Beginnings (Audio-Animatronic Technology
Comes of Age)
"Our whole (past) has been in the
world of making things move, from a drawing
through all kinds of little props and things.
Now we're making these human figures, dimensional
human figures, move... making animals move,
making anything move through the use of electronics.
It's a dimensional thing... it's a new door...
and we hope we can really do some exciting
things in the future."Walt
Disney
Walt Disney describes
his proposed Pirates attraction on a 1965 televised
show celebrating Disneyland's tenth anniversary.
Walt Disney always followed his passion for pushing the
technology of his time to develop means of entertainment
and education. In the case of the quote above, it was to
develop "Audio-Animatronics," which was Disney's
title for robotics for which the main purpose was replicating
the look of living figures. Pirates of the Caribbean,
long one of the best-loved attractions at Disney's theme
parks, was most ambitious large scale use of Audio-Animatronics,
and continues to this day to be startlingly effective. As
Life Magazine reported in 1967, POTC was "the
costliest and most technologically sophisticated" adventure
ever conceived as a permanent entertainment attraction.
The concept of a pirate adventure was first introduced
to the team of talented people that Disney had gathered
to work on his theme park in the late 1950s. Some pirate-themed
concept art, including a "Pirate Shack" and "Bluebeard's
Den," even date back to 1954, before Disneyland even
opened.
New Orleans Square, the section of Disneyland that would
end up hosting Pirates of the Caribbean, was being planned
in earnest by 1957. Famed Disney artist Herb Ryman is credited
with creating the essential look and feel of the place,
which is a convincing replica of New Orleans' French Quarter,
with important input from Disney artist Sam McKim. But most
of the concentrated design effort began in the early '60s,
when Marc Davis, the famed animator who created Disney's
"Tinker Bell" (among numerous other classic Disney
characters), joined Walt at WED Enterprises as an "Imagineer."
Davis set about furiously creating artwork and gags for
the proposed pirate "museum," such as the illustation
above.
The first Audio-Animatronic show at Disneyland (the
small-scale yet largely popular "Tiki Room")
and well-received Audio-Animatronic displays at 4
shows at the World's Fair in 1964 hinted that the
use of the robots would be well-suited to telling
the pirate's salty tales. Pictured here is Walt Disney,
inspecting one of the life-like sculptures that would
become an Audio-Animatronic character in the attraction...
but these startling robotic effects didn't come easily.
In 1991, Disney legend Ken Anderson (in an interview with
Storyboard Magazine) recalled the process of creating the
Audio-Animatronic technology in the '50s:
"Around 1950, Walt built three of
these [animatronics]. He needed a soft shoe
dancer, so he got Buddy Ebsen to dance. He
recorded that, and then we had an animator
come in and build a machine that would actually
work. Walt got to thinking that we better
use a better guy [so] we got Roger Broggie.
We hired other people and got all sorts of
people in from the outside to do things that
later became very important to Disneyland.
By that time, we had developed audio, and
an electronic character that would move [to
the] voice. Ub Iwerks actually did the first
one. He had a head, a skeleton sitting on
the table, and the skeleton opens his eyes
and said "How do you do?" You couldn't
see any wire, you couldn't see anything. The
thing was talking to you. I was actually very
impressed."
Of course, from that point, Audio-Animatronic technology
developed much before it was ready to be implemented in
Pirates. In fact, the technology finally utilized to control
the lifelike movement (though this process has since changed
with today's newer technology) was an extension of engineering
designed to control the timing of launching rockets into
space. To put it simply, pneumatic and hydraulic valves
inside the character (which make the actual animation occur)
were controlled by sonic impulses (up to 438 per second)
on 32-track magnetic tape. This was the high-tech heart
of the '60s Audio-Animatronic magic.
The development of the Audio-Animatronic characters,
in all of their technological sophistication
at the time, also marked a turning point for
Disneyland. Prior to the installation of "Great
Moments With Mr. Lincoln," which was brought
to Disneyland after its installation at the
World's Fair, the park's technology was dedicated
to imitating nature and providing special effects
that would "wow" guests. In The
Disney Version, author Richard Schickel
comments on the Disneyland technology before
Audio-Animatronics:
"The technical imitation, the piece
of machinery, if you will, is 'imaginatively'
put together... (all home craftsmen and backyard
tinkerers purely love Disneyland for precisely
this reason...) What the average, middle-class
American wants and has always wanted of art
and of the objects he mistakes for art, is
the fake alligator which thrills but never
threatens, that may be appreciated for the
cleverness with which it approximates the
real thing but that carries no psychological
or poetic overtones... It's all over in a
minute, and you carry away not some dark phantom
that may rise up someday to haunt you, but
an appreciation of the special-effects man's
skill."
However, when Walt started to pursue the ultimate
robotic achievementsimulating a human
to the extent that the robot could cause an
emotional responseDisneyland became something
different. An early-'60s WED press release remarked
on this new technology by stating that "Walt
has often described Audio-Animatronics as the
grand combination of all the arts. This technique
includes the three-dimensional realism of fine
sculpture, the vitality of a great painting,
the drama and personal rapport of the theater,
and the artistic versatility and consistency
of the motion picture." And, in fact, the
Lincoln exhibit at the World's Fair did move
people to tears, proving that Audio-Animatronics
had the potential Walt dreamed of. However,
Schickel goes on to reflect on the technology,
wondering if it is truly suited to a theme park
such as Disneyland was:
"Are we really supposed to revere
this... weird agglomeration of wires and plastic,
transfering to it, in the process, whatever
genuine emotions we may have... toward mankind
in general? [We are] worshipping a machine
that is no less a machine for having the aspect
of a man."
An overstatement? Maybe. But when applied to
the proposed Pirates attraction, a point can
be made as to the efforts put forth by WED to
use a new, space-age technology to create a
believable, and even likable, group of salts
that commit various acts of mayhem, robbery,
arson... and, before the ride was altered in
1997, even sexual assualt. Nevertheless, as
the years have gone by since the ride's debut,
audiences have become accustomed to the technology
that was so novel in the mid-'60s, and the ride
has taken its place in Disneyland history as
a worthy attraction of note, both due to its
technological advances and in spite of them.
Meanwhile, apart from WED's robotic teams,
engineers at Arrow Development were working
on a transport system for the ride, following
their success with attraction vehicle development
that was implemented at the World's Fair. The
"Small World" ride at the World's
Fair actually provided the inspiration for the
boat as a means of transportation, since the
attraction utilized it successfully.
The technology (propulsion by silent
jets of water) did not intrude on the
guest's experience. Arrow Development,
which designed the Small World vehicles,
was also called upon to create the ride
transport system for POTC. Powered by
20,000 gallons of water flowing per minute
(from a total system of 750,000 gallons),
the POTC stream can take each 22-passenger
boat through the complete attraction path
in about 15 minutes. At left, Walt Disney
(front) is pictured on a POTC test trough.