A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis: DINOSAUR and Lucky the Dinosaur

By Dave Shute

Welcome back to Fridays with Jim Korkis! Jim, the dean of Disney historians and author of Jim’s Gems in The easy Guide, writes about Walt Disney World history every Friday on yourfirstvisit.net.

DINOSAUR AT DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM–AND LUCKY TOO

By Jim Korkis

The Animal Kingdom attraction DINOSAUR originally opened as Countdown to Extinction in DinoLand at that park in April 1998, and is one of the few Disney theme park attractions that opened before the movie that inspired it was released.

After the movie DINOSAUR was released in May 2000, the attraction was renamed to the movie title.

(c) Disney

The logo on the building was taken down and replaced with a sign featuring the logo for the film. The original statue at the front of the building, which was a Styracosaurus, was replaced with a statue of Aladar, the Iguanodon hero of the animated feature.

In the attraction, guests board vehicles at the Dino Institute called Time Rovers and are sent to the Cretaceous period that contains several elements from the film including the appearance of a Carnotaurus, Igaunodon and a meteor shower.

Realizing that the newly re-named attraction might attract a younger audience that had seen the movie, at the same time the movement of the vehicles was changed to be less intense and the soundtrack was revised to be less frightening so that the sound of the Carnotaurus seemed further in the distance. (Later, the attraction was amped back up to more of a thrill ride.)

Imagineer Joe Rohde, executive designer of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and other Imagineers involved in the creation of the park, worked closely with the Walt Disney Pictures team that created the animated feature, Dinosaur to create the unique ride experience.

To publicize the film, there were even plans to have an audio-animatronics dinosaur parade walk down Main Street at Disneyland. Those readers who saw the 2012 Travel Channel special on Imagineering saw a huge box drop open and a free standing four-legged audio-animatronics dinosaur take a few steps.

Those experiments in the “Living Character Initiative” evolved into Lucky.

Lucky the dinosaur is the prototype for the next generation of audio-animatronics figures. In fact, the 20-feet long, roughly 12-feet tall, the 450-pound Lucky, who smiles, grunts, sneezes, bats his eyelashes and signs clover-shaped autographs, had very successful test runs at Disney’s California Adventure and later Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

Lucky is patterned after the Gallimimus dinosaur, but Disney designers took some liberties to soften his image so children of all ages would fall in love with him.  He did vocalizations including hiccups.

Lucky was five years in development. Unlike earlier animatronics figures, Lucky is operated by electric motors and sensors that are controlled through a central computer, which regulates everything from Lucky’s ponderous footsteps to the gentle batting of his eyelashes.  The batteries and computer were located in the flower cart that he pulled.

The type of skin generally used for other animatronics characters could not be used for Lucky because it was too heavy so Imagineers developed a lighter, more flexible skin.

Lucky was also meant to publicize the four hour television mini-series Dinotopia (2002) which is why Lucky’s “handler” who walked along his side was attired in garb appropriate for that show.

Lucky’s first appearance was at The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles on August 28, 2003. A few days later he visited Disney California Adventure park.

Since Lucky was only “play testing”, he returned to his home at Walt Disney Imagineering and eventually made appearances in Disney’s Animal Kingdom (May 6, 2005) at the Walt Disney World Resort and Hong Kong Disneyland Resort.

Today, he’s back home at Walt Disney Imagineering and makes occasional appearances for Adventures by Disney guests, the D23 2009 Expo and non-Disney events like the 2008 World Science Festival.

*  *  *  *  *

Thanks, Jim. And come back next Friday for even more from Jim Korkis!

In the meantime, check out his books, including Secret Stories of Walt Disney World: Things You Never You Never Knew, which reprints much material first written for this site, and The Vault of Walt: Volume 4, and his contributions to The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit, all published by Theme Park Press.

Follow yourfirstvisit.net on Facebook or Google+ or Twitter or Pinterest!!

RELATED STUFF

• A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis
• w. Most Recent Stuff