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One thing that’s always set Disney apart from other theme parks has been its use of

audio animatronics. It’s that extra bit of Disney magic that really brings your theme

park experience to the next level. Audio Animatronics have been used by the Walt Disney Company

since 1961 and to this day are seen all over the Disney parks. Since about 2005, the Disney

Parks have been looking for ways to enhance the guest experience through animatronics.

So in the mid 2000s, they started something called the Disney Living Character initiative.

This initiative by Disney was to bring new levels of guest interactions while bringing

characters to life like never before. One early initiative was the introduction of the

articulated characters. A lot of the impressive animatronic attractions created by Walt Disney

Imagineering, wether for the Living Character Initiative or not, have quietly disappeared

from the Disney parks and no longer exist. So today, we’re gonna be taking a look at

the Top 5 Extinct Disney Animatronic Attractions.

Number 5 Lucky the Dinosaur

2003 marked the year that Disney debuted it’s very first free-roving audio animatronic;

Lucky the Dinosaur. Standing at 8 feet tall, this Segnosaurus animatronic character was

very life like and was the first official character built in response to Disney’s

Living Character Initiative. He could walk on his own, move his head, blink his eyes,

respond to guests and even signed autographs. He made his first appearance at The Natural

History Museum of Los Angeles on August 28th, 2003. A few days later, he made his way over

to Disney California Adventure, but since he was still in the prototype testing phase,

he returned to Walt Disney Imagineering and didn’t make his official Disney Park debut

until 2005.

“You know what, we’ve been trying all kinds of things”

In June 2005, Lucky appeared at Walt Disney World in Dinoland USA at Animal Kingdom along

with his handler Dr. Woodson.

Lucky this is Cole. (Growl)

He said he’s very pleased to meet you Cole. (Growls) Thats good.

Now you might be wondering why he was pushing a flower cart? Well I guess you could say

the flower cart was pushing him. See the figure needed to be lightweight so he could walk,

but he also needed power to run, so the flower cart was used to conceal the batteries and

computers that provided power to Lucky the Dinosaur. After his brief summer stint at

Animal Kingdom he was then moved to celebrate the opening of Hong Kong Disneyland in Sept

of 2005. Now since he was only a prototype, he wasn’t very reliable. It was said that

during his time in the parks, he was constantly missing multiple appearances each day because

he kept breaking down. So Lucky the dinosaur goes down in history and joins the other dinosaurs

that are now extinct, but has made a few other appearances outside of the Disney parks. He

has a new permanent home at Walt Disney Imagineering in Glendale California.

I think we got rid of him. Yea we did, thats okay.

Number 4 Chef Remy

Bonjour!

In 2008, also as a part of Disney’s Living Character initiative,

Bravo!

“Bon Appétit from Chef Remy” premiered as an addition to the dining experience at

Restaurant des Stars in the Walt Disney Studios Park at The Disneyland Paris Resort. Later

in 2009, it would also make its premiere at Les Chefs de France restaurant in the France

Pavilion at Epcot.

Six days a week with four appearances a day, a Maître d’ would greet diners of the restaurant

with a rolling gourmet food cart. They’d lift the lid, like they normally do in France,

from a silver-domed cheese platter, when the Maître d’reveals a six-inch-tall animatronic

rat. Chef Remy from the animated film Ratatouille then comes to life, entertaining diners with

animated movements and quiet little squeaks.

Those aren’t your chicken strips. Those are for her.

Probably the only rat you’d be okay with seeing in a restaurant.

To date, Chef Remy is the smallest audio animatronic created by Walt Disney Imagineering and is

also the only living character initiative animatronic to get two separate figures made.

It does a very good job at entertaining diners and bringing this small little animated character

to life. Now you might be wondering exactly how this figure works. Well, if you look closely

at this video, you can see that the black handle of the silver dome has a small joystick

on top of it and what looks to be a trigger at the bottom. It’s likely that this gives

the Maître d’ control of the figure. Even while this cast member sings, pay attention

to her hand gripping the handle in relation to Remy’s movement.

(Sings) Even though he made it for you. Oh that was wonderful!

The animatronic figure was definitely a success and lasted at Epcot for 4 years until it became

extinct in October 2013 and for 5 years until June 2014 at Disneyland Paris. With the addition

of the new Ratatouille ride coming to the France Pavilion at Epcot, it would be a great

opportunity to bring this animatronic back to Epcot at some point in the future, wouldn't

you say so?

Au Revoir! Au Revoir! Say Bey

Number 3 Push the Talking Trashcan

This is my home, Tomorrowland!

Although not part of the Disney living character initiative, Push the Taking Trashcan made

its official debut in 1995 at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. Created and Designed

by Daniel Deutsch, Push was a radio controlled robot that made daily appearances in Tomorrowland.

Now he was an actual trashcan: if you pushed the flap you could look inside to see a trash

bag, but he also moved around freely and interacted with guests. He was actually quite the character.

Its okay people she’s not stealing me.

When interacting with PUSH, it was easy to forget that it’s being operated by someone,

and the technology of this figure is actually quite simple. So the robot was controlled

by two cast members on stage with PUSH who appeared in disguise, and by disguise we mean

wearing normal clothes to blend in as a guest. One cast member had a transmitter hidden in

a backpack and the other had a microphone hidden in their hand.

My name is push.

When they spoke into the microphone it changed their voice and allowed them to interact with

guests nearby.

Thank you PUSH. Alright see ya!

PUSH became a staple of Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom and was loved by fans. So much so

that when Disney announced they would be saying goodbye to Push, fans reacted on social media

with Facebook Groups and hastags trying to keep this character in the park. According

to Daniel Doich in a New York Daily News Article, there was “some ambiguity to the verbiage

as to what they owned and what I owned” that being between Disney and Real Simple

Ideas, the company that owned PUSH.

When push comes to shove, ultimately he was canned from the Magic Kingdom making him extinct,

but his cousins who sport a slightly different look can be seen at other Disney Parks overseas

in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Paris.

Number 2 The Luxo Jr. Dancing lamp

The Pixar Place area at Disney’s Hollywood Studios opened in 2008. Later in June of 2009

Disney premiered its newest animatronic in the area which was a 6 foot tall Pixar Luxo

Jr. animatronic lamp. You were able to see this animatronic up close on the wall across

from Toy Story Midway Mania, approximately every 15 mins for a mini show.

Luxo was a very impressive figure but it did face many mechanical issues that caused it

to constantly go down. Now most Disney audio animatronics run on hydraulics but Luxo Jr

was a prototype that used electrical actuators.

Around the time Luxo Jr appeared at the park in 2009, the Norwegian company Luxo lamps

filed a lawsuit against Pixar and Disney accusing the companies of infringing its copyright

when they sold a limited edition Luxo Jr. figure that came with the Up Bluray. The lawsuit

document also mentioned the Luxo Jr animatronic figure at Walt Disney World. Luxo Jr was removed

from the park in April of 2010 with Disney saying that it will no longer perform since

it was a test figure with a limited run. Seeing where this figure was built and placed, doesn’t

seem like a location for a limited run type figure so its removal was probably more of

a case of mechanical and legal issues, but we’ll never know for sure. Also, the alley

of Pixar Place where Luxo Jr once performed is going to become a backstage area once Toy

Story Land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios opens, so it probably would have been lights

out anyway even if he was still around. Number 1

Wall-E If you were lucky enough to be in the right

place in 2008 you would have experienced a very impressive Wall-E animatronic. Based

on the title character of the 2008 Disney Pixar film, Wall-E was created by Walt Disney

Imagineering and was used for promotional events for the film’s release, with the

plan to eventually transfer to Walt Disney World and Disneyland. Like the other figures

created for the living character initiative, Wall-E is fully interactive and can roll on

his tread feet, tilt his head, move his arms and hands, all while responding to guests

through electronic sounds made vaguely to resemble speech. It really brought the character

from the animated film to life.

The Magic of Disney Animation meet and greet at Hollywood studios and an area at Disney

California Adventure were actually set up to house the planned Wall-E experience in

the summer of 2008, but it was never carried out. Aside from a cardboard cut out that was

used a place holder for the Wall-E figure, it was an extinct animatronic in the parks

right from the start.

So the figure stands about 3 1/2 to 4 feet tall and its said to weight approximately

700 pounds. Word on the street is that Disney was concerned about the figure’s weight

and size and became worried that it could easily run over guests feet, causing harm.

So yea, the animatronic never made it into the Park but it has made brief appearances

at the D23 Epxo in the past. There’s also accounts saying that the Wall-E animatronic

figure was actually testing backstage at Walt Disney World in 2008 but kept breaking down.

Probably a similar situation of when Wall-E died during a meet and greet at D23. So along

with the character’s size, the unreliably was probably another major factor of why it

was never seen in the park .

So, have you ever had a chance to experience any of these figures first hand? And if you

could choose one figure to be brought back to the parks, which would it be? Leave a comment

bellow and start a conversation.

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