See How Disney Imagineering Made Audio Animatronics for Tiana's Bayou Adventure
Here’s what it’s like to go behind the scenes at Walt Disney Imagineering for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.
io9 went on a tour of Walt Disney Imagineering at the Glendale, CA creative campus, where all the Disney Parks magic comes to life. While we weren’t able to take photos of the work in progress you’ll soon see on Tiana’s Bayou Adventure at Walt Disney World and Disneyland, Imagineering has released images and videos of what we saw while being guided by Ted Robledo, the executive creative director on Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, who shared insight on the making on the upcoming attraction.
Here’s what you need to know about how Imagineering has created a new story inspired by Walt Disney Pictures’ The Princess and The Frog, for an attraction that will give us a new chapter in Princess Tiana’s New Orleans story.
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure - It’s now Princess Tiana’s world
From the jump, one of the standout things in the tour was the visual confirmation of how the beloved characters seen in The Princess and The Frog have seamlessly jumped from 2D animation to 3D audio animatronics without projected faces. Robledo explained, “In this case we wanted to really again have the figures feel as real as possible. We thought to ourselves, ‘You know what? For this type of environment, for this type of rendering it makes more sense to do a real [over a] projected face.”
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure - No projection faces here
He continued. “So it’s a case [of a] world that we can kind of relate to... it is still fantasy, but it feels like our world. That makes sense for this latest attraction [as opposed to] Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway—that’s a very stylized world. Maybe the right way to go with some of those things is to utilize some of the different methodologies for that world and how that’s rendered versus Tiana’s world.”
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure - Mama Odie
Everything from costumes and technology is meticulously designed to work together and exists in a shared space where you can walk from a fabric table to an animatronic testing station. For Disney, it was all hands on deck to insure Tiana would be as accurate to her world as possible. “This has been a long time in the making. We talk about costumes but this really is [about] something that sort of speaks to the era, speaks to who they are as characters. And we really wanted to kind of elevate that,” Robledo shared. “One thing that’s really special about these characters is that they come from the 2D world. The last project I worked on was The Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast in Tokyo, and that was the first time where those 2D characters were realized as 3D animated characters.”
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure - Juju!
Robledo added, “Walt Disney Animation Studios created those models for us. And you know, who better to arbitrate what those characters should look like in three dimensions—so they came back again, helped us with these characters as well.”
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure - Tiana’s guiding you
The heart of the attraction is, of course, Tiana herself. There are a number of audio animatronics of her that park guests encounter as she guides them into the bayou—and immersing visitors into the story is one of the main goals of the attraction. “One of the things that the team has worked really hard to accomplish here is to make sure that we connect with her, and she connects with us because she’s speaking directly to us,” Robledo shared. He explained that the Tiana figures are stationed in such a way that enhances the flow of the storytelling. “She’s looking at us straight in the eye, so our animators have to see her from [that] vantage point. A lot of work goes into bringing up that very complicated figure up there of Tiana—that’s what we have to do to kind of make sure she performs and she connects with us in the way that we need her to. So [there’s] lots of Tianas. But we also have a lot of friends like Mama Odie and Juju.”
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure - Charlotte and Eudora
It was so exciting to see Lottie and Eudora from behind the curtain too. Here they’re seen waving in Mardi Gras celebration attire, which we’re guessing may come later in the attraction, but nevertheless they’re lifelike in their interaction. “From looking at Eudora and Charlotte, there’s definitely levels of complexity the designer designs for the performance. So Mama Odie may have more complexity to her versus, say, Charlotte or Eudora. But as you can see they still feel like they’re alive,” Robledo said.
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure - The voices are where it begins
A huge part of bringing the movie’s world to life is having the original voice cast return: “We bring the actors in first, they provide the performance. And that’s what our animators animate to.”Anika Noni Rose (Tiana), Jennifer Lewis (Mama Odie), and Micheal Leon-Wooley (Louis the Gator) are all set to be featured on the ride.
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure - Imagineering is all in the details
Robledo discussed how the magic all comes together thanks to the Imagineers. “This is a milestone. It’s the first time we’ve seen these characters realized in three dimensions, and so much care is included from the finishing group into the hair, the texture of the hair and color of the hair, the materials themselves, and the fact that they can do this 18 hours a day, all day long is amazing,” he said. “ And that really is the credit of the care design from who’s going to build these things, be able to perform all day long.”
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure - Meet Ralphie
A minor character from the film gets to appear on the ride as a fun highlight. Ralphie, brother of Prince Naveen (who we did get to see in a fancy flashy outfit—alas we don’t have an image to share), pops up as part of the band. “The inspiration from that came from a Golden Book from Disney Publishing, which I think it was called [Tiana Is My Babysitter]. And as it turns out, Ralphie learning to play the drums was in it,” Robledo revealed about the character finding a place on the attraction. “[It was] perfect: we’ll have Ralphie join the band.”
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure - Critters!
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure opens this summer at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom and later this year at Disneyland.
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