Disney Imagineers Tap Adobe’s Firefly AI to Speed Up Ride Creation

Walt Disney Imagineering is teaming up with Adobe to bring generative AI into the early stages of theme park ride design. Under a partnership announced Tuesday, Imagineers will use Adobe’s Firefly AI to accelerate concept work and create ride visuals faster than traditional methods allow.

Firefly Foundry, Adobe’s enterprise-grade AI platform, lets Disney build custom models trained on the company’s own library of designs, licensed assets, and intellectual property. That means an Imagineer can generate images of Mickey Mouse, Moana, or Elsa that stay true to the characters’ official looks, without starting from scratch.

The tools include a sketch-to-image model that turns hand-drawn concepts into polished 2D art, and a 3D-modeling feature that converts those 2D renderings into prototype-ready digital models. All of this runs inside the Adobe software Imagineers already use.

“At Imagineering, we’ve always believed technology and human creativity can work together responsibly,” said Kyle Laughlin, senior vice president of R&D, Technology and Engineering at Walt Disney Imagineering. “Our work with Adobe lets us bring Disney stories and characters to life in our Parks faster, and with the emotional quality our guests expect.”

Disney didn’t say whether using AI would reduce the number of Imagineering jobs. The news follows Disney’s rollout of an AI-driven animation tool last year that helps generate character movement for cartoons, letting animators focus on creative decisions while the software handles repetitive steps.

Imagineers plan to start using the new AI tools “soon,” the companies said.