I'll say this here because I've been conflicted about it for a while.
During the Epcot 30th celebration in 2012, Marty Sklar gave a long (public) talk where he went through the development of the park from its inception, etc, and touched upon his hopes for the future of the park. (It was a wonderful discussion - at one point, he criticized the current management for abandoning the attraction icons and theming, which - pardon the term - was such an iconic element of the park since its opening. I remember him getting loud applause for that.)
At one point, he talked about the development of The American Adventure, and the choice to use Ben Franklin and Will Rogers to (loosely) represent the 18th and 19th centuries respectively. He noted that they considered someone to represent the 20th century, and were sometimes asked about such a possibility - and people would frequently suggest "Why not Walt Disney?"
(For background: Marty joined Disney when
Disneyland opened, and eventually became Walt's primary writer for speeches and presentations. He later spent decades as the head of Imagineering.)
Marty was emphatic - the whole idea was
appalling to him. It was one thing to write for Walt and to know that Walt spoke his words, but the idea of installing an animatronic of Walt in a theme park attraction and
literally put words in his mouth - it was too upsetting for him to even consider.
When they announced this new attraction, Marty's speech was the first thing I thought about. Especially knowing that several of the decision-makers for this worked with and for Marty for many years. (Marty died in 2017.)
Having said that - I totally get the difference of making an animatronic of someone you personally knew versus making one of someone you idolize. At its face, having someone make an animatronic of your dead friend sounds ghoulish. But, after all, Walt led the invention of animatronics to represent one of his heroes, Abraham Lincoln. If Lincoln's peers had lived to see it (and been able to comprehend the technology), they probably would have been horrified. But, to everyone else, Lincoln isn't necessarily a real person - he's almost more of an idea.
Walt himself had two sides. There was the real Walt - the chain-smoking, hard-to-please perfectionist - and Uncle Walt - the affable television host eager to show you the amazing things he and his staff are developing. If they can somehow channel the latter - if it's really just the
character of Walt Disney, and/or maybe an homage to what Walt was trying to do for Lincoln - maybe it'll work.
But this feels a lot lose/lose. With Lincoln, Walt was helping you see the man as a real person and show you what he might have been like - he was giving Lincoln a dimension and a truth that didn't really exist in the handful of photographs of the man. Unlike Lincoln, people can go online and see the real Walt Disney in action. He's been gone for almost 60 years, but people can visit with him like he still has something he's excited to share with you. There isn't as much of a need here. (And, honestly, they kinda didn't get it right for the Disney 100 exhibit.)
Honestly, there's an argument that his spirit is already at Disneyland. Whatever they do, it needs to be really
really good.
I'm hoping it's amazing. But I would not want to be any of the people at Imagineering tasked with making it a reality.
