Walt Disney’s granddaughter has condemned the entertainment giant he based for re-creating the late entrepreneur as a soulless “robotic grampa” for the seventieth anniversary celebration of California’s Disneyland theme park in July.
Disney, who died in 1966, will seem as an animatronic determine in a brand new attraction known as Walt Disney – A Magical Life within the park’s Main Street Opera House that commemorates the resort’s 17 July 1955 opening.
When the undertaking to point out “what it would be like to stop by Walt’s office” was announced last year, firm officers mentioned it will be “a fitting tribute” to one of many pioneers of recent leisure.
But in an interview with the Los Angeles Times published on Tuesday, Joanna Miller mentioned her grandfather would have hated his regeneration right into a speaking mechanical reproduction – and accused the corporate of ruining the legacy of her beloved “Grampa”.
“I think I started crying,” Miller mentioned of the second she first noticed the determine. “It didn’t look like him to me.”
She mentioned she laid out her fears in a letter to Disney’s chief government, Bob Iger, when the enterprise was first proposed and later met him and members of the group creating the attraction. “He was very kind. He let me do my spiel,” Miller recalled, however she mentioned her plea to drop the animatronic fell on deaf ears.
She additionally spoke out in a Facebook post in November, through which she mentioned Disney was “dehumanizing” her grandfather, who liked to fulfill crowds on the park in particular person and would spend hours chatting with them.
“The idea of a robotic Grampa to give the public a feeling of who the living man was just makes no sense,” she wrote. “It would be an imposter, people are not replaceable.
“You could never get the casualness of his talking, interacting with the camera, [or] his excitement to show and tell people about what is new at the park. You cannot add life to one empty of a soul or essence of the man.”
On a private stage, she mentioned she remembered magical childhood days along with her siblings when their grandfather would take them to his studios and allow them to play with no matter he had been engaged on. “He’s ours,” she mentioned. “We’re his family.”
As for the general public’s expertise of watching the animatronic and listening to Disney’s computerized voice, Miller instructed Iger: “I strongly feel the last two minutes with the robot will do much more harm than good to Grampa’s legacy. They will remember the robot – and not the man.”
Miller instructed the Times she was not talking on behalf of her 5 siblings or different descendants of her grandfather. “I do speak for my grandfather and my mother,” she mentioned, including that it “pains” her to be talking out in regards to the firm he created.
“When you get older, you just start to get pissed off. And you get tired of being quiet. So I spoke up on Facebook. Like that was going to do anything,” she mentioned.
“The fact that it got back to the company is pretty funny.”
A spokesperson for the Walt Disney Company on Tuesday directed the Guardian again to a press release in regards to the attraction issued in August 2024.
Josh D’Amaro, chair of Disney Experiences, instructed attenders of D23, the corporate’s annual fan occasion, that the corporate would attempt to create an genuine model of Walt Disney utilizing animatronic know-how extra superior than 60 years in the past, when he launched a determine of Abraham Lincoln on the 1964 New York World’s Fair.
“Creating our first Walt figure is an idea that’s been whispered in the hallowed halls of imagineering for years, decades, even,” D’Amaro mentioned.
“We just had to wait for innovation to catch up with our dreams. And we’re finally ready.”
