Disney Showed Its Hovering Droid Drink Cart at D23

Bloomberg reported in June 2026 on a Walt Disney Imagineering prototype developed with director Jon Favreau: droids that hover above a stationary food truck, treating it like a stage, and respond differently depending on what a guest orders.

The concept surfaced publicly at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event in August 2026, inside the Imagineering: Horizons exhibit. Disney showed the idea rather than the hardware, using Grogu animating food and drinks. Reporting names the cart Hugo's Sweets & Fizz and describes guests ordering soda from a mobile app and collecting it at the cart, with the droids performing based on the order. One described behavior: acting lonely when only one drink is bought.

Disney has made no formal announcement, has not confirmed a location and has not given a date. This is also a different platform from the BDX droids already interacting with guests at Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, which are free-roaming bipedal walkers rather than hovering units. Those were built by Walt Disney Imagineering Research and Development under senior vice president Kyle Laughlin and trained through reinforcement learning, so they train in simulation before ever taking a real step. Live park appearances still involve a puppeteer working behind the scenes.