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Expedition Everest: Disney Brings Nepal and Tibet to Orlando, Florida

Whether you love Disney or curse it for devouring the world, you’ve got to admit that the mega-corporation sure understands the power of travel and the journey. Since Uncle Walt opened Disneyland in 1955, the company has drawn people to its theme parks by tapping into the mythology of many of the world’s iconic destinations and travel experiences. New Orleans. The Matterhorn. Pirates plundering the Caribbean. Huck and Tom on the Mississippi River. Then there’s California Adventure, an entire theme park that revolves around some of the state’s best known attractions. Even Disney’s $7.5 billion deal for Pixar supports the point. After all, aren’t “Toy Story” and “Finding Nemo,” at heart, about epic journeys?

Now Disney has spent a ton of money—reportedly about $100 million—to create Expedition Everest, a new roller coaster at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida. All that cash has gone into what Joe Rohde, executive designer at Walt Disney Imagineering and lead designer of the park, calls a “symbolic and authentic” expedition to Everest.” It’s hard, of course, to imagine an almost 200-foot-tall faux Everest in the middle of the Florida flatlands as anything other than a theme-park attraction. “Into thin Air,” we’re betting, it’s not. But Disney’s “Imagineers” went to great lengths to attempt to shape the illusion. According to a story in the Orlando Sentinel, they took several trips to Nepal, Tibet and China to study the architecture and cultural customs so they could get the details just right. They also accumulated objects—Nepalese Coke bottles, pot-bellied stoves, Buddha statues—that are all part of the attraction.

“It’s an adventure,” Rohde told The Sentinel’s Scott Powers. “I mean I spent a lot of time in the Himalayas and over the years have come to know them very well. I would say most important is the first sense you have in a place like that, and that is the sense of being on an adventure.”

The ride opened for previews this week and will officially open to the public April 7, when Disney will also demonstrate its ability to cross-promote. A program based on those trips called “Expedition Everest: Journey to Sacred Lands” is scheduled to debut on the Travel Channel around that time.

For now, Disney has a video podcast about Expedition Everest with commentary by Rohde, and WDWMagic has a bunch of unofficial videos and photos, including some on-the-scene photos from the Imagineers’ trip to the Himalayas.

Mike Thomas was among the early “Expedition Everest” riders. He praised it in an Orlando Sentinel commentary: “After riding it three times, I think they may well have hit the right compromise, providing enough thrills for the thrill-seekers without the stomach-churning impact that has forced Disney to put barf bags on Mission: Space. The only people this should terrorize are the head honchos over at Universal Orlando.”