On Saturday, March 8th, Disney keynote speakers Josh D’Amaro and Alan Bergman – along with special guests – made an appearance at the South by Southwest Conference to discuss the future of Disney, and how Disney Experiences and The Walt Disney Studios teams plan to work together to tell stories in new, compelling ways through the innovation of Imagineers.
“I can never stand still. I must explore and experiment… I resent the limits of my own imagination.” This quote from Walt Disney was the cornerstone of this conference, as D’Amaro and Bergman took a deep dive into the ways that the Walt Disney Company continued to honor Walt’s philosophy of moving forward, to create the next generation of theme park entertainment, offering guests who visit their parks a unique storytelling experience driven by innovation, imagination, and the values that Walt built his first park with in 1955.
By moving forward, the Walt Disney Company has continued to improve and develop the Audio Animatronics since their inception in the 60s, starting with the original (but still incredibly charming) Enchanted Tiki Room birds. Though the conceptual elements of Audio Animatronics have remained more or less the same over the years, the execution of those concepts has evolved drastically; no longer are these machines anchored in place or carefully positioned to hide larger mechanisms. The Walt Disney Company has engineered a new breed of Audio Animatronics that move freely, walking amongst guests and navigating terrain on their own.
Disney has shown off a line of autonomous BDX Droids inspired by the Star Wars world, indicating that the cute little robots will be making their debut at Disney Parks around the world later this year, including locations like Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, and Walt Disney World.
In addition to the BDX Droids, new Star Wars attractions will be debuting at Disney Parks, allowing guests to visit iconic locations in the Star Wars universe where guests can experience band new missions on the existing Smuggler’s Run attraction.
Michael Hundgen and Pete Doctor also joined the SXSW conference to discuss the future of Pixar within the Disney Parks, like the upcoming Monster, Inc. coaster coming to Walt Disney World, which will not only be Disney’s first suspended coaster, but also the first vertical lift coaster that any Disney Park has seen.
Disney has also announced a new type of ride vehicle for the Car’s Off-Road Rally Racer attraction also coming to Walt Disney World. Imagineers did field research on off-road vehicles in Arizona to better understand what type of experience they wanted to create, allowing the Disney creatives to build its own custom off-road vehicles and its own custom off-road track.
“These things have to be tough – the workload on our ride vehicles far exceeds a normal car,” Hundgen explains. “They have to run twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for decades – so if your car does about 13,000 miles in a year, ours can go up to 65,000 miles every year depending on the attraction. And on top of that, we’re running it on this really rough terrain.”
But new ride vehicles isn’t all the that Imagineers are working on; pivoting into Marvel, Disney also showcased their recently-debuted Spider-Man animatronic that swings through the land at the Avengers Campus in Disneyland’s California Adventure park, praising the team that has made this one-of-a-kind effect possible.
Bruce Vaughn and Kevin Feige stepped on stage to explain more about what guests can expect to see from Marvel in the parks, including upcoming meet and greets with the Fantastic Four and a new H.E.R.B.I.E. robot that guests will be able to meet. With the recent ground-breaking on the expansion for the Avenger’s Campus in California Adventure, Disney plans to double the side of the land with two brand new attractions: Avengers Infinity Defense, featuring the largest collection of heroes ever featured in one attractions; in addition to this stunning new attraction, guests will also be able to soon experience the Stark Flight Lab, where Stark Industries will showcase some of its latest tech in a new attraction featuring the Kuka Coaster System.
Disney’s presentation at the South By Southwest Conference has made it clear that innovation moving forward is their highest priority. Incorporating that cornerstone innovation into not only how they build rides, but how they tell stories, is the path to creating truly unique experiences. Guests visiting Disney properties around the world will feel the lasting effects of both new and traditional Disney storytelling, as they experience shows, lands, and attractions that will ignite their own imaginations and change the way they see the world of what’s considered possible.
At Disney, the world of fantasy and super heroes is as real as the air we breathe, and it’s through this innovation and masterful storytelling that the Walt Disney Company brings these fantastic worlds to life.
To see the full forty-minute South By Southwest conference, check out the livestream video below, captured, edited, and provided by the SXSW Youtube Channel.
