When Disney announced at D23 that the Yeti inside Expedition Everest was finally getting fixed, it was news Disney fans had been waiting about 20 years to hear. Now Disney Legend Joe Rohde, the Imagineer who led the creation of Disney’s Animal Kingdom and Expedition Everest, says “fixed” isn’t quite the right word. Turns out the current Yeti isn’t getting repaired at all — Disney is replacing it.
“They’re Going to Replace the Yeti”
Rohde made the comments during an interview on the Welcome Home Podcast, where he sat down to talk about his new book, Floating Mountains: The Art of Imagining the Impossible. In the book, Rohde writes about the Yeti as part of a larger chapter on failure, and he famously promised years ago that he would fix the Yeti someday.
By the time Disney’s plans came together, the book had already gone to print. “At the time I wrote it, all I knew is what I always knew, which is we continue to try to find a solution,” Rohde said. “Then I found out that they were going to replace the Yeti.”
“Now to be clear, they’re going to replace the Yeti because if they could fix the Yeti, they would have fixed the Yeti.” Hard to argue with that.
What Matters Is That the Yeti Moves
Rohde pointed out that solving a problem doesn’t always mean redoing exactly what you did before. In his eyes, the Yeti has one job in the story of Expedition Everest. “The purpose of the Yeti within the context of that story is to establish that it is alive,” he said. “That is its job, to establish that it is real and that it is alive. And in order to do that, it needs to move.”
So what will the new Yeti actually do? Rohde doesn’t know. “What it does is immaterial to me,” he said. “I don’t actually know what it’s going to do. I only know that they believe they have found a solution.”
Rohde retired from Walt Disney Imagineering in 2021, so he isn’t part of the project. When the hosts said they hoped Disney would bring him in to consult, his response was, “Nobody owes me anything.”
Why It Has Taken So Long
The original Yeti stopped moving not long after Expedition Everest opened in 2006. For about 20 years now it’s been running in what’s called “B mode,” with strobe lights flashing to fake the movement, which is how it earned the nickname “Disco Yeti.”
According to Rohde, the hold-up is that it’s “exceedingly complicated” to come up with something Disney can afford, that fits in a reasonable window of time, and that won’t throw off the schedule. “If you miss your schedule now, you can’t do it again,” he said. “And that’s all beyond the logistics of getting the old Yeti out and a new Yeti in and all that stuff on a ride that frankly is very popular despite the fact that the Yeti doesn’t move.”
His way of describing it: picture a whole bunch of clocks, all running at different speeds. Every once in a while, they line up. “Sometimes they all hit 12 noon,” he said. “That’s the opportunity.”
When Will the New Yeti Arrive?
Disney hasn’t announced when Expedition Everest will close for the work or when the new Yeti will debut.
Personally, I can’t wait for the Yeti to be fixed. Having never seen him working in A mode, I would really love to see him move in some capacity and not because the fans are blowing his hair.
If you missed the original announcement, we covered it in Disney Is Bringing the Yeti Audio-Animatronic Back to Life Inside Expedition Everest.
You can watch Joe Rohde’s full interview on the Welcome Home Podcast YouTube channel. The Yeti talk starts around the 5:20 mark, and the rest of the conversation is well worth a listen too.
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