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Turtle Talk with Crush

January 8, 2013

Posted by John Saye under EPCOT

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So how does Disney do Character time with characters who could never walk up to you at a breakfast buffet, and would be amazingly difficult to otherwise build? They generate animations of them on the fly and control them in real time with frankly pretty amazing technology. There area couple of these kinds of things now, with the Monster’s Inc. laugh floor and I’m sure we’ll see more in the years to come. I’m surprised there isn’t one of these with Mickey and the gang yet, but that’s just me. I bet there will be someday soon. Turtle Talk is plain awesome. Make sure you visit it. Go ride Nemo, hang out in the aquarium there looking at stuff, get your picture taken with Bruce the shark there, and then get in the line that starts to gather outside of Turtle Talk with Crush.

At this attraction, in EPCOT, the character Crush, a surfer dude Turtle, from the Disney/Pixar film Finding Nemo glides out in his full three dimensionally rendered body and float around in real time. Cameras are hooked up so that the operators of Crush can see the audience, and, before you know it, he’s out there, making eye contact (even though he’s rendered on a screen before you) and taking questions from the audience. “How fast can you swim?”, “What’s it like to live in the ocean?” and kids learn valuable vocabulary like “Dude” and “Woah,” useful stuff like that they can use for the rest of their lives.

Be careful though, and be prepared to talk to the Turtle on the screen. He has a tendency to put people (like my sister) on the spot and call them out by the color of their shell. (Shirt) You may get more than you bargained for, but it’ll be worth it.

John Saye (123 Posts)

Somehow I find myself the person people keep coming to and asking of before they go on a trip to Disney World. I'm the guy they seek out when they are trying to decide between hotels, or when they want to talk about their favorite attraction. I also consider myself a writer of fiction, and a tribal fireside storyteller.