Walt Disney Imagineering has posted a walkthrough of the Animators’ Office, one of the sets inside The Magic of Disney Animation at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and it turns out the room is furnished with real artifacts rather than themed props. The attraction opens September 14 inside the Walt Disney Studios Lot courtyard.
Here's a sneak peek at Easter Eggs found within the Animator's Office, part of The Magic of Disney Animation
— BlogMickey.com (@Blog_Mickey) September 3, 2026
🔗 https://blogmickey.com/2026/09/easter-eggs-found-in-the-animators-office-at-the-magic-of-disney-animation-in-hollywood-studios/
In the video, posted to Imagineering’s Instagram account, an Imagineer named Ben points out more than a dozen items and explains where each one came from. The centerpiece is a desk that was saved from the original Animation Academy that once operated in the same building, back when guests could learn to draw characters there. It sits roughly where the speeder bike from Return of the Jedi was displayed during the building’s years as Star Wars Launch Bay.
Items From Real Productions
Several of the artifacts trace to specific films. A Moana crew hat and a Hercules production jacket hang in the space, along with a pair of Chicken Little’s glasses and a stamp tied to a Mulan team gift. A mirror on display was found at a flea market by Dan Abraham, who directed Once Upon a Studio, the 2023 short that gives the attraction’s theater its name.
Other pieces come from the culture of the animation building rather than any one movie. A set of ping-pong balls was a gift to the feature animation group in California. A copy of Rabbit Rabbit, a magazine handed out weekly to the animators who once worked in the very building the attraction now occupies, sits on the desk. A book collects caricatures that animators drew of each other and dropped on colleagues’ desks, a long-running tradition at the studio.
The Details Most Guests Will Miss
Two of the smallest items answer questions guests might not think to ask. Small sticker tabs visible throughout the room were used by animators to protect the edges of drawings from tearing on the registration pegs that line up each frame. Red rubber bands scattered through the set held finished scenes together once drawing was done, and, Ben admits, were also shot across the room at coworkers.
A mug on display was gifted to the architects who designed the original building when it opened. A small replica of Disney’s feature animation facility in Burbank sits nearby as a nod to the studio the room is modeled on. Early in development, the team photographed real desks inside that Burbank studio, and those photos shaped the finished look of the set.
How The Attraction Came Together
Disney announced in July 2025 that Animation Courtyard would become the Walt Disney Studios Lot, and the courtyard closed that September. The Lot itself opened May 20 of this year while The Magic of Disney Animation stayed behind walls. The finished attraction includes the Once Upon a Studio Theater, the Off the Page character meet-and-greets and now this office, which Disney has framed as a place to see how animators actually worked rather than a gallery of finished art.
The full list of items Ben identifies runs to 13: the Animation Academy desk, the Burbank building replica, the ping-pong balls, the flea market mirror, the Rabbit Rabbit magazine, the caricature book, the Moana hat, the Hercules jacket, Chicken Little’s glasses, the Mulan stamp, the registration-peg tabs, the architects’ mug and the red rubber bands. Whether more artifacts fill the other rooms of the attraction will become clear when it opens next week. The Imagineering video is embedded at LaughingPlace.
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