Avatar is the highest grossing movie of all time and while we've all been promised a trip back to Pandora, the sequels are nowhere in sight. However, there's about to be a new way to travel there and we now have a better look at what we'll see. Disney World's World of Pandora is close to opening and now we have our first real look at what we'll see there.
While Disney Parks have released some details about what sort of things we would see and do inside the Wold of Pandora, and images we saw up to this point has simply been footage from the movie. Now, thanks to Good Morning America, we finally have a look at some of the actual area that has been created inside Disney's Animal Kingdom.
We see actual recreations of the floating islands that we saw in the movie as well as a great deal of plant life that will be worth looking at twice, once during the day, and then again at night after it all lights up. The area probably looks amazing at night. Simply taking a stroll through the grounds after dark is probably an experience all by itself.
We also get our first look at one of the two "E-ticket" rides that will be part of the new area, the banshee ride. While they, of course, don't show us a great deal, we do get a glimpse of the ride area. It appears to be several rows of individual seats. We'd guess that riders will be leaning forward in them to take a position similar to actually riding the flying beast. We also know from the glasses that it will be a 3D experience. Odds are the seats will shift and move along with whatever experience you see via the 3D glasses. Expect air to be blown in your face to give you the experience of flying. It will likely also include scents being blown in your face so that each area you're flying over smells like the real thing.
We know that the other ride in the new land will be a boat ride through the jungle of Pandora. While we don't see any of it here we can guess that the ride will take us past much of the same sort of Pandoran vegetation that we do see here. The only thing we don't know is what the ride itself will be like. Is it a slow and soothing Jungle Cruise sort of a thing, or will it be a more fast paced flume ride complete with rapids and sudden drops? We'd guess the former as the flying ride will certainly have sufficient thrills.
For fans of the Avatar films, it's also implied that some aspects of the new world could act as foreshadowing for the upcoming sequels. it's also stated that the area will become a place for the filmmakers to come and experience Pandora. Since Avatar was done entirely digitally, there was never a real set for the actors to stand in, this is now the closest thing to it.
My next Disney World trip is likely still a couple years away which will hopefully be long enough for the crowds to die down to a normal level of insanity, as opposed to the surely maddening levels that will exist when the World of Pandora opens at the end of May. Will you be traveling to Pandora soon? Let us know in the comments.
