Expedition Everest?

[aubeone]

Does anybody know the status of Expedition Everest at AK?

 

[Bob P]

Hi,

If you do a search on this board you will find many threads on this subject.

The bottom line is: Disney has not officially announced an opening date, but rumors have it opening on April 22 with "soft" openings in February and March.

Bob

 

[DizParks]

Opening Spring 06, soft openings probable for late January early February.

 

[danny1649]

To Mt Everest and am waiting to plan spring 2006 trip when they make offical announcement on opening date.

 

[RoseRoni2]

What are soft openings?

 

[whacked]

A soft opening occurs when ride construction is finished, but it has not been officially opened to the public.

The ride will be opened to park guests sporadically and without any announcement. They just open the ride and let people ride until whatever test they are running is done, or the ride breaks, or they are done adjusting whatever they are adjusting.

We rode Test Track several times this way before it opened. We would either be walking by, or hear the ride start up. This would be our que to run over and see if we could get on. Several times we did manage to get a ride.

This allows the park to test rides without people being annoyed that the ride goes "down" for maintainance or adjustment. Once the kinks are worked out, the official opening occurs.

 

[mgkkgdm]

Does anybody know the status of Expedition Everest at AK?

Here is a picture from last week...

 

[GarrettJD]

Great photo, mgkkgdm! It looks so great with the scaffolding gone.

At another website, I read that Disney is going to start recruiting Everest opening team CMs in mid-November, so soft openings will probably start 2 or 3 months after that. Here's hoping! I won't be back until at least June, so I'm pretty sure it'll be ready when we arrive next.

 

[SorcererDonald16]

Is that actual track, or is that kinda pseudo-display track and/or more scaffolding? Sorry if it's an overdone question, but I hadn't seen that photo or any recently.

If that is the track, eegads, another reason for me to skip that one! I'm a bit of a thrill-ride scaredy cat. Ya couldn't even pay me to get on Space Mountain.

 

[GarrettJD]

SPOILER WARNING FOR THOSE WHO DON'T WANT TO KNOW

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If you look on the left side of the picture, the upward-slanting track is part of the lift hill. If you look to the right of that and down a bit, you see a small hole covered by trees. This is where the 80 foot drop out of the mountain occurs, then the track curves around (hidden from view here) and back up into the mountain (the curved track going into the mountain on the right of the photo.) I think that's scaffolding on the middle of the picture, near the base of the highest peak.

Can't wait to ride this one whenever we get back!

 

[SorcererDonald16]

Thanks for the info Garrett. Very much appreciated.