Walt Disney Animatronic Debuts At Disneyland, Appears To Break Immediately

Disneyland celebrated its big 70th anniversary, and what better way to celebrate than by reanimating the guy who started it all, Walt Disney?

However, to my surprise, this process didn't involve any thawing from a state of cryogenic freezing; instead, they went ahead and created an animatronic of the company's founder.

As cool as this sounds, considering the company has made animatronics of all kinds of historical figures, including every single president, Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, and more, this one was met with controversy. 

It's an impressive piece of technology, but it doesn't resemble Walt Disney much. If anything, it looks a bit more like My Pillow boss Mike Lindell, and I'm going to guess that's not what the Imagineeers were going for with this.

So maybe it just missed the mark a little in the looks department, but if Walt-Bot 5000 hit the ground running when it made its public debut on Disneyland's 70th anniversary on Thursday, all would be forgiven, right?

Right?!

After some previews for the press, Cyborg Walt was unveiled for the public in a 17-minute show called "Walt Disney — A Magical Life," and on the first day, things went a little sideways.

That's not very Walt-like. 

The fact that he doesn't smoke a cigarette or eat chili like the big chili guy that he was (lung darts and chili? How did this guy not see 70?!) kills the illusion for me just a little bit.

But hey, in Disney's defense, this is par for the course in the world of audio animatronics, which they pioneered. 

New ones break down all the time. In fact, after my first visit to Universal's new Epic Universe theme park, I went back again a couple of weeks later, and a bunch of the animatronics on the Monsters Unleased ride weren't working. 

Some Draculas weren't Dracula-ing, and some Frankenstein's Monsters weren't Frankenstein's Monster-ing.

So it happens, but that's the last way they would've wanted the tribute to the company's iconic founder to go down.