The creature designer known as Disney & Universal’s ‘secret weapon’
Lee Romaire, an animatronics producer — known in the industry as a “secret weapon” for major theme parks like Disney and Universal — sat down with Attractions Magazine to share about his 25 years creating animatronic characters and effects for theme parks and entertainment.
Country Bears photo by Matt Roseboom
Wolf puppet photo courtesy of Lee Romaire
You are more than familiar with the work of Romaire, an artist whose best work is under NDA. Lee Romaire formed Romaire Studios in 2000. Romaire and his team have won THEA awards for their work on attractions like Secret Life of Pets: Off The Leash at Universal Studios Hollywood, work within Epic Universe, and the BDX droids from Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. You can see more of his theatrical work in Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” which recently released on Netflix.
I had the privilege to dive deeper into the world of creature work and special effects with him as he told me stories of his times with Disney, Universal, and even in Hollywood. Who better to tell you his story than Lee Romaire himself?
“As as kid, I was surrounded by a lot of taxidermy in Louisiana and people would have fish on the wall and deer heads, and that would fascinate me,” Romaire said. Lee’s interest in realism would come in handy, as Romaire Studios worked with Walt Disney Imagineering on the refurbishment of the Abraham Lincoln animatronic in Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln at Disneyland. The 2009 refurbishment was produced by longtime Imagineer Tony Baxter.
Photo courtesy of Lee Romaire
Despite his fascination with realism, that doesn’t stop Lee from taking on challenges in other genres. Going from a project grounded in realism and rooted in history like Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln to a project like Secret Life of Pets: Off The Leash, Lee finds the tonal shift in his projects invigorating.
“It’s actually refreshing to have that change,” he told us. “You know you’re doing a very realistic thing, and then you go to a cartoon where you think it’s going to be easier but it’s actually more difficult because you’re still trying to capture the essence of that character. You learn different lessons and have different challenges.”
Lee’s team was involved in “every single part” of Orlando’s newest theme park, Universal Epic Universe. For Dark Universe — the area of the park themed to Universal Classic Monsters, like Dracula and the Wolfman — Universal recruited Romaire’s team early on in the process for research and development.
His background in realism was especially useful when approaching some of the more lifelike creatures in the park.
“There are certain creatures that we created for Epic Universe that were supposed to be realistic animals, but also have a bit of imagination to them, like wizardry. My kind of background in realism really helped in that: to get the right textures, fur, qualities, all of those kind of things.”
Lee Romaire’s work in theme parks just barely scratches the surface of his portfolio. Lee’s team was brought on to Guillermo del Toro’s on his 2025 film adaption of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”
“When you do something for a theme park, you’re doing something that is designed, when we sign a contract, to last 20 years and have 95% reliability,” Romaire said. “You’re basically engineering a car and everything that entails goes with it. Things that you could do for a movie only have to last for a shot, and then you can come in and fix it for the next shot.”
When talking to an artist who has been part of so many projects in the themed entertainment industry, I had to know what his favorite memory that wasn’t under NDA was. Lee told me how fond he was of a redo of the Country Bear Jamboree back in the early 2010s. Lee and his team worked on re-designing aspects of the bears’ look.
“The bears were very cartoony with the fur and the hair and the face. So I just added a little bit more splotchy coloration on the face, painted the noses a little more realistic. We put pupils and irises in.“
Photo by Matt Roseboom
Lee has a lot in the pipeline, as to be expected from an artist and his studio so favored by the industry leaders in themed entertainment. There isn’t much he’s allowed to say about the future of Romaire Studios, as to be expected, but Lee is excited to give new life to classic attractions in the near future.
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