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[The Butlin Boy]

I found this on dlp.info forum:

Hi just a quick note to say that I heard today some exciting news regarding Mickey's Winter Wonderland Show and possibly Animagique.

In development right now are new radio controlled Mickey, Minnie and Donald heads which will be able to move their mouths and blink their eyes on cue via radio signals.

These new costumes, similar to Timon in the Legend Of The Lion King show will enable Mickey, Donald and co to actually mime to the dialogue and bring even more magic to these shows.

The new costumes could be seen as soon as November this year.

[Anthony]

Great news!

I've been wondering why we haven't seen that technique they use with Timon copied to any other characters.  It was such a "breakthrough" with the characters that I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned a bit more - an American resort gets a remote control trash can and the whole world stops, but DLRP takes an awesome step forward and nothing is said at all.

This where someone corrects me and says "but Timon wasn't the first character to do that!".  

[Kristof]

Actually I believe it's not radiocontrolled.  The eyes are connected with a cable to one finger of the actor.  When  he moves his finger up and down, the eye will blink.  (An insider explained me  :wink:  )  You should pay attention to Timon's hand in a video or so.  

Oh and another thing, some Mickey heads already have the possibility to wiggle the nose.  It uses the same system.  I wanted to post this on DLP.info too, but they wouldn't care...

[Kristof]

Oh there you go, Mr. Entertainment has explained the system.  

Timon is in fact a "human puppet", and is NOT controlled by radio signals, but by two handles that are hidden in each "hand" of the costume. Visibility is by the mouth.
Working with the Lion King Cast last summer, I believe it is the right handle that controls the mouth, and the left, the eyes. It may be the other way round though

[Anthony]

I would have never guessed it was the performer controlling the movements themselves, which shows just how well the system works.

I wonder if they'll use it in the new version of Winnie the Pooh?

[Dlrpfan]

They used the wink system in the grand opening of the HCOE at california with Dumbo. It looked so cute!

[Kris]

Yes, Dumbo was like that. It looked very odd though and of course it was not synchronised to a voice. Using a controlled Winnie is so possible as his touring stage show already has characters using the same technology.

Yep, Timon is controlled via the hands.. it's very funny to see CMs rehersing doing the hand movements without the costume on apparently lol. The new system does sound like everything is pre-programmed which makes a lot more sense really. We naturally first thought Timon was like that anyway!