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What’s the most realistic animatronic at a Disney park? Ask any group of theme park enthusiasts and you’ll get a few common answers: Hondo Ohnaka from Star Wars: Millennium Falcon – Smugglers Run, the Na’vi Shaman from Na’vi River Journey…

But amongst the stunning centrepieces of modern Disney attractions will be an answer unlike the rest: the Na’vi Avatar from Avatar Flight of Passage.

Found in the queue area of Avatar Flight of Passage, a long hour or so away from the ride itself, the Na’vi Avatar is unique in its presentation. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon to find show-stopping animatronics outside of a main ride experience, but show-stopping is the defining word. Attention-grabbing. Eye-catching. Everything-in-the-room-is-designed-to-make-you-look-at-this.

The Na’vi Avatar isn’t like that.

It’s quiet. Amongst a million other set pieces in one of the most impressive queue areas to date, the animatronic is almost tucked away. There’s no fanfare, no grand reveal. The queue isn’t even shaped to let you look at it for a long time – or to look at it at all if you’ve got a FastPass.

But it’s not unheard of for guests, after waiting hours to board Avatar Flight of Passage, to let others go ahead of them in line just for another moment to watch the animatronic move.

What makes the Na’vi Avatar so captivating? In concept, it doesn’t seem like it should be as magical as it is; it barely moves, has a fixed facial expression, and doesn’t show off the latest feats of animatronic engineering like its Na’vi River Journey counterpart. Suspended in a tank of water, the Na’vi Avatar floats peacefully, occasionally disturbed by a understated stirring. The surrounding water smooths out the motion and washes away any flaw that could risk a step into uncanny valley.

Maybe the lack of fanfare is part of the magic, or maybe it’s the understated movements, or a combination of a thousand design choices that went exactly right, but there is no animatronic more realistic than this. You know the Na’vi Avatar isn’t really living, but when you see it in person, your brain doesn’t care. Even the most cutting-edge animatronics of the last few years fall just short of replicating life, but nothing about the Na’vi Avatar betrays the illusion.

The Mystery

Here’s the thing: nobody knows how the Na’vi Avatar works.

It’s something that theme park enthusiasts have been trying to figure out for years, and Disney’s Imagineers have given no clues. When unveiling a new animatronic, Disney will often publish promotional content about the engineering behind it (such as this promotional video for Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast), but the Na’vi Avatar has received no such publicity.

In its early days, it created quite the stir online, with intrigued fans debating in the comments of YouTube videos and online forums. If you were a themed entertainment enthusiast in Avatar Flight of Passage’s opening year, you might recall that there was even argument over whether the animatronic was really underwater. As the attraction has aged – it reached its 5-year anniversary in May 2021 – two popular theories have emerged: either the Na’vi Avatar is a typical motors-and-actuators animatronic or it’s barely an animatronic at all.

Me? I don’t think there’s a single electronic component or mechanical joint inside the Na’vi Avatar.

I’ve puzzled through a number of theories, and my conclusion is this: inside the animatronic is a system of tubes connected to a main pipe that is not hidden from guests – it’s the one that tethers the Na’vi Avatar to the tank. At varying intervals and pressures, water is pumped through the system of tubes. The resulting changes in pressure cause the animatronic to twitch and jerk, while the water in the tank makes the movements appear less abrupt.

When we think of how realism can be achieved in an animatronic, we think of custom-built actuators and aluminium skeletons and a hundred degrees of freedom and real-time collision detection software – and don’t get me wrong, animatronics that boast such features are breath-taking – but the Na’vi Avatar proves that’s not the only way. If a silicon body in a tank of water with nothing but a simple system of tubes can give higher-budget animatronics a run for their money, there is so much hope for practical effects in the future of theme parks.

If you get the chance to visit Disney’s Animal Kingdom, skip the FastPass line for Avatar Flight of Passage. The full queue is never short, but it’s worth it.