To clarify my initial point about Yeti not being very important to fix: I think maintenance and show quality are extremely important. But I would have the yeti be very low on the list of things to fix, even if we were limiting out maintenance priorities to show elements in Expedition Everest.
Broken effects in Everest that add more to the experience than the yeti include:
- The steam effect in the train at load
- The fog effect higher up the mountain before the twisted track
And I do want to display my credentials a bit regarding the yeti: I went on the ride dozens of times (maybe around 100 times?) prior to the yeti going into perminant B mode.
I was in high school and had just gotten my first WDW annual pass about six months before Everest opened. At the time, my friend group would go to the parks to primarily do the thrill rides. So after Everest opened, we would rope drop DAK and do a couple of laps on the ride while waiting for our fastpass window, and once the Ling got a little longer, would lap the ride in the singles line. We would typically do 8-10 rides on Everest per visit. (As an aside, we would do the same with Mission: Space, before the Green Team version of the ride opened, it had a single rider line and we would do a lap every 15 minutes!)
Anyway, I guess I am saying that my opinion of the yeti comes from having experienced the ride many, many times with it working and afterwords. Seeing it a video is not the same thing as seeing it in the ride.