More on Disney’s Yeti
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on March 2nd, 2006
The St. Paul Pioneer Press featured an article about Disney’s newest attraction. The Disney designers made several trips to Nepal to get the details to make the attraction realistic. Film crews accompanied them and shot footage for a Travel Channel show that will premier in April.
Several research trips from western China to Nepal helped Disney designers create the 6.2-acre attraction, including their rendition of a Himalayan village called "Serka Zong" that leads visitors up to the ride.
The village includes a tourism booking office, Tashi’s General Store and Bar, and an old warehouse refashioned as a yeti museum — all built with taut attention to the architecture and feel of a real east Asian mountain town.
It took jets, helicopters and donkeys to deliver Disney’s creative team past slippery, narrow roads and to a 1,000-year-old monastery to study the Himalayan culture. The team stayed there three days and gathered information about local beliefs in the yeti.
"Our story was really about the culture and the people, the areas where there is human habitation," said Joe Rohde, executive designer and vice president with Walt Disney Imagineering, and a member of the expeditions.
Disney based its design for the yeti on golden monkeys in the Qinling mountains — cold-weather primates with blue faces and fiery orange fur.
Cryptomundo reader TJ commented earlier "I think the design team used the chinese golden snub-nosed monkey (Pygathrix roxellana) as a point of reference for the Yeti." Looks like TJ was correctomundo.
Park researchers were accompanied by Conservation International and film crews from Discovery Networks, whose Travel Channel will premiere a chronicle of the trip called "Expedition Everest: Journey to Sacred Lands" the week of April 9.
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
As Disney World is just about in my back yard, I have already been to the preview opening of the new Expedition Everest attraction and had a chance to view the displays.
Disney imagineering has done a great job on collecting material for the exhibit area and kudos to Loren for his contributions and direction provided to the Disney team that put the attraction together.
The only disappointing aspect of the ride is the gift show offerings that are available at the end of the ride. They could use a great deal more in terms of video/DVD, books and artifact reproductions for the cryptozoology interested to take home — rather than boat loads of stuffed toys that perpetuate the myths and not the facts.
Congratulations Loren on a major feat to further the cause of cryptozoology!