Two of the most famous animatronic manufacturers from the United States have joined forces: Garner Holt Productions has fully acquired Advanced Animations. The latter is now ”A Garner Holt Productions Company”. The announcement was made during the second day of the IAAPA Expo 2025 in Orlando.
Garner Holt, founder of animatronic company Garner Holt Productions (Redlands, CA, U.S.A.) says in a press release: ”This is big news for animatronics. The two most experienced animated figure builders anywhere will now combine talents to help bring projects of all scopes and scales to life. We’re excited to help bring our clients’ vision to reality for guests.” Garner Holt has worked on many dark rides like Symbolica at Efteling, Piraten in Batavia at Europa-Park and various others at the Disney parks.
The Advanced Animations (Stockbridge, VT, U.S.A.) website has been updated with an updated logo, now also including that of Garner Holt, to reflect the change. Bob Crean, president and CEO remarks: ”We think it’s a perfect fit. Our two organizations have been part of the most significant attractions at all the world’s major parks. I can’t picture a better team up.” They were acquired by Garner Holt to increase their capacity, and will be developing and producing supplemental project scopes. Across the two locations, about 100 people will be employed.
Advanced Animations was founded in 1980 by Bob Marquis and Dan Long. One of the first notable projects they did was a series of Looney Tunes Revue animatronic shows for the Gadgets chain of restaurants, owned by Warner Communications. This prompted a buyout by Warner in 1982, under which they produced various shows for parks and restaurants. In 1985, Marquis and Long bought back their company and moved it to where it is still located today.
During the 90s and 2000s, Advanced Animations worked for many big names in the industry like Universal, Disney and Six Flags, creating animatronics for E.T. Adventure, Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts and many more. Outside of theme parks, the company created many figures for museums and travelling exhibitions.
During the IAAPA Expo 2025, the Advanced Animations booth sported the updated logo. They also showed off their interactive robot ”ROI”, which is powered by ChatGPT-4 (AI chatbot technology by Open AI), the idea being that it can for example be used as an information kiosk attendant. Thanks to its advanced text to speech capabilities, the robot can be made to speak in any language and voice style.
