What Happened to Animatronic Wall-E?

[ashmonster]

Hello Everyone!

Was perusing videos on YouTube and came across this one of the animatronic Wall-e that imagineers built. He walked down the brown carpet at the wall-e premire and was also seen around various places. This was all back in... I believe 2008? I know the plan for it was to have him wandering the streets of Disney World/Land but it seems like that never happened. Anyone have any knowledge or insight as to why that happened? From the videos I saw it looked absolutely fantastic! And with the Pixar Place part of WDW and all the Pixar related things at CA Adventure I don't understand why I never happened!


Below is the link to the YouTube video of the wall-e at disneyland! so cute!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As7UQtKX00c

Thanks

[somethingguy912]

the reason they probably backed down on the idea because the Wall-E was 700 pounds or so and they found it dangerous if it was to accidentally run over one of the kid's feet with it's heavy treads. They did have it for a time but it was way too heavy and cautious for the children's sake to keep it around the park, so they went with the cardboard version. Not as realistic, but, safer.

[DarkHandOfSigourneyWeaver]

Blah, Blah, Blah, and that's the party line. But the answer just begs the question, why not make him smaller, cuter and less weighty? He is too big anyways. The size from the movie is good for building skyscrapers of cubes, but just doesn't translate into tooling around in our world. Also they need to make him know he is about to run over little kids feet with either infra red or motion sensing. Interactivity at the Disney parks has to be more than some big animatronic thingees jostling about or 'close calls' during some ride. The Imagineers have to do better...

[Pixar Builder]

LOL, I asked those exact same questions DHOSW on my earlier thread Why Isn't WALL·E in Tomorrowland?. I think the issues regarding WALL·E is that because it's not a series like Cars or Toy Story, Disneyland just doesn't feel the need to actually do anything else with the character. The only reason why we have a rides based on standalone films like Monsters Inc or a Finding Nemo was because they either a) California Adventure was desperate for something to rejuvenate the park for younger audiences or b) they simply carved out an already existing ride. Tomorrowland already has Star Tours as its main attraction, so there's no market for WALL·E, sadly.

Honestly, if you want a smaller animatronic WALL·E, you'd have better better off just joining the WALL-E Builders and building your own than hoping Disney Imagineers completely rebuild a new one.

Anyway, @OP, I believe the original promotional robot, when it's not being shoved inside some Disney Warehouse, still makes appearances at Disney Conventions like D23.

[DarkHandOfSigourneyWeaver]

Oh, that's a long thread, and I read only parts of it when it was being made. I liked the post where somethingguy912 notes that the McQueen car must weigh 3,000 lbs and could be a threat to kids! That was justice. I just knew that you were going to respond, PixarBuilder, and say something like "well, then build one yourself". And that's the solution, of course.

Tomorrowland. Well, Wall-E just doesn't fit in there. EVE does, but he doesn't. No wonder she tried to jettison him back here. Most everyone here will want him there, in some fashion. Maybe he could visit there, with a 'Visitor's' button, heh. Our tractor-turtle friend is just too similar to today's technologies, even if he isn't here yet, he is just around the corner...