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When I performed at Disney, they were super strict about not taking any images of ‘behind the scenes’ Disney, e.g. characters with their costume half off, tinker bell smoking, etc.

It’s curious that they would publish something like this without glossing over the silence-of-the-lambs imagery to make it fit more with the Disney iconography.

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Well there’s an associated journal publication about the technology - Disney Research is hardly keeping this under wraps, and they publish many of their findings and technologies. And in general this is a demo like we might see with Marvel/Lucasfilm demonstrating special effects, etc, and not really a spoiler about a Disney World attraction.

And from a Corporate Disney perspective this is good PR, particularly for the labor market (I am not sure many engineers think of Disney as a major tech employer).

These sorts of things are routinely published in journals, no? I’ve seen Disney animatronic stuff show up in SIGGRAPH.

Yes, not that long ago being a Disney Imagineer was like landing a job at FAANG for your resume. A decade of hollowing out their engineering department ended that but it's still a very respectable research house for robotics, logistics, UI/UX, and a few other topics.

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