Originally Posted By trueblue I feel sorry for you guys here at LaughingPlace.com. You guys are stuck with merf. Hilarious.
Originally Posted By Anatole69 I thought the EE Yeti issues had to do with Disney not giving them a big enough budget to lay the proper foundation and stress relief for the Yeti they wanted to build, so they did the best they could with their budget hoping they could work around it only to find out the issue wasn't overcome. That's my impression why the Yeti doesn't work. It was greed that killed the beast. - Anatole
Originally Posted By CuriouserConstance I read online that sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.
Originally Posted By Manfried The Yeti, in this person's opinion, was a terrific, yet complicated figure. It was also way over-designed and built for what it was used for and where it was in the attraction.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros It could be something along the lines of the Abomnible Snowman in the Matterhorn at DL. It's a fully dimensional figure, with an arm that moves in a very simple up-and-down clawing motion. Given how long you see him (probalby less than 1 second each time), it's plenty of motion. Since it's a simple pivoting that's endlessly repeating, it's not considered an AA. It's more like the animation in the windows around the Emporium on Main Street. I've only ridden Everest once, and it was after the Yeti was permanently in B mode, but it doesn't seem like you see him any longer than you do on the Matterhorn. Even with the simple motion, I think it would really add a lot to the otherwise-static scene. The strobe light doesn't really do much, and the lighting is purposfully dark to hide the lack of motion, but also hides the figure a little too much. Giving him a little movement would allow them to turn the lights up, and it might even be a little scarier than what's there now.
Originally Posted By mousermerf It could have been a series of dimensionally textured panels suspended by airline wire that merely tilted from side to side in a very simple movement that was nearly impossible to break and created nearly the same effect.
Originally Posted By Manfried At least it would have more movement then. Or how about a projected Yeti on a statue like Leota? Something without so many moving parts?
Originally Posted By jmuboy Yeti 1.0 was HIGHLY over engineered. Now Yeti 2.0 when and if it ever happens could be so much more simply built. DEven the frame and outter skin could be reused. But some more minimal movements will need to replace the powerful movements that made the Yeti 1.0 pretty much destroy itself.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "Yeti 1.0 was HIGHLY over engineered." See, if this is true, you really have to wonder WHAT the folks at WDI are thinking sometimes.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< Yeti 1.0 was HIGHLY over engineered. >>> Or perhaps it's underengineered. Perhaps it's both but in a different manner of speaking. Another possibility is that shortcuts were made at the last minute in order to keep the project under budget. It seems to be generally accepted that they worked hard to keep EE within a $100 million budget, when such a project would have historically cost a lot more. Perhaps whatever extra fudge factor that is typically included in such designs was taken out in order to meet the budget, and this time it came to bite them when the actual calculations turned out to be shy of what's necessary.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "...when such a project would have historically cost a lot more." But it's one figure that people see for a split second in the dark. How much should something like that cost and how fluid does the animation need to be to achieve the effect that the designers wanted? Considering the incredible level of imagineering done on the Everest attraction the yeti figure seems like it should have been one of the lesser aspects of its overall design. The hype for this thing and the subsequent meltdown of the figure sort of reminds me of Rocket Rods and how they developed those incredible automated high speed vehicles that were completely over designed for the track they ran on.
Originally Posted By barboy Everest imagineers blew it in 3 different ways concerning the pivotal show scene and star of the show--- the Yeti AA encounter: I. the creature, as been stated, doesn't animate when it should. II. the train speed as we pass by is way, way too fast to appreciate any figure be it an animated one or not. On Journey to the Center of Earth we travel slow enough to not only take inventory of the lava creature's(1)disposition,(2)stature and(3)lava+fire+rock lair but also the fate of unfortunate previous explorers.......that 5 second encounter is the perfect amount of time allotted. But we stupidly get 1.5 seconds for Yeti but **18 SECONDS FOR BROKEN TRACKS AND BIRD-ON-A-STICK AND 10 SECONDS FOR THE VIDEO PROJECTED SHADOW** ....WTF!! III. the inside portion of the ride should have been continuous. Instead of the train going into the mountain 4 times before the climactic Yeti encounter it should have been ONCE. Why? Because we need time to adjust our eyes to a darker environment so we can see the inside show scenes better. Furthermore Animal Kingdom is mostly a daylight hour park so having guests abruptly transition from the Florida sun to a dimly lighted cave 4 times is seriously lousy engineering and planning.
Originally Posted By Westsider barboy, all very valid points. I went on Expedition Everest a few times with CM's who work Matterhorn during a recent WDW trip, and they basically thought the same thing, just not so coherently layed out as barboy did it. EE has potential, but WDI really screwed up what could have been an absolutely amazing attraction. Oddest thing is that the EE CM's haven't named their snowman. The CM's who had worked Matterhorn have total passion and pride for "the rock" as they call it, and they love their Harold, and they were talking to the EE CM's about the Florida attraction. And the EE CM's were just sort "meh" about the whole thing, and they hadn't bothered or cared enough to give their Yeti a name or anything. They were very low-key about it and really had little passion for their attraction. It was kind of sad to see the Matterhorn CM's dejected like that, when they realized their fellow CM's at EE had no discernible culture or Yeti pride.
