Located in the Windtraders shop in Pandora: The World of AVATAR at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, guests have the opportunity to be turned into an action figure in the AVATAR Maker experience.
This large kiosk towards the center of the shop is home to the service, offering two stations back-to-back.
The stations are intriguing and hard to miss, so expect to hear a lot of guests asking what this is every time you visit the store.
Several pre-made figures are on display around the space.
Nearby, accessories are sold for the figures. These items can be discounted (annual pass, cast member, etc.).
So, how does the process work? Well, you begin by going to the podium outside of the ACE AVATAR Maker kiosk inside of Windtraders. Once you make a reservation (provided they are available), you then get an RFID enabled card and proceed to paying for the service. The price point is $79.99 and no discounts are applicable, similar to the shoulder Banshee experience.
After you pay, just return to the podium when your reservation rolls around and the cast members will take it from there. After scanning, it does take some time for your AVATAR figure to be made, so you will have to return to Windtraders once again.
The process of scanning your face is simple, but the cast members make it a show experience, playing up story elements and the process as creating your own real-life AVATAR, rather than just an action figure. The scanning doesn’t take long at all and is over in seconds, but the process can take a few minutes between the cast member hamming it up and the guest choosing the body type, hair style, eye color, and facial stripe pattern for their AVATAR.
We recorded video of myself going through the entire process, from sign-up, to scanning, to receiving the figure with my face on it. You can watch the entire experience below:
As you can see in the video, the pick-up process is pretty neat and completes the process with a simple yet effective finale. Kids will be blown away by the tech involved in my estimation, but maybe quite a few parents as well. Figures are typically completed 45 minutes to an hour after you sit in the chair, but not could be longer depending on how busy it is on a given day.
The retrieval station in Windtraders draws a lot of attention even when it isn’t in use, so expect a lot of guests to be watching you play with this thing when you pick up your AVATAR.
The figure doesn’t really have much of your likeness honestly, just the basic shape of your face essentially. Otherwise, you are customizing the remainder of the figure. Since the AVATAR’s in the film also only have a facial resemblance to their host, I guess this makes sense.
The figures are of a good quality and come in a rather nice display tube.
We did have some issues in that the hair that came out was not what I picked, but I didn’t want to wait any longer to get it fixed so I decided not to complain about it. Otherwise, everything was as ordered.
Overall, the ACE AVATAR Maker isn’t the best souvenir available on Pandora, but it does offer quite the experience. I could see a younger guest finding the process fun and thinking that an action figure with their face on it is just about thew coolest thing ever. If the cast member is half as into it as the one that helped me through the process, then I think kids would have an experience that they would never forget and a nice souvenir to remember their time on Pandora. While I still think that adopting a Banshee is a somewhat cooler offering and toy, the AVATAR Maker is also quite unique and memorable, another positive evolution in Disney theme park merchandise.
Now when do I get to be a Star Wars action figure? I HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL 2019???
How do you get a reservation?
Did you get yours done right after Joe Rohde did his? (Saw your Twitter post about him cutting ahead of you.)
Overpriced and underwhelming. I bet this will be discounted soon
Wow that is literally the biggest waste of money ever. I bet they just have a bin full of heads back there and they just look through it until they find a head that ever so vaguely resembles the shape of your face, but you fully believe it because they “scanned” you. I think I’ll just use my money to buy a shoulder Banshee, Navi tail, and ears so I can go to Not So Scary as a Pirate of the Pandorian.
Which is not to be confused with the Pirates of the Pandorian costume that is just a regular pirate costume except the dreads are beaded with Pandora Charms.
I wonder if Joe Rohde’s Avatar had one big long ear.
But can you have one sit on your shoulder Banshee?
There’s just no fan base for this. It’s the highest grossing movie of all time, yet there are no cultural effects. No one quotes the movie, there aren’t parodies of it, no one is cosplaying the Navi.
There is no way this will sustain itself and continue to draw in visitors.
YEEEEEES!!! THANK YOU! I thought I must be the only person who just doesn’t “get” this franchise, but you are so right, this film has never woven itself into our culture like Star Wars or Harry Potter. I thought I read somewhere that Cameron wanted an Avatar land and shopped it around to all the big players 8 or so years ago. Universal wasn’t interested because they were knee deep in Wizarding World, but Disney bit because they wanted to have something ready for when the draw of the then few year old Expedition Everest wore off. I thought also that Cameron put up a large sum of his own money to sweeten the deal, which Disney liked because it was in essence just like a corporation sponsoring a ride, a model which Disney sees as a safe investment. Maybe if it hadn’t taken SO long to get sequels, and SO long to deliver the “land” people would have stuck with it. I can only hope that this gutsy (some may say stupid) move will ignite a new interest in the franchise? Don’t get me wrong, Disney delivered a BEAUTIFUL product, (besides the lack of storyline in the Navi river ride… Not saying every ride has to be a thrill ride, but it does need a story. It follows almost identically the model of Frozen Ever after…cool scenery…cool scenery…build up to see Elsa…we see Elsa…couple last scenes of cool scenery…done.) but I worry that even though it’s super high quality, it’s super high quality that no one cares about. Flight of passage works, not because it’s themed to Avatar, but because it’s Soarin’ 2.0 with more immersive elements.
I can see this being very popular if done in Star Wars Land. As for Avatar? I don’t think there is enough of a resemblance to make it something special plus Star Wars Action Figures have enough hype on their own. Hopefully it will stick around long enough to be implemented into Star Wars Land
Hi, I will be there on April, need to do 4 reservations for our Avatar maker in Pandora, been looking and can’t find no information how to do it, please need help. Thank you.
You have to go to the store and set up a time.