For two weeks, Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park is testing a new lighting scheme on the long-broken Yeti audio-animatronic figure in Expedition Everest.
For many years, the figure has been illuminated by only a strobe light. During this test, the strobes are still on, but a fairly bright light is also shining on the creature as it did when it was functional.
With Pandora now open, it is expected that the ride will be closed for a period and the Yeti will be fixed, but it is unclear as to when that might happen.
What the heck was that?
I’m glad to hear that and I hope they stick with it – at least until they can get him fixed anyway. Now, with just the stobe lights, he’s too easy to miss. I actually thought they removed him at one point.
I do miss him swooping down to grab you as you go by!
After every ride we always say the same thing, “remember when the big yedi arm used to swoop down to grab you as you went by”? Let’s all hope he gets fixed and can be restored to his original glory.
Based on all I have read and heard (on reputable blogs and podcasts), repairing the Yeti to original working order is impossible without dismantling the entire structure. This would be extremely costly and time consuming.
i wonder who actually cleans that yeti…
is there an actual job that states only cleans yeti?
The Yeti would have been fixed long ago if the reason why he doesn’t work wasn’t so complicated. Basically he is too heavy for the structure he is attached to, and in order to make him work again would require opening up half the mountain to rebuild the structure. It hasn’t happened, and probably will never happen, Thus a new light as another band-aid.
Still absolutely love that ride .
Extremely disappointing and surprising that when the originally constructed this ride they didn’t plan for something like this… how don’t you plan for an audio animatronic breaking down and needing to be fixed. Pretty strange and careless. I miss the actual moving Yeti.. now sometimes I don’t even notice him
I never saw the working Yeti I don’t think (first went on it in 2015). However we always really like the strobe as it works really well to make it look like he is coming towards you. Not sure about this new light being on. I think the strobe on its own was better.
Agreed. With the strobe it gave the illusion that he could be closer to you than you think. The constant light is too revealing.
Yeah exactly that
When we were there we saw both versions used. On 6/11 it was the bright lights, on 6/16 it was the strobes. Being able to seem him with the brighter light was cool, but I thought it was unintentional and something was broken.
Or maybe someone complained that they were scared by the sudden appearance of the monster and thus decided to put a constant light as to make people see it sooner and not be scared by the surprise.
I thought the yeti didn’t work anymore because of the amount of stress it put against the mountain structure and how it was unsafe for the yeti to be animated anymore. Thought that was gonna cost fortune and a long repair time as nearly the entire structure would need to be redone to account for the stress the sudden movements cause.
I did read somewhere Animal Kingdom’s chief design imagineer, Joe Rohde promised they would try and fix him.
He didn’t actually promise, it was more like “If I ever have my way, he’ll be fixed.”
At a dinner with an imagineer, we heard the same things that many people are saying here — to fix the Yeti would mean taking apart half the ride itself because he’s so heavy and so complicated. At the time, Everest was THE premiere attraction in Animal Kingdom… now with Pandora, it’s not as “premiere” so they may take some steps to work on it… though I can’t imagine them shutting down Everest for a year to do it.