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Imagineer Joe Rohde has been a very busy guy; we caught up with him when he had just returned from China, was about to fly to Tibet, and in between he's been frantically working on the finishing touches to the biggest thing to hit Disney's Animal Kingdom since the addition of the Asia land back in 1999. It's a towering achievement guaranteed to leave Guests cold - yet breathless with excitement. It's Expedition Everest, Florida's newest mountain.
Joe gave us an inside peek at what to expect next spring, when the first brave Guests set out on an expedition into the heart of the Himalayas, and embark on a collision course with the legendary yeti itself.
The first thing Guests should know is that Expedition Everest is going to be one wild ride. "Expedition Everest is definitely a thrill ride. It does have good speeds and forces, comparable to Rock �n' Roller Coaster," Joe explains.
Detailed stories and immersive experiences are a hallmark of Disney theme park attractions, and Expedition Everest will not disappoint. Joe gave us the full scoop.
"The premise is that we, the Guests, are Expedition Everest. We've arrived on this particular day in this little Tibetan town in the foothills of the Himalayas. And the little trekking company that we've engaged is going to get us on this train, which they've just refurbished. It used to be the train that served the tea plantations in the Himalayan foothills - they've refurbished it to get us to Everest really, really fast. But to do that, we have to go through the realm of the yeti. And traditional Tibetan thought holds the yeti to be the protector of the hidden and forbidden reaches of the Himalayas. So the yeti is doing his job as defender of the mountains when we encounter him on our train journey, attempting to get to Everest. And it ends up being that we now have to escape from the wrath of the yeti and make our way back to town in this high-speed escape adventure."
The thrills will be there in plenty, but Joe is proudest of the incredible detail that is going into creating the world of Expedition Everest for Guests to explore. "It feels like you are in the Himalayas," he promises. And having just returned from those peaks himself, Joe should know. Many of the painstaking details of Nepalese and Tibetan culture that appear in the attraction's environment are modeled on what he and his colleagues have encountered on the Mission Himalayas expeditions, as well as years of other research.
"This region we were just in has a very powerful living oral tradition of the yeti as the protector of the forest. So we adopted a lot of that attitude to put our ride together," says Joe. "And many of the details we saw there can be seen all across the Himalayas, so we picked them up from other places. There's some architectural color, some props, and there's a little area in the standby queue where we're going to talk about the actual expedition - what we discovered, where we went, that kind of thing."
Expedition Everest will be unique among Disney Park attractions in that Guests choosing the Fast Pass or standby queues will pass through very different areas and have different experiences.
"The standby queue for this ride is a spectacular environment. It takes you around a pagoda temple that was actually designed and produced for us by Nepalese wood carvers. It's completely covered with various images of the yeti, and I believe it's the only structure of its kind in North America," Joe explains. "It's very impressive, and there's scene after scene that takes you through the experience as if you were booking a trip, then traveling through this little town on your way to the train in the Himalayas.
"The Fast Pass people are treated a little differently, even within the story, in that they're assumed to have already done most of that, so they're on a �fast track.' They get their permits stamped in the permit office, and then they kind of blow through a little mountaineering equipment place, and then they're on the train. So depending on which line you choose, you're enveloped in the story in different ways."
In keeping with the best Imagineering tradition, Joe won't divulge whether there are any Hidden Mickeys along the way - but he did give us a few tips for details to watch out for. "There are many many portrayals of the yeti spread through this village, reflecting this idea of the yeti as a kind of protector of the environment. Just looking for those alone, you could spend an hour."
Although Expedition Everest looks tantalizingly complete to passersby, there's plenty to finish before it opens to Guests. "We're installing props in the buildings, doing little finishing paint touches in the buildings. We're installing the yeti into the great cavern where the yeti lives, and we're running the ride around the track and testing it to see how it works and testing the special effects to see how they work," Joe says.
So far the only ones lucky enough to ride Expedition Everest are specially shaped water buckets designed to simulate the attraction's effects on people of different sizes - "sort of like a jerry can with a waist," as Joe describes them. "You seatbelt them in and fill them with water to represent the weight of different humans, and then they get to ride over and over and over. I'm sure they're very happy, thrilled little water buckets!"
Come spring, Guests will get a chance to encounter the yeti for themselves - and see if "happy" and "thrilled" are the order of the day.
Imagineer Joe Rohde has been a very busy guy; we caught up with him when he had just returned from China, was about to fly to Tibet, and in between he's been frantically working on the finishing touches to the biggest thing to hit Disney's Animal Kingdom since the addition of the Asia land back in 1999. It's a towering achievement guaranteed to leave Guests cold - yet breathless with excitement. It's Expedition Everest, Florida's newest mountain.
Joe gave us an inside peek at what to expect next spring, when the first brave Guests set out on an expedition into the heart of the Himalayas, and embark on a collision course with the legendary yeti itself.
The first thing Guests should know is that Expedition Everest is going to be one wild ride. "Expedition Everest is definitely a thrill ride. It does have good speeds and forces, comparable to Rock �n' Roller Coaster," Joe explains.
Detailed stories and immersive experiences are a hallmark of Disney theme park attractions, and Expedition Everest will not disappoint. Joe gave us the full scoop.
"The premise is that we, the Guests, are Expedition Everest. We've arrived on this particular day in this little Tibetan town in the foothills of the Himalayas. And the little trekking company that we've engaged is going to get us on this train, which they've just refurbished. It used to be the train that served the tea plantations in the Himalayan foothills - they've refurbished it to get us to Everest really, really fast. But to do that, we have to go through the realm of the yeti. And traditional Tibetan thought holds the yeti to be the protector of the hidden and forbidden reaches of the Himalayas. So the yeti is doing his job as defender of the mountains when we encounter him on our train journey, attempting to get to Everest. And it ends up being that we now have to escape from the wrath of the yeti and make our way back to town in this high-speed escape adventure."
The thrills will be there in plenty, but Joe is proudest of the incredible detail that is going into creating the world of Expedition Everest for Guests to explore. "It feels like you are in the Himalayas," he promises. And having just returned from those peaks himself, Joe should know. Many of the painstaking details of Nepalese and Tibetan culture that appear in the attraction's environment are modeled on what he and his colleagues have encountered on the Mission Himalayas expeditions, as well as years of other research.
"This region we were just in has a very powerful living oral tradition of the yeti as the protector of the forest. So we adopted a lot of that attitude to put our ride together," says Joe. "And many of the details we saw there can be seen all across the Himalayas, so we picked them up from other places. There's some architectural color, some props, and there's a little area in the standby queue where we're going to talk about the actual expedition - what we discovered, where we went, that kind of thing."
Expedition Everest will be unique among Disney Park attractions in that Guests choosing the Fast Pass or standby queues will pass through very different areas and have different experiences.
"The standby queue for this ride is a spectacular environment. It takes you around a pagoda temple that was actually designed and produced for us by Nepalese wood carvers. It's completely covered with various images of the yeti, and I believe it's the only structure of its kind in North America," Joe explains. "It's very impressive, and there's scene after scene that takes you through the experience as if you were booking a trip, then traveling through this little town on your way to the train in the Himalayas.
"The Fast Pass people are treated a little differently, even within the story, in that they're assumed to have already done most of that, so they're on a �fast track.' They get their permits stamped in the permit office, and then they kind of blow through a little mountaineering equipment place, and then they're on the train. So depending on which line you choose, you're enveloped in the story in different ways."
In keeping with the best Imagineering tradition, Joe won't divulge whether there are any Hidden Mickeys along the way - but he did give us a few tips for details to watch out for. "There are many many portrayals of the yeti spread through this village, reflecting this idea of the yeti as a kind of protector of the environment. Just looking for those alone, you could spend an hour."
Although Expedition Everest looks tantalizingly complete to passersby, there's plenty to finish before it opens to Guests. "We're installing props in the buildings, doing little finishing paint touches in the buildings. We're installing the yeti into the great cavern where the yeti lives, and we're running the ride around the track and testing it to see how it works and testing the special effects to see how they work," Joe says.
So far the only ones lucky enough to ride Expedition Everest are specially shaped water buckets designed to simulate the attraction's effects on people of different sizes - "sort of like a jerry can with a waist," as Joe describes them. "You seatbelt them in and fill them with water to represent the weight of different humans, and then they get to ride over and over and over. I'm sure they're very happy, thrilled little water buckets!"
Come spring, Guests will get a chance to encounter the yeti for themselves - and see if "happy" and "thrilled" are the order of the day.