PHOTOS, VIDEO: New 6-Minute Behind the Scenes Look at Pandora Reveals More Than Ever Before; Banshee Is a Virtual Reality Ride
If you stayed up to watch ABC’s Nightline last night, then you saw the most comprehensive and impressive preview to date of Pandora: The World of AVATAR at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The 6-plus-minute tour shows everything from Flight and Passage and the Navi River Journey, to the food and floating mountains of the land. Take a look:
Revealed in this video, it appears that the Banshee image that was leaked to us was just a test seat used at Walt Disney Imagineering during the early development of the Flight of Passage ride. Instead, guests will sit in a row in the seats pictured below and experience a “virtual reality” thrill ride.
In the interview, Landau states “This is where people will be able to link with a Banshee and actually fly across Pandora.” The pre-show experience matches you with your own personal Avatar. Guests then sit in the attraction in “link chairs” that connect to the Banshees virtually, which is all very similar to the film where humans become Navi people through Avatars. Nightline goes on to call the attraction a “Virtual Reality experience”, leading us to believe it will be a Soarin’-type ride system with 3-D and virtual reality technology at play to make you feel like you really are flying on the back of this creature. The link chairs do no have backs, so you will be seated as if you were riding a Banshee, but in the safety of seats with plenty of protection from falling.
The 6-plus-minute behind the scenes look is fascinating and shows way more than just these clips about Flight of Passage, so make sure that you check out the whole video above. You’ll even see more of the fantastic nighttime bioluminescent glow of Pandora… and its drinks…
Pandora: The World of AVATAR opens May 27th, 2017 at Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park.