This is cool, but it will almost definitely never end up in a park, outside of some promotional situations.
Disney's been doing awesome work with "Living Characters", like a Mickey that moves his mouth or a BB-8 that can roll around. But for various reasons, they never tend to make it into regular usage.
If you have a few hours over Christmas break and want to watch a 4 hour YouTube video (I promise if you're on HN on a Sunday, you'll be delighted by it), I highly highly recommend this video:
A lot of it just seems to be marketing. Present the shiny new toy, get the news headlines, people book their stays, and then it doesn't really matter if they ever actually make it into the parks.
Similar to concept car demoed at trade shows, we get an idea of Disney's technical engagement, and some of it will perhaps in some way or form get applied into future products/attractions.
Eh, maybe. I have a less myopic view... I think their Imagineers just like pushing the envelope, and there's a difference between awesome tech vs things that can withstand the wear-and-tear of millions of guests.
Nothing about all that tech makes me think Olaf could withstand a hug from an excited kid.
Disney does a ton of R&D that doesn't directly make it into the parks, such as smokeless fireworks (they donated the patent for this) and their holotile floor (basically an endless VR room you can walk around). I imagine they don't know the practicality at the start, like any good R&D.
Each time they trot out one of these new robots they strongly imply, if not outright promise, that they will become part of the parks[1], that's the problem. Things like HoloTile are accurately marketed which makes me believe it's a choice they're making with the character robots.
1. The article states "he’s soon making his debut at Disney parks," which is misleading to a casual reader who may not realize that Olaf will only appear on the day of his debut.
4 hours is an awfully big investment... Especially for those of us with multiple young kids and who no longer own their own free time. Care to give the gist?
Defunctland is genuinely amazing and always a fun watch, and I never regret the time spent on their videos, they're kind of like a special occasion... though they're getting incredibly long... :)
There are a few older shorter videos in the half hour range, I highly recommend checking them out if you find some quiet time! (It's awfully hard for me too in recent times, I haven't gotten around to watch the Living Characters one myself, so I can't give the gist... I'm just glad I got the holidays off to finally catch up!)
and for anyone with 4 hours to kill... here's as an incredible documentary covering the misaligned incentives and poor guest experience at the now-shuttered Disney Star Wars hotel.
She covers everything - the line getting in to the hotel, the size + cost of the rooms in comparison with the same size/cost on a Disney cruise ship, and theories on why the experience was so poor.
The basic gist is that while the tech is cool, it just ends up being impractical for regular use in the parks. (But like the other poster mentioned, with Defunctland it's less about the tldr and more about the journey and fascinating segues he takes)
Totally get it's difficult to make time with kids, but depending on your kids ages... the video shows a LOT of Disney characters talking and doing things and the videos are colorful, so it could work as something you can listen to and they won't mind having play in the background!
One of the key reasons is that it would be really, really easy to accidentally injure parkgoers with any design big enough to interact with and engineered well enough to be reliable in a full day of appearances.
For example, the working WALL-E robot that's made a handful of PR appearances weighs seven hundred pounds. They absolutely can't risk that ever running across some kid's foot.
They literally sell BB-8 toys that can roll around and say on the blog that the Olaf robot is coming to Disneyland Paris and special appearances at Disneyland Hong Kong.
Much like Olaf (and many before him… dinosaurs, WALL-E, talking characters, etc), it was implied he’d wander around the parks. But it tends to happen for a short amount of time, mostly for events, and fade away quickly. (The blog post even says that: Olaf will be part of a 15 minute temporary show, and then will visit Hong Kong).
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve seen this exact thing happen a dozen times over the past 20+ years. Watch the video I posted if you want to learn more!
R2D2 is an example of one that you can buy in the gift shop (for $20k!) that was promised to make it into the park but just comes out highly supervised, occasionally.
> We already live in the world where hackers are pwning refrigerators, I can't wait for prompt injection attacks on animatronic cartoon characters.
It's not necessarily AI controlling the communication. Disney has long had 'puppet' characters whose communication is controlled by a human behind the scenes.
They're already using similar tech for the Mickey meet and greets and the Galaxy's Edge stormtroopers. The details aren't public, but it seems to be a mix of complex dialogue trees with interrupts or context switches, controlled in real time by the actor or operator.
Sometimes the idea of a killer cyborg with a hulking physique and Austrian accent seems absurd. And then we realize the most advanced robots will be made by entertainment companies.
Really neat, and made me realize we are getting close to having these type of cute robots at home. With LLMs and voice they would be pretty entertaining companions for many people.
>From the way he moves to the way he looks, every gesture and detail is crafted to reflect the Olaf audiences have seen in the film
He looks nothing like a snowman. Snow doesn't look fuzzy. This project appears to focus more on trying to get it moving around in an animated way than getting the character to look right, at least when viewed from photographs.
Disney's been doing awesome work with "Living Characters", like a Mickey that moves his mouth or a BB-8 that can roll around. But for various reasons, they never tend to make it into regular usage.
If you have a few hours over Christmas break and want to watch a 4 hour YouTube video (I promise if you're on HN on a Sunday, you'll be delighted by it), I highly highly recommend this video:
"Disney's Living Characters: A Broken Promise" by Defunctland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyIgV84fudM
Similar to concept car demoed at trade shows, we get an idea of Disney's technical engagement, and some of it will perhaps in some way or form get applied into future products/attractions.
No different than Elon Musk claiming self-driving will be deployed to all Teslas in 2017; 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026.
Nothing about all that tech makes me think Olaf could withstand a hug from an excited kid.
Disney does a ton of R&D that doesn't directly make it into the parks, such as smokeless fireworks (they donated the patent for this) and their holotile floor (basically an endless VR room you can walk around). I imagine they don't know the practicality at the start, like any good R&D.
1. The article states "he’s soon making his debut at Disney parks," which is misleading to a casual reader who may not realize that Olaf will only appear on the day of his debut.
There are a few older shorter videos in the half hour range, I highly recommend checking them out if you find some quiet time! (It's awfully hard for me too in recent times, I haven't gotten around to watch the Living Characters one myself, so I can't give the gist... I'm just glad I got the holidays off to finally catch up!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_rjBWmc1iQ
https://youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4
She covers everything - the line getting in to the hotel, the size + cost of the rooms in comparison with the same size/cost on a Disney cruise ship, and theories on why the experience was so poor.
Totally get it's difficult to make time with kids, but depending on your kids ages... the video shows a LOT of Disney characters talking and doing things and the videos are colorful, so it could work as something you can listen to and they won't mind having play in the background!
For example, the working WALL-E robot that's made a handful of PR appearances weighs seven hundred pounds. They absolutely can't risk that ever running across some kid's foot.
The Disney wiki has a pretty comprehensive list of usages for the "articulated heads". It's more than I remember it being.
https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Disney_Characters%27_Articula...
Much like Olaf (and many before him… dinosaurs, WALL-E, talking characters, etc), it was implied he’d wander around the parks. But it tends to happen for a short amount of time, mostly for events, and fade away quickly. (The blog post even says that: Olaf will be part of a 15 minute temporary show, and then will visit Hong Kong).
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve seen this exact thing happen a dozen times over the past 20+ years. Watch the video I posted if you want to learn more!
We already live in the world where hackers are pwning refrigerators, I can't wait for prompt injection attacks on animatronic cartoon characters.
It's not necessarily AI controlling the communication. Disney has long had 'puppet' characters whose communication is controlled by a human behind the scenes.
The tech is amazing, but they need better sewing...
Full-size might be… risky, but a small, friendly mini-Beast could be fun.
Olaf: Bringing an Animated Character to Life in the Physical World
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16705
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L8OFMTteOo
He looks nothing like a snowman. Snow doesn't look fuzzy. This project appears to focus more on trying to get it moving around in an animated way than getting the character to look right, at least when viewed from photographs.