Mickey talking to guests at Disneyland

[Drtooth]

And Drtooth; Yeah, the Toy Story ride is in California as well, and Mr. Potato Head has dropped his ear a few times. But lately, I've seen it work well.
Here is one time from California where it didn't work; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-PyrCJDLKs

There is nothing in the world quite as funny as a goofy malfunction completely derailing a performance. The clip I posted is much funnier, because it includes a minute of awkwardness and little kids screaming that he dropped his ear. Everything just completely dropped with it, especially the show.

 

[Mupp]

wait, would Bunsen and Beaker count?*

Yes, it does count.

All of those experiences are part of Disney's "living character" initiative.

And I still believe that they are working on a new Muppet Interactive experience, as they mentioned at D23. JUst becuase we haven't heard anything since then, doesn't mean that its not going to happen. WDI is very secretive of their projects. They keep things under wraps.

 

[dwmckim]

The really cool thing is as nifty as it is to adults, think how truly magical this is for kids. I always was disappointed with Disneyland trips as a kid because the characters i was meeting didn't talk (their size didn't affect me but their silence did). If you could have these characters not only talking in their "real" voice and also interacting with you, then kids will be in nirvana!

 

[SeanC]

I was in Hong Kong Disneyland a couple of weeks ago and they have this great attraction called 'Stitch Encounter'. Basically, a fully animated Stitch appears on a movie screen, asking questions to various people in the audience and cracking jokes at their expense. I was one of the 'lucky' people chosen. Had a two or three minute conversation with Stitch where he asked me if I'd ever been to Hawaii because he thought he recognised me. Turns out he met me in space prison... and as evidence he produced a wanted poster with a pic of me on it. How all this was done I've no idea, but it was quite fun.

 

[Katzi428]

My 3 year old niece was at Disney World back in July. She would have loved it if Mickey & co. had talked to her!
(yeah..I know the characters talked in Disneyland,but just the same,she would have been thrilled!)

 

[wiley207]

According to what I heard, Disney's been experimenting with talking characters since the 1960s, but initially had practically no success, or it was very limited, like with certain occasions, such as the Walt Disney World 25th Anniversary in 1996, or the "Muppets on Location: Days of Swine and Roses" stage show in 1991. The "talking characters" didn't become more commonly seen until that traveling Disney stage show, which featured realistic talking versions of Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy and Goofy, but they performed to pre-recorded vocal tracks for all of those. Here are some more links to this sort of info:

http://www.povonline.com/2003/News030903.htm#031103a
http://www.povonline.com/2003/News030903.htm#031203a
http://jimhillmedia.com/editor_in_chief1/b/jim_hill/archive/2006/09/08/5563.aspx?PageIndex=1

Yeah, something I could talk about for quite a while