Disney Animators Are Helping Bring To Life New ‘Beauty And The Beast’ Audio-Animatronics

Disney has offered a sneak peek of its upcoming Tokyo Disneyland attraction Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast, which will take audiences through scenes from the 1991 animated version of Beauty and the Beast.

The ride incorporates the “next-generation” audio-animatronic figures that the company has increasingly started to build for its park attractions. The sophisticated movement of the characters is not only due to advances in robotic engineering, but also because of a collaboration between Walt Disney Imagineering and Walt Disney Animation Studios. Animators at Disney are first creating a cg-animated version of the characters’ movement for the ride, which is then built and programmed as three-dimensional figures by Imagineering.

Imagineering has been working directly with animators at Disney Animation for a number of years now to produce these advanced animatronics. The first ride for which Disney animators provided a “full 3-D design and delivery” was the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train ride, which opened in 2014 at Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida.

The Beauty and the Beast ride will open at Tokyo Disney in 2020.