Behind the Scenes of Disneyland’s New 3D-Printed Prop Canoe on the Jungle Cruise
Our slow-moving queue wraps around a two-story wooden boathouse filled with paraphernalia from explorations across distant lands. At the front of the line, a Disney actor dressed in khaki helps us onto a quaint little boat for a ride through the jungle.
This is Disneyland’s famous Jungle Cruise, filled with animatronic animals and painful puns from your captain, as well as old-world sets depicting scenes straight out of the Amazon, the Congo, the Mekong and the Nile. It’s a ride that Walt Disney himself helped develop, but something new is coming that separates it from its 1950s origins: a 3D printed prop.
You may have seen small scale 3D printing made by amateurs at home. But that’s child’s play compared to what 3D printing shops can do on an industrial scale.
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Haddy, a Florida-based 3D printing company, claims it can build worlds. More specifically, Jay Rogers, co-founder and CEO, tells me that the company is installing its first boat in a Disney park.
“It’s on the Jungle Cruise ride,” he said during Disney Demo Day at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, late last year.
3D printing burst onto the scene in the mid-2010s. These printers take small pellets or strands of polymer or liquid resin and turn them into fully fleshed-out designs, like the purple octopus and Prada handbag that my 3-year-old daughter received from her Uncle Zach for her recent birthday. Using a digital file, you can send a project to the printer to make, whether it’s a little octopus or an armchair.
The illuminated shape of Mickey hanging from the tree at Walt Disney Studios was 3D printed by Haddy.
You can buy small 3D printerspriced between $180 and $400, for home projects, while larger operations require enormous machines that produce items as large as coffee counters and even houses.
And yes, boats.
Haddy’s Jungle Cruise boat is a propeller-driven canoe that has now been placed on the ride at Disneyland, part of the scenic journey alongside these faux animals on the banks of the Amazon-Congo-Nile-Mekong River.
Walt Disney Imagineering worked closely with the Haddy team to adapt the boat plans, ensuring that it captured the spirit of the existing props while utilizing 3D printing technology.
“We had the old boat and we did a 3D scan to get its dimensions,” Chris Hill, associate R&D imagineer for Disney, said in January when Disneyland installed the canoe right in front of the loading dock. “For the creative part, we had a photo of the boat from the 1960s, and so using the dimensions from the 3D scan, I modeled the new boat, which is what we used to 3D print the boat.”
The Imagineers 3D scanned their old canoe and used a reference photo of the boat from the 1960s to create a new one that could be 3D printed.
Yes, 3D printed boats can float
Founded in 2022, Haddy creates home decorations like planters and furniture like outdoor benches, chairs and tables. Its collaboration with Disney’s Imagineers came about after being selected as one of four startups to receive funding, platform and mentorship through the Disney Accelerator 2025 program.
Rogers says Haddy can quickly turn imagination into reality, saving a lot of time (and probably money – the companies wouldn’t provide details). This is in addition to the ability to recycle any 3D printed material for new objects, because once a prop reaches the end of its lifespan, it can be melted down and 3D printed again to create something new.
A 20-foot boat made by a traditional boat builder might take a thousand man hours, but that’s not the case for the Jungle Cruise canoe propeller, Rogers says. “It’s not only quicker to make, it’s also quicker to develop.”
He describes the traditional process, which takes place over weeks and months: design the boat, create and secure a master mold, repeat the mold-making process an average of 30 times per boat and then make the parts that go on the boat.
For comparison, it would take Haddy 70 robot hours to manufacture. Both processes use a digital file as a starting point. The difference is that Haddy can simply make changes to the file and reprint the boat if there is a problem with the final product – no more making molds.
The new 3D printed propeller canoe at Disneyland.
Nick Blackburn, director of technical business operations at Disney, says his team went to a series of conventions and conferences to find the right company to partner with in the 3D printing space.
“This project is currently the first one we are working on to show we can use advanced manufacturing, robotic manufacturing and new materials to bring parks to life faster and more efficiently,” Blackburn said.
However, how much fantasy remains? Can a 3D printed boat evoke the same feelings of nostalgia and fantasy as the ride’s existing sets?
At Disney’s Demo Day, I see what appears to be a wrought iron fence leaning against a tree, and Rogers says it was 3D printed. Perhaps guests won’t even notice if a boat is made of polymer instead of fiberglass-reinforced plastic and printed by a robot.
Even the lights in the Main Theater at Walt Disney Studios, where I had just watched a video showcasing various new technologies used by Disney-backed startupswere made by Haddy for this event. (I had assumed that the intricate, bright blue lights were a holdover from the days when Frozen 2 was being workshopped at the theater.)
Haddy’s 3D printed gate looks like wrought iron.
Maybe 3D printed objects have their own fantasy? James Bricknell, CNET editor-in-chief and 3D printing expert, says yes. The canoe would not only have all the fantasy an Imagineer could conjure up, but would also be made more quickly and much less expensively – and would certainly float.
“It’s a brilliant idea,” Bricknell says. “You can make them look whatever you want, just like normal boats, but instead of injection molding you can make each part individually at a much lower cost.”
Disney Imagineers We are continually looking for new technologies to integrate into the parks and on Disney cruise ships.
Walt Disney Imagineering is “the tip of the spear when it comes to emerging technologies” like AI, robotics and drones, according to Michael Hundgen, creative executive producer of the Walt Disney Imagineering portfolio.
With Haddy, the Imagineers explore creating sets for Disney theme park attractions. Beyond Jungle Cruise, these products could also include closet doors from Monstropolis – for the new ride Monsters, Inc. under construction at Walt Disney World – and rock work for various terrains, such as Star Wars: The Edge of the Galaxy. There could even be the creation of furniture for thousands of hotel rooms at the Orlando property.
“We don’t just create technology for technology’s sake; we do it to help our creative teams bring the company’s stories to life,” says Hundgen.
So now, out with the fiberglass reinforced plastic and in with the polymer pellets. We’ll have to see if guests can really tell the difference between the old props and the new ones.
