Neil Patrick Harris opens D23 showcase with an ode to Disney Audio-Animatronics

By entgrove · August 16, 2026

Neil Patrick Harris kicked off the Horizons: A Carousel of Progress showcase at D23 with an original song about wanting to become a Disney Parks Audio-Animatronics figure. Tig Notaro, Megan Hilty, Jack McBrayer, Skylar Astin, Darren Criss, Paige O'Hara, and Joe Rohde joined a number packed with Magic Kingdom references, from the Carousel of Progress to the Haunted Mansion.

Neil Patrick Harris opened the Horizons: A Carousel of Progress showcase at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event with an original musical number about a very specific career goal: becoming a Disney Parks Audio-Animatronics figure. The song closed out night two of the event with celebrity cameos, a live band, and a lyric sheet stuffed with attraction references, many of them pointing straight at Magic Kingdom classics.

A song about the ultimate Disney job

The showcase takes its name from two Disney attractions with deep Walt Disney World roots, Horizons and the Carousel of Progress, so the opening number leaned into the theme. Harris spent the song daydreaming about trading show business for a spot inside a Disney attraction, telling the crowd "I bet everybody here has that one special Disney role meant just for them" before launching into the first verse.

The premise gave the writers room for jokes only a parks regular would catch. The narrator wants a role that lasts forever with no bad days, where "admission is perpetually free," the air conditioning never quits, and the same symphonic music plays on loop in his ears. One verse comes from the perspective of "an A-1 model who's been here since 1964," a nod to the Carousel of Progress cast, which debuted at the 1964 New York World's Fair before eventually settling into Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom.

The guest list

Harris did not carry the number alone. Tig Notaro appeared as an animatronic Abraham Lincoln, a reference to Walt Disney's first human Audio-Animatronics figure, and returned later as the Yeti from Expedition Everest, complete with a joke about the figure's famously dead mechanisms ("Tell you what, I just won't move"). Megan Hilty played Madame Leota, Jack McBrayer showed up as a sort-of Caretaker from the Haunted Mansion, and Skylar Astin and Darren Criss took turns as pirates and hitchhiking ghosts.

Paige O'Hara, the Disney Legend who voiced Belle in Beauty and the Beast, appeared as herself, though the running gag had everyone onstage insisting she was an animatronic replica ("No, I'm the real Paige O'Hara. I swear"). Joe Rohde, the Disney Legend and former Imagineer best known for creating Animal Kingdom, made a surprise cameo. A live band called The Phoenicians and an ensemble of dancers backed the whole thing.

How the song is built

The melody is original, but it quotes freely from the Disney songbook. The Sherman Brothers' "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow," the Carousel of Progress theme, threads through the number and closes it out. There are also passages of "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid and "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast, the latter arriving right as O'Hara walked on.

The arc runs decade by decade through Audio-Animatronics history. It opens on the Carousel of Progress and its 1964 World's Fair origins, detours through Pirates of the Caribbean for a full "yo ho yo ho, an animatronic life for me" singalong with rum and gold shout-outs, then moves into the Haunted Mansion for a stretch built on "Grim Grinning Ghosts":

Happy haunts materialize / And begin to vocalize / Grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize

That section also sneaks in a Hatbox Ghost joke ("Like the Hatbox Ghost you appeared too soon") and a Pepper's Ghost effect reference ("While we disappear like Peppers"), plus Hilty's Leota declaring she is "not actually animatronic, I'm projection mapped." From there the lyrics reach the modern era, saluting Walt Disney himself as "Walt himself, trailblazing" and the Imagineers who build the figures.

The animatronic roll call

The back half of the song is a rapid-fire roll call of figures across Disney parks. In order, the lyrics name-check DJ Rex from Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, the dolls of "it's a small world," Carlos from the Enchanted Tiki Room, the Country Bear Jamboree crowd ("a crooner from Yu Nork"), Skippy in suspended animation, Kylo Ren as the advanced generation, the Na'vi Shaman of Songs from Pandora, and figures described as a foxy scientist and a gangster full of moxy. Olaf gets his moment too, with a cast member breaking in to ask "Do you want to build a snowman?"

Magic Kingdom guests get one more inside joke near the finale. The narrator points out that an animatronic never feels pain "or need the Lightning Lane to skip the line." The number even staged a fake breakdown, with an announcer asking the audience to remain seated with seat belts fastened while the opening number resumed, before everything whirred back to life for the "Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" finish.

Why this matters for Magic Kingdom fans

Opening numbers do not change park operations, but this one says something about where Disney's attention sits. The company built a marquee D23 showcase around the Carousel of Progress, an attraction that has run at Magic Kingdom since 1975 and traces to Walt Disney's own 1964 World's Fair work, and filled the song with Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Expedition Everest references. The showcase itself carried the parks announcements of the night; Disney Parks Blog is covering those separately as D23 continues. The full performance is on Disney+ and YouTube for anyone who wants to hunt down every Easter egg.