Once upon a very long time ago, it was difficult to even picture a Disney attraction without Audio-Animatronics. From Haunted Mansion to Pirates of the Caribbean; Splash Mountain to the Great Movie Ride, there’s no question that some of Disney’s most legendary, timeless, E-Ticket rides earn their blockbuster status thanks to their impressively-sized casts of robotic characters.
Today, Imagineering has greater Audio-Animatronics technology than ever before… but tends to use it sparingly. Attractions like Na’vi River Journey, Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT!, and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run each feature just one character brought to life by animatronic, albeit an immensely-impressive one. Even if Rise of the Resistance, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, and Runaway Railway up the ante, it doesn’t seem like we’ll see Animatronic casts of 100 again anytime soon.
For the most part, it’s clear that we’re in the Age of the Screen. And now, that apparently includes screens replacing Audio-Animatronics… Which is exactly what happened in one of the most unique attractions at Disneyland Paris.
Les Mystères du Nautilus
Often regarded as the most beautiful of Disney’s six “Castle Parks,” Disneyland Paris is a park layered in incredible detail and warmth. Well-known among Imagineering fans is its unique take on Tomorrowland. Given that European visitors wouldn’t have any cultural connection to the American mid-century Space Age, Tomorrowland’s classic attractions were all rewrapped in Paris as Discoveryland – a golden, steampunk-inspired seaport modeled on the works of French author Jules Verne and the inventive plans for the never-built Possibilityland: Discovery Bay.
Docked in a bubbling lagoon alongside the Lost Legend: Space Mountain – De la Terre á la Lune resides the iconic Nautilus, the fantastic submarine designed by Disney Legend Harper Goff for Disney’s 1954 film adaptation of the Jules Verne novel. And thanks to a spiral staircase descending underground, guests can actually step aboard. (Well… kind of. Actually, the Mystères du Nautilus is housed in a hidden showbuilding, with the spiral staircase serving to disorient guests and make them think they’re crossing underwater to the docked submarine.)
Inside resides one of Disneyland Paris’ fabled walkthrough attractions, allowing guests to explore the chambers and compartments of the Nautilus. That includes the Ballast Chamber, the Diving Chamber, the steaming Engine Room, Captain Nemo’s Cabin, and the Chart Room. But the real highlight resided in the sub’s iconic heart: the Grand Salon. Inside, guests would find one of Disney’s most awesome Audio-Animatronic encounters.
Every so often, the voices of helmsmen would announce that a creature was approaching. As the salon’s lights dimmed, Nemo himself would call for the ship’s “iris” to be opened. There, through the murky, bubbling depths, guests would brace for the attack of a giant squid – the action-packed finale of both the film and Disney World’s E-Ticket ride, Lost Legend: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Submarine Voyage.
With the iris open, the squid would appear from the darkness, its tentacles gripping the top and bottom of the sub as it pulled itself in closer, all in a flurry of bubbles filtering up from the deep. (Actually, a clever visual trick – the Animatronic was dry, with a thin layer of water between the double-paned porthole selling the illusion.) This cutting edge figure with its undulating tentacles and gnashing beak would pull itself to the porthole, moving up and down and back and forth as it tried to break through the hull (see video in the embedded tweet below)…
Here’s a video compilation of Disneyland Paris Nautilus, Mireille, the giant squid. One of the most ambitious animatronic ever created by Disney at the time (1994) now gone forever, replaced by screens… pic.twitter.com/CfCXVgtVL5
— Themountainking (@Themountainkin1) July 1, 2023
Ultimately, only Nemo’s call for an electric discharge would see sparks illuminate the ocean deaths, causing the squid to recoil and shriek, using its tentacles to jettison away from the sub just as the iris closed again.
Incredibly sophisticated for its time, the advanced animatronic with its unique boom-arm-support (to allow it to “swim” into the scene with no visible anchoring mechanics) was a triumph, and led to a genuinely cool, dimensional, and thrilling element for a walkthrough attraction.
On par with Disneyland Paris’ fabled La Tanière du Dragon animatronic encounter, this climactic experience was truly a hidden gem of the resort (not to mention the pet project of Imagineer Tom Scherman). So what does it look like without an animatronic? Read on…
The New Nautilus
After years and years of financial issues for the French resort, The Walt Disney Company assumed full ownership and control of Disneyland Paris in 2017. Since then, Disney has been aggressive in its attempts to reverse the resort’s fortunes, including infusing billions of dollars into the underbuilt Walt Disney Studios Park and beginning an aggressive clean-up of the long-under-maintained Disneyland Park.
In keeping with Disney’s vision for its parks, that’s also meant infusing Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars into Disneyland Paris as quickly and efficiently as possible. Coco is the thematic basis of a re-themed Frontierland restaurant; Pixar’s Luca will takeover hosting duties of a Fantasyland ice cream shop; Star Wars has overtaken Discoveryland. And of course, the French version of Avengers Campus opened just last year.
(Also in keeping with Disney’s vision for its parks: the recent re-introduction of Annual Passes for Disneyland Paris basically saw almost all passholder perks cut, and prices uniformly increased by $200.)
But of course, at today’s Disney, the parks are places to celebrate hot box office IPs… not old ones. So you can understand why fans were wary when the Mysteries of the Nautilus walkthrough closed for a year-long refurbishment, that quietly extended well past its announced April 2022 re-opening. Would Disney simply abandon this walkthrough experience altogether, deeming it a needlessly complex, low-capacity A-Ticket not worth the upkeep?
Even if the Nautilus was closed for 14 months longer than Disney expected, it was very good news when it did re-open in June 2023. Filled with refreshed lighting, restored effects (like leaky, misty pistons in the Engine Room, creating a mini splash pad), and more.
Of course, what guests noticed a severe lack of was any real, meaningful connection to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Notable props from the film were weirdly missing as if specifically removed even though they did no harm as general placemaking. Likewise removed were voiceovers from Captain Nemo and company… Nemo’s iconic organ in the Grand Salon was silent, and the captain’s face (which appeared in the organ via a two-way mirror) was absent, too…
WDI Show Producer Louise Doré offered a sort of explanation: “We completely refurbished the attraction while also bringing a new story where our guests will experience the wonders of the oceans. To deliver that message, we recorded a new soundtrack specially orchestrated for the attraction as well as a new narration.”
Huh… “A new story” where guest experience “the wonders of the ocean”? Wasn’t this a walkthrough themed to the 1955 science-fantasy adventure film? To purposefully omit Nemo and the iconic score of 20,000 Leagues in the Nautilus was an odd choice. But the strangest omission was in the feature Disney tried to spin as a plus.
“We wanted to tell a conservation story that would be more relevant today to our guests, so now, as Louise mentioned, new encounters are happening in the Grand Salon scene,” Principal Illusion Integrator Daniel Joseph said. “The cool thing was that with that project, we worked with our Disney marine biologists, animal keepers, and all kinds of talented and amazing people within the company who work with marine life. These scientific resources helped give a sense of realism to the Nautilus attraction that wasn’t possible before.”
Translation? The squid is long gone. And in its place are new projected mini-shows where the iris opens to display stock footage of ocean creatures. As Theme Park Insider notes, “It’s less Jules Verne and more Jacques Cousteau.” When the iris opens now, guests may see a pod of whales or dolphins swim by for a brief, hazy encounter before the window closes again. It’s… fine! Nice! Interesting! But it’s also incredibly odd.
Clearly, Disney must’ve felt that after thirty years, the animatronic squid had met the end of its service life. Imagineers may also have decided that the encounter was too intense for families. Or maybe, for some odd reason, Disney is trying to distance the attraction from 20,000 Leagues, opting to merely use the highly-decorated submarine as a more conversation-focused, National Geographic-style experience rather than a science fiction adventure one.
So what do you think? Does Disney’s new, ecological angle for the Nautilus make sense to you? Do guests care about the 60 year old film it’s based on? And for that matter, do you think that the new National Geographic-style projected animal experiences are fine as they are? Or does this move worry you? Let us know in the comments below!
