Since most individuals are used to only seeing these characters perform, very few expected to be able to simply talk to the character. Most audience members must be encouraged to do so and rarely attempt to of their own volition. Oddly enough, the biggest fear seemed to be the embarassment of talking to a robot that might now talk back. Preserving the illusion of life takes hard work. Keeping the character intact and distracting a guest from the many technologies involved is an active process.
Typical audiences are hesitant to ignore the nuance of robotic characters.
Regarding the way audiences typically interact, we found that most guests are hesitant to ask questions in public. However, in groups of less than three or so people, the questions abounded. We can imagine that many guests may refrain from asking too many questions for fear of being embarassed in return. As a consequence for this ramification, we have been designing structured experiences to complement the open-ended conversations.