Garner Holt
Garner Holt is the founder and president of Garner Holt Productions, Inc. (GHP) Located in San Bernardino, CA, GHP is the world’s largest designer and fabricator of animatronics, show action systems, special effects, and other creations for theme parks, museums, retail and dining experiences, and other attractions. Inspired by a childhood trip to Disneyland and a lifelong love of Disney theme parks, Garner founded his company when he was only 16 years old. Since 1977, GHP has created nearly 3,000 individual animatronics and hundreds of other items for clients like the Disney Theme Parks, Universal Studios, Chuck E. Cheese Restaurants, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, NASA, Lockheed-Martin, and hundreds of other clients. Find out more about Garner and GHP at www.garnerholt.com
Howdy everyone and welcome to a (I hope) better-late-than-never new edition of This Animatronic Life. As many of you may know, the past year has been a pivotal and exceedingly challenging and productive one in the life of my company,...
Howdy everyone—in the past few weeks, I’ve been hearing a tremendous amount of commentary about the creation of successful portrait figures (that is, animatronic or static characters designed to look like a realistic, lifelike, or specific person). I’ve even...
Howdy everyone and welcome to a rather cheesy edition of This Animatronic Life. I’ve been a little surprised at the vocal outcry from many fronts in the past couple weeks since the announcement from Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurants’ (as...
Howdy everyone—two weeks ago, the themed entertainment industry and Disney fans worldwide lost an important and beloved friend, Marty Sklar. Any fan engaged with the history and culture of Disney theme parks around the world knew his name, and,...
Howdy everyone—July was an exciting month for us at Garner Holt Productions, Inc. (GHP): in the middle of the month, GHP was on hand at the D23 Expo to share some of our work to support MiceChat and the...
Howdy everyone, and welcome aboard the GHP Scenic Railway, a short-runs-on-time-(almost)-all-the-time-fair-weather-route-railroad of a column. I’ve been thinking a lot about railroads and trains lately, and how my company (Garner Holt Productions, Inc.) has been part of a number of...
Howdy everyone—greetings after a much-too-long hiatus from this column! It’s been many months — I confess, over a year! — since I’ve written, during which time my company has been busier than ever before, with attraction openings from the...
Howdy everyone—please pardon this column’s long absence. We’ve been wildly busy here at GHP, with diverse projects all over the world. Time just gets away…
Last week brought the sad news of the passing away of Disney Legend and legendary...
Howdy! To everyone who was in the audience for the “This Animatronic Life” panel at MiceChat’s 10th Anniversary Weekend, thank you! The response we got—my creative director, Bill Butler, project management lead Tracy Cathey, technical director Vic Martin, and...
Howdy—and welcome to part two of the story of Garner Holt Productions, Inc.’s (GHP) work in revitalizing Knott’s Berry Farm’s incredible Calico Mine Ride attraction. In part one, I recounted GHP’s previous involvement with the attraction and the lead-up...
Howdy—and welcome to the latest This Animatronic Life, the “not-as-frequent-as-I’d-like-but-genuinely-tries-to-be-semi-regular” column about the history of animatronics technology, themed entertainment, and Garner Holt Productions, Inc.’s (GHP) place in the story! Since the last update, we’ve been enormously busy here, with...
Greetings, and welcome to a new installment of This Animatronic Life…and you only had to wait a year to read it! As you may be aware, my company, Garner Holt Productions, Inc. (GHP), has been busier than ever in...
Howdy everyone, and welcome to a fun little interlude here at This Animatronic Life. Thanks to everyone for their great comments and questions about my last article, all about GHP’s parade work. Answers will be posted shortly!
Today, the answer...
Howdy everybody, and welcome to the third installment of This Animatronic Life. Since my last column, the dynamic at the Disneyland Resort and Disney California Adventure (DCA) in particular has changed in ways I’m sure no one could have...
Howdy, and welcome to the second installment of “This Animatronic Life.” Before I kick things off today, a word of thanks to all of you who wrote in with such kind and enthusiastic comments for my first article—THANKS! You...