this ride doesn’t come over here, I guess I’ve gotta save up to go to Tokyo.
This looks so wonderful. Now there is one more reason I want to visit Tokyo. Only if I knew the firm opening date for this ride I would be booking the tickets right now. Putting the initial excitement aside, I remember when I went to Disneyland in 2011, I was so surprised by how real the animatronic characters moved compared to the memory from my childhood. Like the article says, in my memory they were robots doing impressions of humans but the characters already looked like they were kinda cartoon coming to life. And yet the animatronic Belle shown in the video is even more natural and really demonstrate what ‘cartoon coming to life’ can mean. I wonder at which point people will reach the uncanny valley and how it will affect the further advancement of the animatronic characters. I guess it’s time to pay another visit and get surprised again!
This is a very interesting article. It is always interesting to see what Disney does in their theme parks and what impact that might have on our industry in general. In this case, the use of lifelike animatronics is unlikely to have a large impact on theatre, just due to the fact that we do not often use animatronics. However, I could imagine this having some unforeseen impact in theatre. As technology advances and automation becomes more and more prevalent, I could imagine, eventually, automation having a place onstage. We are starting to see this now as well, with the use of “holograms” such as Roy Orbison’s tour. Will we see lifelike automation of cartoon characters onstage at any other place than Disney anytime soon? I doubt it, but we will see what happens in the future.
This honestly creeps me the hell out. The animatronic field has progressed so far that even figurines that have not been designed to be lifelike, and actually look like cartoons, appear to be lifelike. This feels like an episode of doctor who, where the extremely realistic facsimilies of human life will rise up and start murdering humans. While i do realize that maybe the moment skynet takes over is still a bit of time away, and these animatronics also probably require a dump truck full of servos, actuators and control equipment. Watching those figurines move is just... weird. On the other hand, one has to really applaud the engineering work that is being put into this, and the incredible research that this is spawning in the field of automation controls. It must be the dream of every engineer out there to work for disney imagineering, simply for the amount of support you must get and the toys you get to play with. The only downside I can see is being a slave to the mouse.
These animatronics are so impressive! When I first saw the gif at the top of the article I really thought they were CGI, and I can't believe that this is something that is a fully realized piece of technology. They look exactly like the cartoon characters, and I'm sure it will be very nostalgic and engaging for all of the riders. The "Be Our Guest" dinner sequence that they mentioned in the article is the one that I'm the most excited about, because if they are able to bring all of those dishes and food items to life I will be extremely impressed. I also am intrigued by the idea of having the ride without a track, giving you the ability to go around rooms more than once. What's to stop you from being in there for hours? I'm sure there's some kind of override on there, but I'd love to learn more about this navigation system.
This is an incredible project! I am sad to see that it is so far away in Japan. It was so fascinating to see the process behind how they make the animatronics. I love that they created an environment in which the riders can be a part of the world and not just have the world come at them a la Its a Small World. I am curious though how the selection of Beauty and the Beast came about. Out of all the Disney Golden Age movies, I would not have thought that one would be the first go to. I also wonder if there were any adaptations to the language or environment knowing that it was going to be in Japan. I went to Disney once in France and was shocked and the different characters chosen that were different than the quintessential disney characters at Orlando.
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