In an era of screens, special effects, and projection mapping, there may still be nothing more sensational for theme park fans than an encounter with a good, old-fashioned animatronic. Since the technology’s debut in 1963, Audio-Animatronics have become industry-standard storytelling tools, bringing to life everything from pirates to princesses; dinosaurs to dragons. That’s why our must-read Countdown: 25 Best Animatronics on Earth feature is one of the most-read here at Theme Park Tourist, celebrating the most astounding animatronic encounters on E-Ticket attractions the world over.
But for those who prefer to keep their feet on the ground, a number of well-known animatronic figures are scattered across theme park paths, simply there to expand the worlds of “yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy” and present one-of-a-kind encounters outside of the parks’ rides and attractions.
Today, we’ll take a look at some of the animatronic figures you can find at Disney and Universal Parks without being on a ride… or even stepping into a ride queue. Some are fabled, can’t-miss classics, while others are so hidden, you may not have known they existed! For each entry, we’ll include the link to a video showcasing the figure in action.
1. The Barker Birds
Image: Disney
Status: Removed
Location: Adventureland at Disneyland
Video: “Better come see this thing!”
When fans discuss Walt Disney’s classic favorites, the Modern Marvel: The Enchanted Tiki Room is an essential. Opened in 1963, the attraction and the accompanying Tahitian Terrace dinner theater debuted right at the height of the “Tiki Craze” (aligning with Hawaii’s entrance into the U.S.) and Americans’ fascination with all things Polynesian. Of course, the Enchanted Tiki Room served as the debut of Disney’s patented Audio-Animatronics figures. (In fact, we still rate its avian cast among the world’s best.) So groundbreaking was the very concept that Walt and his designers figured that guests wouldn’t understand exactly what awaited inside.
Enter Juan (cousin to the show’s emcee José, we’re told), a macaw positioned atop the ride’s marquee with the simple job of acting as a carnival barker, excitedly spieiling to attract guests to the show. Juan would chirp, whistle, and – of course – speak, giving guests a glimpse of the wonders that would await inside. But the seemingly intelligent talking bird was so novel, he became an attraction in his own right, and guests were known to gather around and gawk at the figure with such intensity, they often cut-off the pathway leading into Adventureland! Eventually, that necessitated Juan’s removal entirely.
Image: Disney
Nearly sixty years later, another Audio-Animatronic bird found its way to Adventureland… In 2018, Disney smartly repurposed the long-underutilized remains of the Tahitian Terrance dinner theater into the retro-nostalgic Tropical Hideaway. Nestled into the Tiki Room’s thatch-roofed courtyard and overlooking the rivers of the Jungle Cruise, the “Instagrammable” courtyard is filled with details that expand the Tiki Room’s mythos, connect to Adventureland’s larger narrative, and simultaneously pull in nods to Disney’s mysterious, cross-continental secret society, S.E.A. – the Society of Explorers and Adventurers.
No doubt the Tropical Hideaway is a spot mostly designed for Disneyland’s Annual Passholders to “Dole Whip and chill,” acting as a crowd-holding sponge to clear up pathways ahead of the launch of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.
Image: Disney
But a welcome detail for the fan-service food court? An Audio-Animatronic Rosita (a white cockatoo whose absense from the show’s “bird-mobile” has been noted since 1963) is at the river’s edge with jokes and puns to entertain guests while they dine on Dole Whips, bao buns, and sweet pineapple lumpia spring rolls. Even sweeter, the crate that supports her perch also holds a barker’s hat and cane… call-backs to Juan himself and Rosita’s newfound career as a barker. And she’s not the only one…
2. Mr. Potato Head
Image: DAPSMagic
Location: Pixar Pier at Disney California Adventure
Video: “Hurry, hurry, hurry!”
As you amble along the stately Victorian boardwalk of Disney California Adventure’s Pixar Pier, you’re meant to feel as if you’ve been transported back to the heyday of the Golden State’s elegant, seaside pleasure parks of strung Edison bulbs, whimsical domes, and ragtime music (somewhat incomprehensibly overlaid with Pixar’s decidedly-modern and non-Californian-boardwalk-set films… it’s a long story… more on that when we return to the Pier later on…)
Naturally, any celebration of the state’s century-old amusement piers would include classic midway games like “Break the Plate,” “Ring the Bottle,” and “Shoot the Duck.” It’s wonderfully clever that those games exist here, and that as you stroll along the boardwalk, the real ones blend seamlessly into Toy Story Midway Mania, an E-Ticket family ride with clever Toy-Story-styled digital midway games.
Image: Sasaki Time
Rather than the toy-sized facade given to the ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, California Adventure’s version is wrapped in an appropriately-Victorian white boardwalk ballroom exterior. And fitting real seaside amusement parks, it has a “barker” spieling about the excitement awaiting inside.
Mr. Potato Head here isn’t just queue line entertainment as in Florida or Japan; he’s a “barker,” sincerely meant to attract guests with his “Hurry, hurry hurry!” excitement. At times, Mr. Potato Head is even “live puppeted,” able to call out to specific guests surrounding him and interact one-on-one with boardwalk visitors. That’s what a carnival barker is supposed to be like, so leaving Mr. Potato Head out in the open for any and all guests makes him a memorable moment in a day at Disneyland.
3. The Snake
Image: Walt Disney World for Grown Ups
Location: Diagon Alley at Universal Studios Florida
Video: Parseltongue
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando Resort might’ve single-handedly shifted theme park design to its new, totally-immersive, film-focused, “land” based strategy. And yet, for all the enormous, industry-changing precedents it set, some of its biggest successes are the smallest details. Fans went wild over the opportunity to purchase interactive “wands” able to cast spells throughout the land, activating special effects in shop windows and beyond, but the personal-sized encounters go even further.
If you venture down the alleyway beside Diagon Alley’s Magical Menagerie shop, you’ll find a snake on display in the window, who will follow you as you move. Listen long enough and the slithering serpent may even speak Parseltongue (the language of serpents, first heard in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone when Harry unknowingly communicates with a Brazilian boa at the zoo)… and should you happen to be a Parselmouth yourself, you may even hear the snake’s words in English instead. Its just yet another tucked-away magical encounter that’ll leave Potter fans with the distinct feeling that this massive world is really built on individual encounters.
4. Iguanodon
Status: Extinct
Location: Discovery River at Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Video: “Besides that one over there, dinosaurs are long gone…”
When Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened in 1998, the park offered only two noteworthy attractions: the headlining Kilimanjaro Safaris, and the terrifying Lost Legend: Countdown to Extinction. In the latter, guests would board EMV Time Rovers to leap back to the last moments of the Cretaceous, tasked with saving an Iguanodon from the brink of extinction and returning it to the Dino Institute for study.
Image: Sam Howzit, Flickr (license)
Of course, the park also contained the Discovery River Boats. To Disney’s thinking, this simple boat-based ride would simply shuttle guests from the park’s entry Oasis to Asia, easing walking requirements for the gargantuan park. Along the way, the boats would sail past simple vignettes meant as “teasers” for what each of the park’s lands would offer, like a goat exhibit and geysers in Africa and a fire-breathing dragon near Camp Minnie-Mickey (meant to hint at the Possibilityland: Beastly Kingdom). Along the shores of Dinoland, guests would find a playful Iguanodon splashing along the shores of the Discovery River, as if the dinosaur folks had rescued aboard Countdown to Extinction had escaped!
The connection was cute, and helped expand the world of the ride to a deeper continuity connecting the rest of Dinoland to its story. But unfortunately, the Discovery River Boats garnered multi-hour waits from guests expecting a “Jungle Cruise” style experience (especially with only two other rides in the park), inevitably leading to disappointment. By the park’s first autumn, the ride was renamed Discovery River Taxi to emphasize its functional role, but it wasn’t enough. In March 1999 – before its first birthday – the ride lost its riverside scenes and became the Radio Disney River Cruise before closing forever that November.
5. Seagulls
Image: Disney
Location: Tomorrowland at Disneyland
Video: “Mine! Mine! Mine!”
When Disneyland’s venerated Submarine Voyage closed in 1998 (a strange way to “celebrate” the land’s Declassified Disaster: Tomorrowland 1998 “update”), all hope seemed lost. After all, Magic Kingdom’s version of the ride – the fan-favorite Lost Legend: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – had closed just a few years earlier without so much as a warning and it stood to reason that Disneyland’s 1959 ride would be sufficiently sunk as well. Fans held to the hope that Disney’s 2001 film Atlantis: The Lost Empire might inspire Disney to re-theme the Walt classic, but when that film bombed, all hope seemed lost.
But 2003’s Finding Nemo and a major change of management at Disneyland buoyed the concept of reviving the subs to celebrate Disneyland’s 50th Anniversary. We traced the growth of Pixar and its place in Disney Parks in its own standalone feature – Disney•Pixarland – with 2007’s Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage as one of the largest E-Ticket “Pixar” rides yet. While it doesn’t have much in common with its predecessor, fans were relieved to see the revival of a ride system Walt himself had cared so much for.
Image: Loren Javier, Flickr (license)
As you walk along the bubbling lagoon between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland, the iconic and beloved seagulls from the film will make it perfectly clear that the cartoon clownfish has overtaken the Tomorrowland classic. “Mine! Mine! Mine!” Roosting on a floating buoy, the seagulls chatter, chirp, and provide phenomenal photo opportunities… to some, an unfortunate invasion in the continuing “cartoonification” of Tomorrowlands. Similar seagulls can be found outside of The Seas with Nemo and Friends at Epcot.
6. Sonny Eclipse
Image: Disney
Location: Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom
Video: “Hello, all you Earthlings!”
Believe it or not, there was a time before Tomorrowland was overtaken with Pixar properties. After any semblance of actual scientific futurism but before Finding Nemo, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., and Lilo and Stitch moved in, Tomorrowland briefly existed as one of Disney’s first ever attempts at land-wide continuity. In fact, when Magic Kingdom’s New Tomorrowland debuted in 1994, the idea was that each of its rides, shows, and even restaurants would take place in the same “universe,” each connected by an overarching narrative and art-deco architectural style.
Tomorrowland was meant to be a real, immersive, sci-fi city – an intergalactic spaceport of landed spacecrafts, neon signs in alien languages, and a spirit and style influenced by 20th century pulp sci-fi comics and characters like Buck Rogers. The city’s Transit Authority (the Peoplemover) would whisk guests past the Tomorrowland Science Center (home to the Lost Legend: The Timekeeper on exhibit), the Interplanetary Convention Center (hosting the alien engineering firm X-S Tech, unwittingly making guests guinea pigs on the Lost Legend: Alien Encounter), and the city’s space port (Space Mountain). Most every element of the land was meant to feel like part of the same frame story.
Image: “Joe Shlabotnik”, Flickr (license)
That includes Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe, a retro-futuristic jazz club owned and operated by aliens. As guests dine at this intergalactic restaurant, they’re serenaded by the smooth stylings of “lounge lizard” Sonny Eclipse, “the biggest little star in the galaxy” from the planet Zork as he sings original songs on the Astro-Organ. Okay, so Sonny is clearly a bit of ’90s Chuck E. Cheese-style kitsch leftover from another time… but he has outlasted the rest of Tomorrowland’s ambitious ’94 rebirth, now a single bit of original sci-fi left in the Pixar-populated land. By the way, jet off to Tokyo Disneyland for the even wilder animatronic entertainment of Tony Solaroni on the second level of the park’s Pan Galactic Pizza Port for a full-on show during your meal.
7. Gringotts Goblin
Location: Diagon Alley at Universal Studios Florida
Video: “I seem to have neglected your presence…”
We’re back at the Wizarding World in Universal Studios Florida for another fascinating figure accessible to guests… And while the land’s headlining attraction – Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts – does contain a grand, marble atrium of studious animatronic goblins as part of its queue, there’s another goblin you needn’t brave a roller coaster for…
Image: Universal Orlando
Insiders often discuss how Disney executives were shaken to their cores when they noticed that guests at Universal Orlando were willing to wait in line at the competing Wizarding World, not for rides or shows, but to get into gift shops and restaurants! Imagine the industry-defying idea that guests would queue for an hour to spend money on a souvenir. As if to add insult to injury, the Wizarding World’s second phase, Diagon Alley, created a scenario where guests are willing to wait in line to trade their “Muggle money” for Universal gift cards.
Granted, those gift cards come in the form of attractive “Gringotts Bank Notes,” and are dispensed by way of a live-puppeted animatronic Goblin who will converse with guests before taking their meager U.S. dollars and dispensing Wizarding World bucks instead. The resulting Bank Notes are, of course, redeemable throughout the Wizarding World… or – as Universal hopes – worthy of taking home as a souvenir; the price one pays for an audience with a real goblin.
8. Figaro
Image: Disney
Location: Fantasy Faire at Disneyland
Video: Cat nap
The simple carnival tent of Plaza Gardens had been a fairly nondescript part of Disneyland for decades. So when it was announced that the hideaway spot (known for its weekend swing dancing) would be absorbed into Fantasyland at the expense of the simple circus tent and patio tables, fans practically protested. As with most things that earn the ire of die-hard fans, the charming Fantasy Faire ended up being a fan-favorite… a gentle, functional, and superbly detailed corner of the park.
Among its offerings is a Royal Reception Hall (a meet-and-greet for princesses, perhaps saving one of the park’s classic dark rides from the same fate as Magic Kingdom’s Lost Legend: Snow White’s Scary Adventures) and the Royal Theatre, presenting clever, Vaudevillian retellings of Beauty and the Beast and Tangled accompanied by a live pianist.
Image: HarshLight, Flickr (license)
The simple Medieval courtyard is also packed with Easter eggs and easy-to-miss details, including an animatronic of Figaro – the cat from Pinocchio – sleeping on a windowsill overhead. Every few minutes, a caged bird on the window chirps, waking Figaro. The lazy cat, meows and paws at the bird, then snuggles back to sleep… an easy-to-miss and adorable detail.
9. The Lamp
Image: Disney
Location: Pixar Pier at Disney California Adventure
Video: Light the night
There’s perhaps no Disney Park on Earth with a story as layered, complex, and controversial as that of Disney California Adventure, the (in)famous second gate at the Disneyland Resort. We told the wild tale of the park in its own special series – Disney California Adventure: Part I and Part II, but that latter entry is of particular interest for most Disney Parks fans… After all, that second half chronicles the life of the park after Disney invested over $1 billion to remove the odd modern influences and general lack of Disneyland-style timelessless that had plagued the park since its 2001 opening… oh, and the surprising decision by Disney just five years after that grand rebirth to essentially undo the core of that re-do in favor of turning the park into a “studio”-style catch-all for Marvel and Pixar properties.
Such is the case with Pixar Pier (studied in-depth in that Part II entry), an “evolution” of the park’s former Paradise Pier. Pixar Pier is an odd case study, as it very effortlessly obliterated any immersion or world-building that its former identity had thanks to its four “neighborhoods” of clashing IPs and mismatched architectural styles dedicated to The Incredibles, Toy Story, “Other,” and Inside Out, respectively. What’s worse, Pixar Pier resorts to slapping Pixar characters and their lofty, emotional, award-winning films on hot dog stands, carousels, and simple carnival rides – a move more expected of Six Flags than Disney.
Image: Disney
But the weirdest part of Pixar Pier is that it also doubled down on the enchanting, eccentric, historic seaside boardwalk architecture that Paradise Pier started to get after the park’s 2012 rebirth… So the land is filled with beautiful and frustrating contradictions, with its most successful features being in spite of the Pixar brand and not because of it. Such is the case with its dreamy, elegant, storybook Victorian entry of flickering Edison bulbs, historic domes, jewel-tone turrets, and an ornate, flashing, hand-carved turn-of-the-century archway entrance… with an articulating modern desk lamp on top…
The presense of Pixar’s iconic lamp (part of Pixar’s title card on the big screen, but originally made famous in – and sometimes unofficially named after – their Luxo Jr. short film) is almost a barker in its own right, albeit a silent one. The old Paradise Pier transported guests to a Victorian boardwalk at the turn of the century. If Pixar Pier has a story, it would have to be that the modern Walt Disney Company owns a seaside amusement park and has decided to overlay its high-earning Pixar film intellectual properties on the rides there. Unsophisticated as it may be, that at least makes the Lamp’s presence make sense. And luckily, it’s cute enough to watch.
10. The Dragon
Image: Disney
Location: Fantasyland at Disneyland Paris
Video: The dragon awakens
Though the 1992 opening of Disneyland Paris (and its subsequent financial failure) are often cited as the pivot point that led to closed, cancelled, and cop-out attractions for the decades after, there’s also no denying that Disneyland Paris may be the most beautiful, detailed, and storied of Disney’s castle parks. Fans often cite its castle – Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant – as key evidence, somehow combining the charm, intimacy, and beauty of Disneyland’s miniscule original with the grandeur of Magic Kingdom’s… a formula that extends to the rest of the park, too.
But most spectacular is what lurks beneath the castle. A standalone, walk-through attraction at the Parisian park, La Tanière du Dragon (the Dragon’s Dungeon) allows guests to enter the dimly-lit, ethereal caverns beneath the castle for an encounter with an 89-foot-long sleeping dragon.
Image: Disney
Every once-in-a-while, the chained dragon awakens, spies onlooking guests, and defiantly grips its claws, lifts its head, growls, and breathes smoke before remembering that it’s chained. Frustrated, the dragon simply growls, narrows its eyes, and goes back to sleep.
The face-to-maw experience is somewhat transcendental for Disney Parks fans, acting as evidence of what a difference such “simple” asides can make in the spirit of casting “the park as the E-Ticket.” For that reason, the encounter with the sleeping dragon has become a sort of must-see, bucket list moment for Disney Parks fans who make the trek to Paris for just such surprising differences between it and its stateside sisters.
More to explore…
Image: TDR Explorer
Though there’s no denying that Disney and Universal have shied away from attractions filled with dozens of Audio-Animatronics in favor of screens and spectacle, appearances by this famed figures continue, and sometimes seeing them outside of rides and attractions makes face-to-face encounters even more unbelievable. From hidden, tucked away moments to enormous encounters, stumbling across these animatronics can be surprising, spectacular, and special…
The figures we’ve listed here are just the start of places where you can find animatronics outside of rides and queues… Which other figures have you stumbled across in your journeys to parks across the globe?
