Location
Asia
Height Restriction
44 inches (112cm)
Ride Duration
2 minutes 50 seconds
Expedition Everest
Located in the Asian area of the Animal Kingdom, discover the fearsome legend of the Yeti at "Expedition Everest" - a high-speed train adventure that combines coaster-like thrills with the excitement of a close encounter of the hairy kind!
The park guests at Everest theoretically are trekkers who want to ride a train through an abandoned tea plantation to the lower mountains. These trekkers first walk through the village, beneath slightly tattered prayer flags whose decorations are mainly mythical animals, lest copying actual flag designs offend anyone.
Before the trekkers enter the offices to reach the train cars, they are funneled past shrines in a pagoda courtyard with statues and several smaller representations of the Yeti, who is protecting the forbidden mountain, his domain. The riders are given lots of visual clues as to what they might encounter. Sharp-eyed riders might notice in one shrine the Coke bottle that bears a label in Nepalese.
The Expedition Everest adventure begins when guests board an old mountain railway destined for the 200 foot high Mount Everest. The train rolls through thick bamboo forests, past thundering waterfalls, along shimmering glacier fields and climbs higher and higher through the snow-capped peaks.
Suddenly the thrills intensify as the train races both forwards and backwards through mountain caverns and icy canyons as guests plunge 80 foot, for an inevitable face-to-muzzle showdown with the mysterious Yeti - known to some as the abominable snowman.
Info and Stats
The coaster roars up to 50 miles per hour, mainly inside the 200-foot-high mountain - the tallest designed in Disney's 50 years of park operations.
The Everest ride is the first in any Disney park in which a roller coaster travels backwards.
The biggest surprise comes near the end of the ride: The passengers will suddenly confront the largest-ever Audio Animatronic robot that Disney has ever made, the Abominable Snowman (Yeti). It may be lost on most riders, but this Yeti is as lifelike as Disney's creative team could make it. Disney talked to specialty biologists and scientists to help design a Yeti that is as believable as possible. Disney's Yeti is covered in a combination of real animal fur and synthetic fibers for a realistic coat.
Once the Imagineers settled on the final shape of the mountains - and Everest is actually the mountain behind the one the train enters - the approved clay model was carved into foam, details were added and the final model stood about 6 feet tall. Its image was scanned by laser and stored in a computer. Those digital files were used to size and shape about 25,000 pieces of steel for the mountain.
About 10,000 tons of concrete and 5,000 tons of steel were used to create the attraction. Nearly 8,000 individual props have been placed in the village.
To landscape the area, 910 bamboo trees of four species were planted, along with 250 specimens of 10 other trees and 88,141 shrubs - 114 species.
Ride Opened: 7th April 2006