Continuing our stroll through Disneyland this morning.
While I was there, I finally had the chance to see Walt Disney - A Magical Life, the theater show with the incredible new Walt animatronic. A Magical Life opened in the Main Street Opera House on July 17, 2025, exactly 70 years after Disneyland first opened its gates on July 17, 1955.
The animatronic took more than seven years of work, with the team studying every detail from Walt’s gestures and facial expressions to his clothing and rings to the way that his mouth and hands tended to move as he spoke.
As such, the finished animatronic itself represents a real technical leap. Disney has called it the most lifelike Audio-Animatronic figure Imagineering has ever created (as it should be!) with new methods for skin, the first “lean to stand” motion for an all-electric humanoid figure, which really is something to see in person, and a legitimate twinkle in his eye.
And the setting, inspired by his actual Burbank office around 1963, the year Walt’s Enchanted Tiki Room opened at Disneyland, formally introducing Audio-Animatronics to park guests with talking birds, singing flowers, and chanting tikis, makes the whole thing feel full circle. A show about Walt told through one of the art forms that he pioneered, set in the time that he was sharing that very work with the world for the first time.
I don’t know what I was expecting going in, but I left very much affected by the experience.
Taken at 100mm, 1/250 second, f/2.8, ISO 5000.