Looking To Light Patrons on Fire, Robot Bunsen and Beaker Prowl Disneyworld

This is just terribly neat:

Over the past two months, numerous Mouse House insiders have written to me -- wanting to share details of their bizarre encounters with this next phase of Disney's "Living Character Initiative" program. These folks were just standing around at the party, minding their own business. Only to have this rocket ship-shaped craft roll up right next to them. And the next thing they knew, these remote controlled AA versions of Bunsen & Beaker would begin interacting with them.

Given Beaker's limited vocabulary (I.E. He only speaks in "Meeps"), Dr. Bunsen Honeydew had to do most of the talking. And the routine that he'd do would typically start off with the good doctor first complimenting the party guest on their outfit ("That's a lovely ensemble you wearing. It wouldn't -- by chance -- be flame retardant, would it?"), then try & cajole them into taking part in a field experiment for Muppet Labs.

On one hand, there's problems with the entire concept of an autonomous robot approach to staffing amusement parks, as nightmarishly elaborated on in The Simpsons and Westworld. But I think we can all agree that the sooner we get promiscuous teenagers out of the gigantic anthropomorphical animal costumes at Disneyworld, the better, although doubtlessly the furries would disagree.

Muppet Mobile Lab gets ready to roll through California Adventure [Jim Hill] (via Boing Boing)