Walt Disney's Granddaughter Rips Disneyland's 'Dehumanizing' Way Of Honoring Her Grandpa

Joanna Miller, Walt Disney’s granddaughter, has doubled down on her criticism of Disneyland as it plans to debut an audio-animatronic version of her grandfather at a new exhibit next month.

Miller has previously posted on Facebook, accusing the California theme park of “dehumanizing him” via a “robotic grampa,” a move she described as making “no sense” and said would come off as “empty of a soul or essence of the man.”

Miller told the Los Angeles Times that while its tough for her to knock the company so dear to her family, it’s important that she speak out.

“He’s ours,” Miller said. “We’re his family.”

Miller revealed that she met with Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger and the Imagineering team behind its theme parks after her Facebook criticism last year.

While Iger was “kind” and let her do her “spiel,” she said she wasn’t convinced by his vow to protect her grandfather’s legacy through the robotic portrayal.

“They’re different people. He’s a businessman, grampa was an artist,” she said.

She revealed that she started “crying” at the sight of the animatronic when she first saw it.

“It didn’t look like him, to me,” she said.

Her comments on the exhibit notably conflict with those from other grandchildren and descendants of Disney, including Chris Miller, Disney’s grandson and director of the Walt Disney Family Museum, and Tamara Miller, Disney’s great-granddaughter and vice president of the museum board, who said they were consulted and expressed confidence in the project.

American film producer and studio executive Walt Disney stands with a group of children and adults as they wait for a parade on Main Street USA at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, in 1962.

tom nebbia/Corbis via Getty Images

First announced last year, the Walt Disney – A Magical Life attraction looks to pay tribute to the iconic animator and entrepreneur via a 17-minute presentation featuring a robot in his likeness to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Disneyland’s opening in 1955.

The attraction is set to replace Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln — an endeavor that Disney championed in his lifetime and features an animatronic version of President Abraham Lincoln.

After the first year of the new robot’s operation, the company said, the Lincoln exhibit will return and share the theater with the Walt Disney attraction on a rotating basis.

The Lincoln robot, which was rolled out at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, grew in popularity and found a home at Disneyland the next year.

Disney, in a throwback clip on the Lincoln attraction, stressed that his company exhaustively researched Lincoln to make a “faithful likeness of this honored man” that’s “so lifelike, you might find it hard to believe.”

About a year after Disneyland's Walt Disney exhibit debuts, the park plans to rotate it with its Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln attraction (above).

Don Kelsen/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Joanna Miller has argued her grandfather did not want to be immortalized as a robot, telling the Times that her late mother, Diane Disney Miller, once dismissed featuring such an animatronic at San Francisco’s Walt Disney Family Museum.

“[She] wanted to show him as a real human,” Miller said.

Disneyland did not immediately respond to a HuffPost request for comment.