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| 1991 Concept Art Disney |
Expedition Everest is one of the most instantly recognizable attractions at Walt Disney World, and the only official Disney mountain located outside of a castle park. But it was not the only mountain attraction planned for Disney's Animal Kingdom.
Welcome to Disney's Animal Kingdom's Cancelled Attractions. Today we are discussing two lost mountain attractions from Animal Kingdom. If you missed any previous entries in this series be sure to go here.
Above you see concept art for one of two mountain attractions that appeared in the overview of Disney's Animal Kingdom created by Joe Rhode in 1991. This was early in the park's development and before many ideas had solidified. For instance, what would eventually become the Tree of Life while pictured in this concept was significantly scaled-down.
This looks to be an appearance of the Fire Mountain concept in a layout of Disney's Animal Kingdom, near the eventual location of Beastly Kingdom. If so it would be here long before it was proposed for the Magic Kingdom, perhaps being developed for one park and then switched over to the Magic Kingdom when the focus of Disney's Animal Kingdom changed, then being overlayed to be related to Atlantis.
The other option is this could be an early version of the dragon coaster, located in a mountain instead of a castle, and the idea would later develop into the one that we know about today.
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| 1991 Concept Art Disney |
The other attraction is one that bears a striking resemblance to Expedition Everest. In fact, it may even be an early version of Expedition Everest. It has long been established that the ideas for the attraction had been present since the planning stages of Disney's Animal Kingdom, long before it was built in the mid-2000s.
This looks to be an early version that would have been located entirely inside, likely being more like a more themed Space Mountain than the ride we know today. Given that technology to make many of the effects in the ride was not available in the early 90s this makes a lot more sense. It would have been based around the same concept but without the inside-outside design and the massive Yeti animatronic.
One of the most common early complaints about Disney's Animal Kingdom was the lack of ride-through attractions. Whatever the reason for this eventual shortcoming it certainly wasn't because of a lack of ideas in Imagineering.
Thanks for reading about these two never-built projects and be sure to check out the rest of this series here. Also check out Epcot Center's Cancelled Attractions, another series about never built Disney attractions. Be sure to come back next week for the next part of this series, the Lost Version of Navi River Journey.
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