The broken Yeti animatronic at Expedition Everest at Disney’s Animal Kingdom is once again a hot topic in the Disney community. Former Walt Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde responded to a conversation about the Yeti on Twitter, and discussed what it’d take for it to be fixed.
Rohde started out by addressing the rumor that’s continually brought up about the Yeti – that a portion of the mountain would have to be removed to fix it. That’s simply not true, but the rumor continually pops up.
He went on to talk about everything that would need to happen to fix the Yeti animatronic.
No that rumor is not true. The issue is a complex interface between finance, operations, marketing, design, timing, engineering, s
narrative l, and … guest satisfaction. All of these need to line up to make a viable solution. There are solutions. There are not opportunities. https://t.co/lozrHfBSbw— Joe Rohde (@Joe_Rohde) June 20, 2023
Rohde’s comment focuses more on the logistics surrounding fixing the Yeti as opposed to fixing the Yeti itself. There’s no question that finances play a big role in the Yeti conversation. What’s the return on investment when the Yeti has operated in B mode for the vast majority of its existence?
Then there’s the topics of scheduling, downtime, in addition to the actual engineering plans required to fix it.
This isn’t the first time Rohde has talked about fixing the Yeti publicly. In 2020, Rohde said there weren’t “easy or timely solutions” for fixing the Yeti. In 2018, well before Rohde left Disney, he said that he still intended to fix the Yeti.
Honestly, we’d love to see a working Yeti on Expedition Everest. But, with Disney’s shrinking parks’ budgets, we’d be more excited to see genuine expansion at Walt Disney World. The parks need to prioritize more capacity and actual expansions – not replacements – that make a Yeti fix feel like an unnecessary expense at this time. (We’d still love to see it fixed)
