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Walt Disney World's Hall of Presidentsclosed for renovations since January 2017 in order to add a new Donald Trump robotwas originally scheduled to reopen with its new president in time for summer.
But now, its reopening has been pushed back to no earlier than the fall, and perhaps beyond that, according to Disney sources familiar with the attraction. After much behind-the-scenes drama and internal machinations about whether or not Trump would have a speaking role in the attraction, Disney told a local TV station that Trump would indeed speak. But the road to get to this point has been fraught with difficulties.
According to our source, Trump's communications team turned what should have been a simple recording process into a public relations nightmareone that Disney executives twisted themselves in knots to avoid, in order to save face for the president, and ultimately, save face for themselves.
Motherboard reached out to Walt Disney World for comment on this story and did not receive a response. "The same thing that we've done with other presidents, is the same plan we have for President Trump," said Jacquee Wahler, Disney's vice president of communications, told News 13 in Orlando. Wahler said Disney hoped to reopen the ride by the anniversary of Trump's election.
The Hall of Presidents is a 23-minute show about the history of the American presidency at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida. At the show's conclusion, the curtain rises to reveal every U.S. president in history. Each commander-in-chief is portrayed by a life-sized Audio-Animatronic (Disney parlance for robot), who can move, talk, and in some cases, sit and stand.
Disney assumed that the transition from Obamabot to Trumpbot would be smooth and seamless. "We've already prepared a bust of President-elect Trump to go into our Hall of the Presidents at Disney World," said Disney CEO Bob Iger in a call with Wall Street analysts last November. But instead, according to a source close to Magic Kingdom management, the Trump communications team has been combative and obstinate, upsetting an established process that three prior presidential administrations found amenable.
"When Disney tried to get this process started earlier this year," said the source in an email to Motherboard, "Trump's people said, 'We'll be writing the speech that the President's Audio-Animatronic figure will be saying.'"
"The Imagineers [the researchers and developers behind Disney's theme park attractions] tried to point out that they're typically involved with this process," continued the source. "That they directly collaborated with Clinton, Bush, and Obama's people when it came to figuring out what the President's Audio-Animatronic figure would say. Trump's people said, 'No. We're writing this speech. You guys have no input on this.'"
So that's been the holdup. Disney has always collaborated with the president on the final speech. Disney, apparently, has finally reached an agreement with the Trump team, though we still don't know yet how much involvement Disney will have in the crafting of the speech (if any).
One solution that was floated internally was to have the current president not talk, and revert the attraction to something resembling its original format, where only Lincoln spoke during the final roll call. This format existed from 1971, when the attraction opened, to the end of 1993, when the talking Clinton robot debuted.
According to our source, this is the solution that many at Disney were hoping for.
"There are those at Imagineering who hope that if they hold off on doing anything with this attraction until the fall, Trump may have done something so egregious that the general public won't have an issue with putting a non-talking version of [Trump] in The Hall of Presidents," said the source.
And now, a simple speech recordingsomething that should have been small, perfunctory, and ceremonialhas snowballed into a political issue.
"They'd particularly like to avoid him tweeting about this situation," added the source. "It would most likely result in a call for conservatives to boycott Walt Disney World, which is the company's biggest fear."
"Disney officials are bending over backwards in an effort not to be seen as disrespectful towards President Trump," said the source.
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