Disney gathers 60 characters for a picture day to open The Magic of Disney Animation

By entgrove · September 15, 2026 · Updated September 29, 2026

Disney Parks marked the September 14 opening of The Magic of Disney Animation at Disney's Hollywood Studios with a three-minute video of 60 characters assembling for one group photo, a live recreation of the short film Once Upon a Studio. Disney's release calls it a rare picture day and publishes its own photograph of the crowd, still without naming anyone in it. The same release sets out what the 60 turned out to open: an Alice in Wonderland playground built on Mary Blair's concept art, six character meets staged in the studio's departments, nine drawing lessons hosted by an Audio-Animatronics Olaf, and a theater for the short itself. Disney Parks followed on September 18 with a 15 second clip of Chip and Dale cut from the same shoot. A 30 second vertical clip titled "A most magical family photo" followed on September 20, still without a roster. An eight second cut titled "Make it pink! Make it blue!" followed on September 22, the fourth in nine days.

Disney Parks opened The Magic of Disney Animation on September 14 with a photo call. A video posted to the Disney Parks YouTube channel that morning shows 60 characters assembling at Disney's Hollywood Studios for a single group picture, staged as a live version of the ending of the short film Once Upon a Studio. Disney's press release for the opening describes the gathering as "a rare picture day," and it lists what the 60 turned out to open: an indoor Alice in Wonderland playground, six character meets, an Audio-Animatronics Olaf who teaches drawing, and a theater for the short itself.

How the three minutes play out

The video has no narration. It runs on music and a handful of character lines, and the audio follows the same beats as the short it recreates. Goofy opens it, humming to himself before announcing, "Here comes some magic. Ah-hyuck!" About fifteen seconds in, a voice calls the crowd to order: "All right, y'all. It's picture time."

The assembly builds from there. Near the half-minute mark a character says, "This is wonderful, y'all. I am so excited. Come on. That means you," and someone shouts "Cinderella!" The music turns playful, then swells into a full orchestral passage.

The villains get their own cue. Just past the one-minute mark the score turns menacing and a voice says, "My goodness. Please, would you move?!" The celebratory music comes back and holds for a stretch, then cuts out on a record scratch before returning for the finish.

The ending is a Goofy bit. Another character offers, "Goofy, why don't you let me take care of that for you?" Goofy answers, "Gawrsh, thanks. Let's go get ready." A countdown follows, "Three, two, one," and the video closes on the click of a camera shutter.

Who Disney has actually named

Disney's caption promises "iconic Disney characters, rare character appearances, and fan favorites," but it does not name a single one, and Disney has not published a roster of the 60. What Disney has put on the record is narrower. The audio names Goofy and Cinderella. The tags Disney attached to the upload list Mulan, Stitch, Baymax, Chip and Dale, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck and Goofy, along with the phrase "disney villains." Until Disney publishes a roster, this article names only the characters Disney itself has identified.

That photograph is the one addition Disney made to the record on opening day, and it still carries no names: the caption counts the characters and stops there. For identifying faces it beats the caption, because it shows the crowd head on rather than through the video's moving camera.

Most of the names Disney did tag are the everyday character lineup inside the attraction. Disney's release lists the meets in "Off the Page!" by studio department, and its wording is that these are "some of the characters guests may meet," so the list describes the lineup rather than promising any of them on a given day:

• Mulan in Story
• Rapunzel in Layout
• Chip 'n Dale in Hand-Drawn Animation
• Donald and Daisy in Computer Animation
• Goofy in Lighting
• Stitch in Effects

The short it recreates

Once Upon a Studio is the 2023 short in which characters from a century of Walt Disney Animation Studios films step out of their artwork after hours and assemble on the Burbank lot for a group photo. The Magic of Disney Animation is built around it. The press release calls the whole collection of experiences "inspired by" the film, and one of its directors, Dan Abraham, worked with Walt Disney Imagineering's Daniel Handke on the attraction. Portraits come to life throughout the building, the same trick the short runs on. The short itself screens in the Once Upon a Studio Theater inside the building, with new animation Disney made for the space and characters that appear in the artwork along the theater walls.

The opening-day gathering, then, is the short's final scene restaged at Disney's Hollywood Studios with the parks' walkaround characters, for an attraction housed in a building modeled on the same Roy E. Disney Animation Building.

What the 60 characters turned out to open

GenieGrove covered the attraction before opening day, including Disney's full walkthrough video. The opening-day release is the shortest official account of what is inside: four named experiences, an art gallery, and "and more." Disney says all 65 Walt Disney Animation Studios features are represented somewhere in the building, including artwork from Hexed, the studio's own 2026 feature, which the count already includes. The name has been used here before. The original Magic of Disney Animation ran from the park's 1989 opening until 2015, and the Florida animation studio whose artists worked in the building closed in 2004.

Drawn to Wonderland

Drawn to Wonderland is the indoor playground, built for the youngest guests from the concept art Disney Legend Mary Blair painted for Alice in Wonderland. It is laid out around scenes from the film: the Mad Tea Party, the Mad Hatter's house, the Queen of Hearts' rose garden and the Cheshire Cat's Tulgey Wood. Disney says it chose Alice in Wonderland because a story about curiosity suits a space built for climbing and wandering, and it pitches the room as somewhere families can sit down and recharge without leaving the story.

Blair's colors will look familiar to regulars. Disney's own page for "it's a small world" at Magic Kingdom credits her geometric shapes and child-like style for the ride's look, and D23's Disney Legends entry for her lists the murals in the Grand Canyon Concourse at Disney's Contemporary Resort.

Olaf Draws!

Olaf Draws! is the piece Disney calls a brand-new attraction, open to guests of all ages. Olaf is an all-new Audio-Animatronics figure, seated at an animator's desk in a setting based on his scene in Once Upon a Studio, where he discovers drawing. He plays class companion while Disney Animation artists teach character drawing through recorded tips, techniques and stories from inside the studio. Josh Gad, who voices Olaf and is a Disney Legend, recorded original dialogue for it.

"I'm so thrilled that a whole new generation of kids can dream of becoming animators one day and can actually begin their journey right there on the studio lot," Gad said.

Nine lessons were announced, each taught by a Disney Animation artist, and the credits Disney lists beside each name are a fair guide to who is teaching what. Eric Goldberg, who takes the Genie class, is credited on Aladdin.

The theater and the gallery that moves

The Once Upon a Studio Theater is a room dedicated to more than a century of Disney Animation, and the short that plays there is not quite the version released in 2023: Disney Animation made new animation for the space, and effects run alongside the film while characters turn up in the artwork on the walls. Next to it is an art gallery of Disney Animation character artwork that looks like an ordinary exhibit until the pictures start moving, again with animation created only for this room.

Chip and Dale get their own clip

Disney Parks came back to the footage on September 18 with a second, much shorter upload. It runs 15 seconds, it is titled "Chip 'N' Dale scurry around The Magic of Disney Animation," and it shows the two chipmunks moving through the new building. There is no narration, and Disney attached a caption that reuses the opening-day film's description with its sentences reordered, down to the invitation to "celebrate the grand opening with an unforgettable gathering of 60 Disney Parks characters."

Two things follow from that. The clip is a cut from the opening-day shoot rather than a new event, which is why its caption still describes a gathering the 15 seconds never show. And the pair Disney chose to lead with are the pair with a permanent post inside: Chip 'n Dale hold the Hand-Drawn Animation stop in "Off the Page!," so a guest who walks in tomorrow can still find them in the building, just not the crowd of 60 the clip was cut from. This one names none of the "rare character appearances" the description keeps promising, and it was not the last cut.

A 30 second family photo, posted September 20

The third upload came on September 20 at 10 a.m. Eastern: a 30 second vertical clip titled "A most magical family photo," with the hashtags #HollywoodStudios and #DisneyCharacters. Its caption is, character for character, the one on the Chip and Dale clip. It carries no caption track and, unlike the opening-day film, no tags, so it adds no names to the record.

Three uploads in six days under one caption is Disney cutting one event into pieces for its feeds, not a schedule, and the cutting did not stop there. Disney Parks Blog has still not written about the gathering; its two most recent Hollywood Studios posts are the September 9 preview of the attraction and a September 16 post about Lilypad's new music for Alien Swirling Saucers. The park's entertainment listing for September 20 carries Off the Page!, Olaf Draws! and the Once Upon a Studio Theater as now open and has no entry for a group of 60.

An eight second cut, posted September 22

The fourth upload came on September 22 at 10 a.m. Eastern, the same slot the September 20 clip went up in. It runs eight seconds, it is vertical, it carries the hashtag #HollywoodStudios, and its title is the line Flora and Merryweather trade over Aurora's dress in Sleeping Beauty: "Make it pink! Make it blue!" The caption underneath is the September 18 and September 20 one again, a single trailing space apart, so this cut also arrives describing a gathering of 60 that eight seconds cannot hold. Disney attached no tags and no caption track to it, and named nobody.

Four cuts in nine days, all under one caption, and the attraction they were made to promote has been open through every one of them. Disney's listings on September 22 carried a Now Open tag on the building and on each of Olaf Draws!, Off the Page! and the Once Upon a Studio Theater, with the building itself filed under Animation Courtyard. Off the Page! posts no times of its own and Drawn to Wonderland has no listing at all, which is what a walk-through meet and a playground look like on Disney's site next to something that runs on a clock.

One moment, or a new opening ritual?

Disney's own wording is the only guidance here. The description calls it "one magical moment" staged for the grand opening, and neither the video nor the September 14 press release announces a recurring version. The reliable character presence at The Magic of Disney Animation is the "Off the Page!" lineup above, which Disney lists as part of the attraction itself.

Why this matters for character hunters

Sixty characters in one frame is not something Walt Disney World does often, and the video and Disney's single press photo are the official record of it. Anyone trying to identify a rarely seen face should work from the footage and the photo rather than from the captions, which name nobody. For a normal visit, plan around the six "Off the Page!" meets, which are the part of this that repeats.

The practical half has filled in a little since opening day. Disney's attraction page listed operating hours of 8:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. when checked on September 19, 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on September 20 and the same window again on September 22, so the hours move with the park day, and there is still nothing on Lightning Lane and no schedule for the character meets. Olaf Draws! keeps a listing of its own and a shorter day with it, closing at 8:30 p.m. on September 22 while the rest of the building ran to 9:00 p.m. Check Hollywood Studios in the My Disney Experience app on the day rather than building a morning around any of it. Families with little ones have the most reason to go early, since Drawn to Wonderland is built for them and Olaf Draws! is open to every age. Attraction details are on the official page at disneyworld.disney.go.com.