Quote Originally Posted by TinkRocks View Post
Where is Lucky these days?

Don't get me wrong - it's great that these new things are making their way to each Disney park, two weeks is nowhere near long enough... How about 2 or 3 months at each Disney park?
Lucky has been back at WDI in California for quite a while, but we continue to test and refine things with both Lucky and the Muppet Mobile Labs.

Back in May, we actually had both Lucky and the MML stop by the Disney Studios in Burbank for part of an Imagineering day where we had fun showing them off around the Disney Studio lot for the staff there.

These are both R&D test platforms where WDI looks at both technology and story concepts on how they can best be applied towards future applications in the parks and with the feedback we get from in-park testing we can then look to develop ways to incorporate them into new attractions or shows. In other words they're like a prototype concept that we'll show off to the parks and parks & resort management where they may then decide to task WDI with applying the idea towards a project (that was kind of the approach that happened with Turtle Talk with Crush which evolved from earlier play testing of Stitch's Photo Phone in Disneyland and an R&D concept with Mickey back at WDI we called the Toon Elevator).

With Lucky there was a lot of new aspects we were working with from experimenting with materials for animatronic skins that were lightweight, flexible and durable that visitors could come up and actually touch and developing an animation system that could be expressive but also safe around guests in that it could be aware of the surroundings.

We're also constantly evaluating and testing different power and mechanical systems so the movements look realistic to where the characters act as living beings but also can perform longer shows than short 15-30 minute performances without needing to be refreshed.

It's actually interesting that for even the team members directly involved with both Lucky and the Muppet Mobile Labs they're not really treated like a mechanical robot but especially with Lucky every morning that we might have him out in the park the teams check up with Lucky as if it were a real dinosaur or animal and you almost form a strange sort of bond with Lucky and concern for his well-being.

The Muppet Mobile Labs specifically represented a new challenge of whether we could take characters that people were familiar with and demonstrate the performance as an interactive character beyond what we accomplished with Lucky. With what we're learning from the in-park tests with the Muppet Mobile Labs it is encouraging that in the future you might see other more familiar characters being brought to life beyond viewing them on a screen in an interactive way.

With Lucky it was about bringing a friendly dinosaur to life but characters like Bunsen and Beaker in some ways are more challenging to try and mimic the original muppet performance and capture that overall look and feel of the characters into an entertaining show and we were fortunate to have access to the some original muppet figures to model and the input of the muppet performers (and specifically Dave Goelz who was quite pleased with how his character Bunsen Honeydew turned out) for how we can tweak the show.

The real interesting test will be soon when the Muppet Mobile Labs should take a visit overseas starting with Hong Kong Disneyland and we'll really get some valuable feedback on the show elements with an audience that won't be as familiar with the character backgrounds.