Are you ready for sentient Disney robots?

I was en route to meet Groot.

Not an imitation Groot conjured with video or those clunky virtual reality goggles. The Walt Disney Company’s secretive research and development division, Imagineering, had promised a walking, talking, emoting Groot, as if the arboreal Avengers character had jumped off the screen and was living among us.

But first I had to find him. GPS had guided me to a warehouse on a dead-end street in Glendale, a Los Angeles suburb. The place seemed deserted. As soon as I parked, however, a man warily appeared from behind a jacaranda tree. Yes, I had an appointment. No, I was not hiding any recording devices. He made a phone call, and I was escorted into the warehouse.

In the back near a black curtain a little wrinkled hand waved hello. It was Groot.

He was about three feet tall and ambled toward me with wide eyes, as if he had discovered a mysterious new life form. He looked me up and down and introduced himself. When I remained silent, his demeanor changed. His shoulders slumped, and he seemed to look at me with puppy dog eyes. “Don’t be sad,” I blurted out. He grinned and broke into a little dance before balancing on one foot with outstretched arms. 

Robots have been part of Disney’s special theme park sauce since the 1960s, when Walt Disney introduced “audio-animatronics,” his word for mechanical figures with choreographed movements. There were endlessly harmonizing Small World dolls, marauding Caribbean pirates (“yo-ho!”), Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address. The technology was a runaway hit, mesmerising generations of children and helping to turn Disneyland in California and Walt Disney World in Florida into cultural touchstones and colossal businesses.

Disney knows it has to devise a new generation of spectacular attractions rooted in technology if it wants to continue to vacuum up family vacation dollars.

There are animatronics at Disney World that have been doing the same herky-jerky thing on loop since Richard Nixon was president. In the meantime, the world’s children have become technophiles, raised on apps (three million in the Google store), the Roblox online gaming universe and augmented reality Snapchat filters. How are the rudimentary animatronic birds in Disneyland’s Enchanted Tiki Room supposed to compete? They dazzled in 1963. Today, some people fall asleep.

“We think a lot about relevancy,” Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, said in April during a virtual event to promote the opening of an interactive Spider-Man ride and immersive “land” dedicated to Marvel’s Avengers.