High-Tech Spaceship May Replace Empty Carrousel at Disneyland : TOURISM/LEISURE TIME

When Disneyland’s America Sings attraction started looking a bit, ah, frayed around the edges, the Anaheim amusement park realized it needed something new.

America Sings, you’ll recall, was the rotating carrousel filled with a menagerie of “Audio-Animatronics”--those computerized rabbits, crocodiles and geese that sang everything from “De Camptown Races” to “Hound Dog.” The 15-year-old Tomorrowland attraction closed last year when most of its critters scooted over to Splash Mountain, the park’s new flume ride that is scheduled to open this summer.

That left Disneyland with an empty carrousel and lots of space for a new show.

If Walt Disney Imagineering--Disney’s park design and engineering division--has its way, America Sings will be converted into a giant spaceship, said Tony W. Baxter, executive creative director for Imagineering.

In an interview this month, Baxter said that plans are not final yet. But Imagineering envisions a spaceship populated by the company’s newest generation of high-tech robots.

The big difference with the new generation of computerized characters is that they can move more quickly, with more fluid movements, Baxter said.

So while the pirates in Pirates of the Caribbean, for example, can hoist their steins and swagger in smooth movements, they cannot, say, run their fingers through their hair. “The hand or hair would break because the figures don’t have sensitivity,” Baxter explained. “But the new ones are literally alive. Everything you can do, they can do.”

The new, more lifelike A.A.s, to use Disney jargon, are in the Great Movie Ride at Disney-MGM Studios, which opened this month in Florida.

Meanwhile, Imagineering is also looking into adding a new land to the Magic Kingdom. “It’s a real exciting area we’ve just begun to explore,” Baxter said.

He declined to discuss specific plans for what would be land No. 8, or exactly where it would be in the theme park, which has long been hard-pressed for space.