Seven years in the making, Walt Disney himself comes to life in a new, groundbreaking attraction at Disneyland. As an animatronic, the founder moves and speaks to the audience, all with a special twinkle in his eye.

As a result, when the audio-animatronic Disney surveys the crowd, it feels like he's really looking at you. When Kirsten Komoroske, executive director of The Walt Disney Family Museum, saw it for the first time, she said she "felt the impulse to smile back at him."

Disneyland quietly pushed back the debut of “Walt Disney — A Magical Life” by two months from May 16 to July 17 as Walt Disney Imagineering continued to work on the Audio-Animatronic figure of the park’s visionary founder. The original date coincided with the kickoff of Disneyland’s 70th anniversary celebration.