Interactive Innovations | Epcot Becoming Episode 3 | National Geographic

We're pushing technology within our ride systems, showing that we can create amazing things together. Frozen Ever After was really the first attraction to use all electric motor audio animatronics figures. Traditionally, all of the audio animatronics figures in EPCOT used oil pressure to generate and control the movement of figures. Which is remarkable but not extraordinarily precise.

We are trying to bring those characters into the real world in a way that no one has ever seen before. So, how do you take a complex animation to an in-person experience that guests can enjoy? We created an arm of Elsa, and we made it all electric. The animators would actually sit with us and say, "Elsa would move like this."

In a movie, every single joint, every finger, every curl is its own control. And so a complicated character like Elsa might have 1500 or 2000 individual controls. What is the smallest number of motors we can use to bring the most life to the character? Elsa's arm is seven functions. We took special care to make sure the range of motion stayed true to the character, and together we were able to develop characters that performed in a way that came like they were just off of the film right dimensionally in front of you.

They solved it and it makes for an emotional connection that's incredibly powerful. When you bring an animated movie scene to life, the ride experience is crucial to tell the story. At Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, I want you to feel like you're Remy in that kitchen. How do I do that? We needed a free ranging vehicle, which means it has to be computer controlled to know "Where do I move you? Do I spin? Do I back up? Do I go forward? Do I shake? Do I tilt?"

Each ride vehicle is programmed with a ride path, but it needs cues to make sure it's going the right way. This is called an RFID tag. RFID stands for radio frequency identification. Imagineers placed RFID tags along the entire ride path of the attraction. Each one is programmed with coordinates so that when a rat vehicle drives over a RFID tag, the control system knows if it's on the right course.

So it's kind of like breadcrumbs on a trail. What it allows you to do is to make the ride vehicle become a character in the story, as opposed to being an invisible mechanism. At Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, cutting edge tech takes you out of this world. You set off into space on a whole new rollercoaster system that we call an Omnicoaster.

This Omnicoaster is Disney World's first reverse-launch roller coaster, blasting its riders into space using something called "stators." Stators are just electromagnets and we will pulse them in a sequence in order to speed you up or slow you down. As you're traveling at upwards of 50 miles an hour, we can pivot and rotate you into the action.

We can turn you at any given point in any direction we choose. Each ride car is individually controlled by a yaw system, a technical term describing rotation about the vertical axis. It just kind of gives you the sense that you're flying and floating through space. With 360 degree turns, you never miss the action projected on the massive screens all around you, some the size of football fields.

Massive story of the Guardians needed a massive way to tell it. This attraction is an evolution of everything that we've done at Walt Disney Imagineering for years. We would never want to do something that is just a thrill ride because we're really about telling stories and putting you into a place to give you an adventure that you can't have anywhere else.

Oh my gosh, that was awesome!