ShopDisney is now selling the Pandora – World of Avatar Interactive Banshees online! If you missed your chance to get them at the parks because they were sold out, here is your chance to get them now! Online, they are coupled with the perches to display them when not in use.
Pandora – The World of Avatar Interactive Banshee Toy – Blue – $84.99
Pandora – The World of Avatar Interactive Banshee Toy – Red – $84.99
Pandora – The World of Avatar Interactive Banshee Toy – Purple – $84.99
Pandora – The World of Avatar Interactive Banshee Toy – Green – $84.99
Pandora – The World of Avatar Interactive Banshee Toy – Yellow – $84.99
To see what it’s like to adopt a Banshee in person at the park, check out our video below:
The Banshee Rookery inside of Windtraders in Pandora is completely empty as of 10:45am on June 3rd, 2017
The Banshee Rookery inside of Windtraders in Pandora is completely empty as of 10:45am on June 3rd, 2017
According to guests visiting this morning, there were a few Banshees on the shelves when the day started, but now there are none. Cast members are telling guests it will be a few weeks until more are in stock (take that for what its worth). Either way, it is clear that Disney sold way more of these neat toys than they ever expected to.
The full contents of a Banshee Rookery box, and the optional perch.
If you are unfamiliar with what these are, you can check out our review of them here. The product was selling well during previews, but it wasn’t uncommon to wait 30-60 minutes just to enter Windtraders over the first week of it being open to the public. Guests would then have to wait another 15-30 minutes if they wanted the full Banshee experience, but Disney was also offering “grab and go” pre-boxed Banshees at temporary tables inside of the shop all week.
We will continue to provide updates on the status of the Banshee Rookery as many a guest have told us they were looking forward to doing this on their first trip to Pandora. Well, some guests will have to wait a little while longer.
The Windtraders shop in Pandora: The World of AVATAR at Disney’s Animal Kingdom has some rather unique merchandise experiences, one of which is the ability to adopt a “Shoulder Banshee” creature to bring back with you to Earth.
These creatures are available near the front of the shop after you wait in a small queue area for your turn to make an adoption. Interested guests are then brought closer to the perches where dozens of the Ikran sit (Ikran is what the Na’vi call these creatures). Guests are given a few moments to pick out a Banshee that “speaks to them” (you can try a few on and test the controls until you are happy with one), then you can choose to adopt and take a pledge to do so. You can see us go through this entire process in our video below:
Once the oath is taken, guests may purchase (or adopt) the creature, and a display perch at an additional charge. The price to adopt a Banshee is $49.99 and no discounts of any kind are applicable. Perches for the Banshees are $14.95 and can be discounted (annual pass, cast member, etc.). Perches are obviously not a mandatory purchase with any Banshee.
Why are these so cool? As illustrated in the video above, the creatures have three ranges of motion (wing-flap, head turn, and mouth movement) and also have sound effects. On top of that, they are just a really neat thing to wear on your shoulder and certainly garner a lot of attention around the parks (at least during these early days of their existence). Cast Members on Pandora are very receptive to those wearing the creatures, and we saw some really cute interactions during our previews, especially with younger guests.
The Banshee stay attached to you via magnets underneath, with a magnetic pad provided that you can put under the shoulder of your shirt to hold them in place above it. I was worried that they would easily fall off, but they stay on there pretty well. The magnetic pad for under your shirt and a belt clip for the controller are provided upon purchase. The Banshee can also be boxed upon purchase should you decide that you don’t want to wear it just yet (or ever, I suppose).
Magnetic shoulder harness
The motion is all accomplished by a pneumatic control connected via a black wire to the back of the creature. The control is probably my only grievance with the piece, as it can be a bit hard to use at times, especially for children, but it’s not enough to not want to take one of these guys home with you.
I did buy the perch as well (for both of my adoptions), which is really great for home display. The long cord connected to the Banshee is held nicely underneath the stand, and there is even a place to lock in the controller on the back, out of sight. I highly recommend this if you will want to display it at home.
Once Pandora: The World of Pandora opens on May 27th, 2017, don’t be surprised if you start seeing these shoulder Banshees all over the Walt Disney World Resort.
This morning, Good Morning America took us inside Pandora: The World of AVATAR at Disney’s Animal Kingdom for our first “good” look at the Flight of Passage attraction where guests will fly on a Banshee, as well as the awesome scenery that will fill the planet.
In the video, Disney takes us inside the Flight of Passage ride, where we get some new information on this very secret new attraction.
To experience Pandora from the back of a Banshee, special goggles (the likes of which we have never seen before) have been developed. They look larger than goggles used at other attractions, but it appears that they will fit better over eyeglasses that guests might be wearing. You may also notice that the lenses are not as dark as other 3-D glasses.
Also, the pre-show experience will include a room where guests are matched to their AVATAR.
Outside of Flight of Passage, the preview also brought us all over the land. This was our first time seeing the actual pathways of the land as guests will and the area looks to be as highly themed as Disney promised it would be.
And of course, how could we not talk about the nighttime lighting?
Pandora: The World of AVATAR opens May 27th, 2017 at Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park.
Concept Art for Flight of Passage attraction, Pandora: the World of AVATAR at Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park
Since the Flight of Passage attraction was announced, we have wondered how Disney would achieve such an attraction, where guests were promised that they would get to ride on a “real Banshee” from the AVATAR film series. Well, the following image was sent our way courtesy of an inside source and is a screen cap of some footage of Imagineers testing out the new ride which will open with Pandora: the World of AVATAR at Disney’s Animal Kingdom this Summer.
Now, obviously, it is not the clearest image, but so is the nature of such leaked things. You can see that 2 people are mounted on a Banshee creature and are riding the attraction with the large Soarin’ type projection screen in front of them.
It might be possible to seat more than two guests on each, but it is unclear due to the clarity of the image. I would assume that children 7 and under would need to ride with someone 14 or older, as is the rule with many other attractions at Walt Disney World.
This is the structure to which the dozens of Banshees will be mounted, holding guests while they fly in Flight of Passage, Pandora: The World of AVATAR
We were promised that we would be able to feel the Banshee breathing and all of its motions below us when we ride the attraction. Based on the leaked image above, I may actually believe the Disney PR machine for once. If each guest really is boarding their own personal animal, I think we are in for something truly amazing. I think even the most bitter AVATAR project detractors will have to look at this as impressive.
But what do you think? Are you excited for Flight of Passage and Pandora: The World of AVATAR?
Bob Iger was certainly busy telling everyone about the plans for the Disney Parks yesterday, and the long-running, controversial, and enormously-budgeted AVATAR project wasn’t left out. Iger recently scaled some scaffolding at Walt Disney Imagineering and took a test-ride on a mock-up of the Banshee ride for the new Animal Kingdom theme park land.
“It felt so real, so lifelike, there’s never been anything like it.”
The vehicles will be the banshees themselves, with movements that should “mimic a breathing beast”. Think of it as a next-generation Soarin’, but the environment on-screen will be presented hi-def 3-D as you ride in a giant alien creature.
The boat ride attraction for the AVATAR land was not mentioned as many report rumors that it may no longer be part of the project.
