Guide2WDW

🐍 Is this Disney’s next Yeti animatronic?

And I don’t mean in a disco sense. (Hopefully.)

In two surprising ways, the new Indiana Jones ride coming to Animal Kingdom is going to be a spiritual sibling to Expedition Everest.

First, this is going to be a very different type of Indiana Jones ride than what’s in Disneyland. Yes, they’ll share the same EMV ride vehicle and have a similar track layout. But tonally, Temple of the Forbidden Eye is very Hollywood, a little goofy, like the B-movie serials that inspired Indiana Jones.

Myth of the Jade Serpent looks like it’s going to be an Animal Kingdom ride, with a story based in deep research and actual Maya mythology. The ride takes you to the Maya underworld, where you will encounter Tsukán, the jade serpent who guards the gate to the underworld.

And look at the detail in the model. According to Joe Rohde’s Instagram, the stylized snake on Tsukán’s head often shows up in Maya art, representing the heavens. Rohde also said at D23 that when Disney showed off the look of the temple at a conference of Maya experts, it got a standing ovation, because this isn’t something often portrayed accurately in pop culture.

This all reminds me of the level of research that was put into Expedition Everest, which is based on actual Himalayan folklore you can see throughout the queue and the ride, culminating with an encounter with a giant animatronic yeti.

And that’s the second similarity. Tsukán? He big. Disney showed off the massive size of the jade serpent animatronic you will come face to face with in the ride, and this looks like one of the biggest and scariest animatronics Disney’s ever made. Just like the yeti.

The level of detail and research, plus the scale of Tsukán’s scales, means Animal Kingdom is about to get its second mythological monster.

And hopefully we’re not all sitting at D23 2046 cheering because Disney finally fixed the serpent.

Tsukán or the yeti: which mythological monster would you rather come face to face with? Let me know. 🏔️

🏔️ Disney World just eliminated the fastest way to ride Expedition Everest: and the reason is basically a math trick.

One of my favorite line hacks at Disney World is Single Rider: you can have a significantly lower wait by being willing to split up your party to fill empty seats. It’s at big rides like Ratatouille, Test Track, and until this week, Expedition Everest, which used to be the best single rider roller coaster at Disney World. You could seriously just wait 5 minutes for this.

But that changed earlier this year, when Disney started using math to lower wait times.

In the standby line, they’ve been dividing groups based on whether there’s an odd or even number of people.

All the even groups fill the 2-seat rows perfectly, but odd groups would leave an empty seat.

But whenever you add two odd numbers together, you get an even number. So putting the odds together ends up making even groups, leaving fewer empty seats. Disney said this actually lowered wait times. (They also do this at Cosmic Rewind.)

Great for the standby line. Bad for single rider, because there are way fewer empty seats to fill. Disney told me that Expedition Everest’s “single rider line no longer provided the guest experience riders have come to expect from single rider lines.” My translation: single rider at Everest just took longer.

Disney made a tradeoff here: they made the line better for the vast majority of guests, but the consequence was single rider got worse. So they eliminated it on this one ride. When I talked to Disney, they emphasized that Single Rider will continue to be offered at other rides. This tracks with recent history: adding Single Rider to Rise of the Resistance and Ratatouille. They’ve even been testing double rider at Millennium Falcon, which fills two seats at a time.

So as a fan of single rider, I’m not panicking. Disney seems to be taking a ride by ride approach to optimizing operations.

At Everest, the math got better, but the hack got worse.

What do you think about this change? Let me know. 🎢

🚨 Somebody is stealing my videos and spreading misinformation.

Last year, I made a video about the Florida Blue Lounge at the EPCOT Food and W**e Festival. A few weeks ago, a TikTok account with a duck avatar and over 10,000 followers stole and reposted the video, and over 72,000 people watched the stolen version.

The problem is that the Florida Blue Lounge isn’t open this year. All the comments are like “this isn’t right, I couldn’t find it,” and I’m now getting comments on my actual account about how I was wrong about that lounge.
But it gets worse than that. This duck has now stolen 57 of my videos. Actually, 58, they just stole another one while I was writing this.

They’re cropping my old videos, still with my footage, face and voice (although they keep making me smaller in the frame, which is hilarious), but they’re posting stuff that’s completely out of date. There’s a promo for a giveaway that ended a year ago. You could plan your trip around something that doesn’t exist anymore, and it’d be my shrinking face telling you to.

I’ve reported this account every way I can, multiple times. TikTok runs an automated review and says they aren’t violating their terms.

I’ve spent years making sure what I put out here is accurate and valuable to you. This is my job. This is how I feed my kids.

So PSA: if you want accurate Disney World content, make sure you’re getting it from me and not the duck.

And yes, they’ll probably steal this video too. 🦆

**eFestival

🤖 Putting a Muppet in a mocap suit was over 60 years in the making.
Since the beginning of animatronics, Imagineers have been experimenting with how to use human motion to program animatronics. And the future is going to get even crazier.
You can see one of the earliest forms of motion capture in the 1964 TV special Disneyland Goes to the World’s Fair. Imagineer Wathel Rogers wears a harness that Walt Disney describes as a contraption from outer space. The harness was meant to capture Wathel’s motions and program them for the animatronics in Carousel of Progress. But the harness was cumbersome, and you can see his movements had to be exaggerated.
Fast forward to the late 1980s. On the Muppet side of things, Jim Henson created an electronic telemetric glove to remotely perform characters. This glove was called a Waldo, and it became the namesake of Waldo C. Graphic from Muppet*Vision 3D at Disney World, who was actually performed by a puppeteer using a Waldo in a very early case of digital motion capture.
In the 2010s, Disney used performance capture for the incredible Shaman of Songs animatronic in Na’vi River Journey.
And this year, Imagineering put a mocap suit on Scooter while David Rudman puppeteered him, to recreate this Muppet as an animatronic for Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, capturing the performance down to the millimeter and to the arm rod.
But things are getting crazier, because Disney Research is using AI and machine learning to use motion capture for its free-roaming robots. With a process they call ReActor, they can even translate bipedal human movement to be used in a quadruped robot. So a robot meant to patrol factory floors can now do a handstand thanks to mocap.
What will Disney do next with their animatronics? Follow Guide2WDW to find out. 🚀

😬👻 This is the most embarrassing correction I’ve ever had to make.

Earlier this year, Disney World filed a permit for a mystery building next to Haunted Mansion at Magic Kingdom, and I was very convinced that they were going to put the Haunted Mansion Parlor here. Because of its popularity on Disney Cruise Line, and with Beak and Barrel next to Pirates, it just made too much sense to make this a Haunted Mansion bar or restaurant. It would print money.

So I made a video going out on a limb and predicting it.

Well, this building did show up in Disney’s Piston Peak model at D23. Hat tip to Mike from for pointing this out first.

And no, it’s not an extended queue for Haunted Mansion like some people speculated. The model does show the queue is being reworked, it’s just not that building.

And sadly for me, I was wrong. It’s not a Haunted Mansion Parlor. It’s something much spookier, because this building will awaken the spirits, just in a different way.
It’s a bathroom.

Of course it’s a bathroom. People need a place to get ‘er done while in Piston Peak.

Going from hoping this is an immersive Imagineering lounge to realizing it’s a Cars pit stop, and being so wrong so publicly, is deflating to say the least. But on the bright side, grabbing a seat here won’t require reservations.

Disney, it’s not too late to shift gears. The Tangled bathrooms are not that far away. Unlike in Haunted Mansion, there could be turning back now, right? Right?

To make up for the error, I will be rope dropping these bathrooms whenever Piston Peak opens at Magic Kingdom.

What did you want this building to be? Let me know. 🚽

🤖 Disney World is adding AI to vacation planning. The most interesting thing is what it doesn’t do, because it says a lot about Disney’s approach.

Disney World will soon start a limited public test of its new vacation planning experience. I got to see a demo at a media briefing earlier this month, and here’s what I learned.

Today’s ways of booking a vacation are not going away, but Disney will be adding a new Guided Search option. And this includes some real upgrades that aren’t AI: searching by season, a pricing calendar, all eligible discounts auto-applied, and comparing rates without opening up 1,000 Chrome tabs. The booking experience looks to be improved before AI is even invoked.

So how is Disney using AI? And what AI is it?

Disney is collaborating with Google Cloud, so the model is Gemini. You can optionally enter a text prompt about your vacation. The example Disney gave: we’re going for my son’s 7th birthday, and he loves Lion King. That gives you more personalized results, with AI snippets explaining why the system is suggesting it: your kid loves Lion King, Art of Animation has Lion King suites, or consider Animal Kingdom Lodge and stay on the savanna. There’s also a chat function for questions and comparisons.

What’s interesting to me is that Disney seems to be really careful about how much AI they’re using, because there’s a lot this can’t do. It can’t do Lightning Lanes or dining reservations. It’s not going to plan out each day of your trip. And Disney’s putting in tight guardrails to make sure it won’t answer your non-Disney questions, like where to stay for “Harry Potter land.”

Will the information be accurate? Disney says this is only sourcing their data, not any third party sources. Which is important for accuracy. But even their system still includes the disclaimer: AI can make mistakes. Which is probably part of why this will be rolled out as a randomized beta test at first.

So, are you hoping you get picked for AI vacation planning, or are you sticking to the old ways? Let me know. 🏰

✨ Most people won’t recognize the most important character in Disney’s new animation attraction.

It’s an easter egg to obscure Disney World history, but it represents so much more.

The new Magic of Disney Animation at Hollywood Studios replaced Star Wars Launch Bay, but this building has carried that name before. When the park opened in 1989 as Disney-MGM Studios, this attraction was a tour of a working Disney Feature Animation studio inside the park, and it started off with a short film with Walter Cronkite and Robin Williams called Back to Never Land, where Robin is transformed into a Lost Boy.

That Lost Boy is now all over the new attraction: at the entrance, in the drawing class, in Stitch’s office.

And here’s the reason why that is so important. I’ve talked to so many people who were profoundly impacted by the original Magic of Disney Animation that it inspired them to get into a creative field or work at Disney. When the studio closed and the tour went away, the park lost something special that was core to the original MGM Studios.

The new Magic of Disney Animation is a love letter not just to the animation studio and the movies that were made in this building, but to the spirit of that animation tour.

It’s a celebration of creativity, and one that aims to inspire a new generation, just in a new way.

Having Robin’s Lost Boy prominently woven throughout reminded me that the studio may be gone, but the spirit lives on.

Were you one of the people the original animation tour inspired? Let me know. ✏️


🤖✏️ An animatronic replaced an artist, and it’s a great thing for humanity.
There’s controversy around Olaf Draws at The Magic of Disney Animation, which brings the drawing class back to Hollywood Studios. The previous version had an animator teaching you how to draw Disney characters live, in person. That artist has been replaced with an Olaf animatronic and one of 9 pre-recorded lessons from 9 different Disney animators.
A lot of people are upset about removing a real person from the room.
But, and I say this as a longtime fan of Disney World’s drawing classes: this is the best version of the Animation Academy Disney’s ever done.
You get to learn from amazing animators, as they share their approach to drawing. Like Disney Legend Eric Goldberg teaching you how to draw his signature character: the Genie.
The Olaf animatronic is great, with genuinely funny dialogue. It all makes the class really fun, especially for kids.

And this is where it goes from an upgraded attraction to something I think will have a real impact on the next generation of artists.

Right now people are rightfully worried about what technology and AI will do to art and creativity. What’s the point in drawing Olaf when you can just generate a picture of him with AI?

When Eric Goldberg and Dan Abraham were asked what advice they would give to young artists, they said simply: just draw.

That’s why it’s so important that this tactile experience with pencil and paper has been leveled up with an animatronic. Olaf will get more families coming through the door, and kids are going to have more fun drawing because Olaf is drawing too. There are going to be kids who discover they love drawing thanks to this, and leave wanting to find out more about who Eric Goldberg is, or what’s that book Olaf’s sitting on.

Olaf Draws is going to help ignite a spark of creativity in a new generation of artists, because the tech is teaching you how fun art can be, not doing art for you.

The Magic of Disney Animation soft opened today, and officially opens September 14.

Is an Olaf animatronic a fair trade for a live artist? Let me know. ☃️

📱 Your iPhone can do almost everything a MagicBand can do, for free.

At Disney World, your iPhone can be your park ticket, scan your Lightning Lane, scan PhotoPass, and a built-in iOS feature makes it all seamless. Plus you can do payments and even open your hotel door.

Here’s how to set up MagicMobile for your Disney World tickets on iPhone.

Open the Disney World app (My Disney Experience), tap the three bar menu button at the bottom right, and scroll down to Set Up MagicMobile Entry. Then press Set Up Your Pass.

Now you can select which tickets you want to add to your iPhone’s Wallet app. This can take a few minutes to work, so don’t wait to do this at the park gate.

And this trips people up: with Express Mode, one pass can come up automatically at a Disney touchpoint without unlocking your phone, very similar to how your default card comes up for Apple Pay just through proximity.

But what if you have multiple passes? Only one of your passes can come up automatically at a Disney touchpoint without unlocking your phone.

Once your pass comes up, you can easily swipe through your passes and scan them one at a time. And you can always bring up your tickets to scan them in the Apple Wallet app, which launches by default by double tapping the side button on the iPhone.

For payments, checkouts take Apple Pay. And with the Disney World app, you can unlock your room door at Disney resorts.
With iOS 27, the MagicMobile tickets are getting even more features, which I will show off how to use here once that update drops in September.

Follow Guide2WDW so you don’t miss the iOS 27 MagicMobile walkthrough. 📲