For months, Disney has been hyping up the new Olaf animatronic they built for the parks. The robot is meant to interact with guests by walking around, talking, and singing.
The new animatronic officially made its debut in Disneyland Paris on March 29. However, it ended up malfunctioning in front of guests only one day later. Luckily, one visitor captured the whole thing on video.
In a Tiktok that is going viral with over 200k likes, you can watch the robot freeze and fall flat on his back. His carrot even falls out of his nose and bounces away from him after the sudden fall. The crowd watching screams and laughs as he hits the ground.
The video is already inspiring memes. One comment on the TikTok said, “Olaf be like: I hate Mondays, I’m out.” Another joked, “Us when our social battery runs out.”
Disney Imagineering put a lot of time and energy into creating Olaf, a 35-inch-tall robot that has three computers and 20 actuators. However, the robot is not artificially intelligent. According to The Verge, “It’s puppeteered by a person with a Steam Deck handheld using preset animations and phrases.” One of those phrases includes his famous line from the first Frozen film: “I like warm hugs.”
When talking about this new addition to the park, Kyle Laughlin, from Disney Imagineering, explained, “It won’t always be a human with a Steam Deck at the controls, either. Olaf can be part of time-coded performances, tied directly into Disney’s live entertainment choreography systems.”
Olaf is meant to do more than walk around with guests. The robot is also scheduled to perform on a boat in a lagoon in front of the castle. Laughlin said, “We built a mock boat in our R&D lab to simulate the considerable amount of rocking back and forth in this boat, and Olaf does an incredible job staying afloat. He’s got his sea legs.”
