Upcoming Walt Disney animatronic sparks family dispute over founder’s legacy

Disney’s Imagineers are working on a new animatronic of iconic American visionary Walt Disney, but some members of his family have opposing views about whether it celebrates his legacy or dehumanizes him.

Disney’s Main Street Opera House plans to unveil a new theme park attraction called Walt Disney – A Magical Life, featuring an audio-animatronic of the company’s founder. 

But Joanna Miller, one of Disney’s grandchildren, slammed the idea of an animatronic as “dehumanizing” in a viral Facebook post. Among her claims, she suggested that her grandfather had told early Imagineer Sam McKim he never wanted to be commemorated with an animatronic. She went on to speak to the Los Angeles Times about why she believes it goes against her grandfather’s wishes.

Shortly after she wrote her post, she met with Disney CEO Bob Iger and Disney Imagineers to see the animatronic in production, crediting the current company head as being “very kind” and noting he listened to what she had to say. The robot itself, however, left her cold. 

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“I think I started crying,” Miller told the L.A. Times. “It didn’t look like him, to me.” 

She wrote in a separate letter to Iger, “I strongly feel the last two minutes with the robot will do much more harm than good to Grampa’s legacy,” and worried people “will remember the robot, and not the man.”

As for claims that Disney would not have wanted to be commemorated as an animatronic, Imagineer Jeff Shaver-Moskowitz said, “In all our research, we never found any documentation of Walt saying that. We know that it’s anecdotal and we can’t speak to what was told to people in private.”

After Miller’s comments were published, The Walt Disney Family Museum shared a statement with Fox News Digital indicating other family members feel far more positively about the animatronic of the Disney family patriarch and were included in the process of its production.

“Walt Disney Imagineering invited museum Board members—five of Walt Disney’s grandchildren and three of his great-grandchildren—to view the progress of the attraction’s development, which included a preview of the new Audio-Animatronics figure of Walt in its animated form,” the statement said. 

“As part of their meticulous eVorts to produce a historically accurate likeness, Walt Disney Imagineering also reached out to the team at The Walt Disney Family Museum for guidance in identifying items that Walt Disney regularly wore,” it added.

Chris Miller, Disney’s eldest grandson and a member of the museum’s Board of Directors, said in the release, “I watched the show with my sisters Tammy and Jenny and the Imagineering team welcomed our feedback.” 

He added further, “The level of innovation and technological advancement has exceeded anything that has been seen before in Audio-Animatronics. While our family has our own memories of Walt as our grampa, we left the presentation feeling confident that he will be depicted in the show as the public remembers him from his introductions on the “Disneyland and Wonderful World of Color TV” series.”

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Tamara Miller, Disney’s granddaughter and vice president of the museum’s Board of Directors, offered similar praise.

“It was an honor to be welcomed by Imagineering to preview the ‘Walt Disney – A Magical Life’ attraction. Having this representation at the park that grampa built is the right place for this, to educate people about who he was and introduce him to new audiences,” she said in the release. “This attraction is a great opportunity for an audience to get a good representation of him. We believe that our grandfather would have been enthusiastic about the project. I look forward to having my children and grandchildren see this representation of my grandfather.”

Fox News Digital reached out to The Walt Disney Company for comment.