Imagineering’s new six-foot aquatic robot uses hydrofoil tech to leap and dive through the water like a real sea creature. A fleet of robot dolphins may follow. Here’s the first look at Disney’s plan to bring its lagoons to life.
Disney is building a robot sea creature, and it’s exactly as cool as it sounds. Picture a six-foot manta ray gliding through a park lagoon, leaping and diving on its own, no wires, no track.
That’s a real thing Walt Disney Imagineering is working on right now, and it might one day become the spirit of Gramma Tala from Moana.
What it actually is
Here’s the breakdown of this thing.
Imagineering has built a roughly six-foot robotic manta ray. It swims by itself using hydrofoil technology, the same principle that lets certain boats lift up and glide above the water’s surface. That tech lets the ray move like a real animal, gliding, leaping, and diving through a lagoon.
The plan is to dress it up as Gramma Tala’s stingray spirit form from Moana, the form Moana’s grandmother takes after she passes. If you’ve seen the movie, you know exactly how fitting a graceful, gliding ray is for that character.
This was revealed in a Bloomberg report that got a look inside Imagineering’s research labs in Glendale, California.
Why Disney is doing this
The reasoning behind it is smart, and it solves a real problem.
Disney parks are full of big, beautiful bodies of water. The catch, as Imagineering’s Kyle Laughlin points out, is that those lagoons mostly sit empty during the day. They light up for nighttime shows, then do nothing while the sun’s out.
“We look at this as a canvas where we could really bring new entertainment to life,” Laughlin said. He described it as “this great mix of water IP and underutilized spaces.” In plain terms: Disney has all this water and all these ocean-themed stories, so why not put characters in the water?
Moana and Avatar are the big inspirations, both rich with aquatic worlds Disney can pull from.
It’s part of something bigger
The manta ray isn’t a one-off. It’s the start of a whole fleet.
Disney says it plans to add dolphin-like robots to join the ray down the line, building toward full aquatic shows with multiple robotic performers swimming together. And the ray itself could be repurposed for other franchises, even Star Wars, since the underlying swimming tech doesn’t care what costume it’s wearing.
This also isn’t Disney’s first dip into water robots. Imagineering showed off early aquatic prototypes last year, including one inspired by the plesiosaur-like creatures from Avatar: The Way of Water. The Gramma Tala ray is the most polished version of the idea yet.
When you might actually see it
Now the reality check, because this is the important part.
This is still in development. The version sitting in Imagineering’s lab is a prototype, and Disney hasn’t announced a date, a park, or a specific show for it yet. So this isn’t something you’ll see on your next trip.
What it represents is the direction Disney is heading. The technology clearly works, the creative vision is locked in, and Disney has committed $60 billion over 10 years to upgrading its parks, so the money is there to make things like this real.
For now, picture it: a few years from now, you’re standing at the edge of a Disney lagoon at dusk, and Gramma Tala’s spirit glides past you in the water, leaping and diving like she’s alive. That’s the future Disney is quietly building, one robot sea creature at a time. And the manta ray is just the beginning of what’s swimming our way.
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Hat Tips:
Bloomberg (June 26, 2026), Samantha reporting, which broke the story, verified for the six-foot manta ray, the hydrofoil propulsion, the Gramma Tala/Moana concept, the planned dolphin fleet, and the potential Star Wars repurposing
WDW News Today (June 26, 2026), verified for Kyle Laughlin’s quotes on underutilized water spaces, the Moana and Avatar inspirations, the earlier Avatar: The Way of Water aquatic prototype, and the Glendale R&D context