How Disney Imagineers are using AI and robotics to reshape the company’s theme parks

With last weekend’s opening of World of Frozen in the renamed Disney Adventure World park, Paris became the new leader in advanced technology among the company’s theme parks. It’s a title that shifts hands frequently, but with its robotic Olaf and a new nighttime show that blends airborne and water drones with fountains, fire, and water walls, Adventure World is a technological marvel. Disney tends to downplay the focus on technology in its park attractions. Workers and executives at Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) see the technology as a way to evoke emotion, their primary goal. And with a growing arsenal of tools at their disposal, from AI to powerful game engines (along with plenty of homegrown methods), all of the parks have a lot of ways to summon feelings from guests. Disneyland Paris has an additional advantage up its sleeve: It sits just a few hours from Disney’s R&D hub in Zurich, where much of the company’s robotics work is happening. That proximity helpe