Pandora's Lost Attraction: Disney's Animal Kingdom's Cancelled Attractions Part 15


Pandora World of Avatar Floating Mountains Disney's Animal Kingdom

Pandora has been a roaring success since it opened at Disney's Animal Kingdom. Flight of Passage has some of the longest lines of any Disney attraction in the world and the ride consistently opens before the scheduled park opening time.

But the land was supposed to have an additional attraction, an attraction that would never make it to the park

Welcome to the final entry in Disney's Animal Kingdom's Cancelled Attractions (for now at least). We are discussing the never built third ride planned for Pandora World of Avatar at Disney's Animal Kingdom. To check out the rest of the series please go here. Also, be sure to check out Epcot Center's Cancelled Attractions, our classic hit series restarting later today.

As amazing as the land is, Pandora was intended to include a lot more than we ended up getting. This is evidenced by how much empty space there is surrounding the land.

Rumors on what this was supposed to include diverge into several proposed additional parts of Pandora.

Some say a more traditional stage show was planned at one point.

Others say that a table service restaurant was in the works.

Most say that some other attraction was planned at one point.

The canceled attraction is believed to have been the most elaborate of the Pandora attractions and ended up being cut for budgetary reasons. While the exact ride system is unknown, rumors place it as some kind of more thrilling attraction.

It is believed this was cut due to a combination of budgetary reasons and uncertainty in the Avatar brand value. Avatar has only had one film, and while it was the most successful movie of all time, the lack of any sequels or new entries to the series in any meaningful way didn't exactly make it a completely safe investment.

The decision was made to scale back on the land, and as we discussed in our discussion of the original version of Navi River Journey, it and Flight of Passage could be built in the same building, making them the rides that ended up getting built.

There is always a chance this ride gets revisited. Avatar 2 is still set to come out and if it is a resounding success Disney could turn back to these plans to immediately capitalize on the success of their latest hit franchise. If it flops, which considering it had been a decade since the original is a real possibility, Disney didn't spend a ton of money on a dead franchise.

The future of Pandora is uncertain, but so is every area of the Disney Parks right now. The coronavirus has changed everything, and there are about to be a lot more never built attractions for us to talk about.

Thanks for joining us on the journey through the never built rides of Disney's Animal Kingdom. We have only scratched the surface of the never-built rides of this park. For every ride we get to see there are several that never see the light of day, and a precious few of these the public gets to find out about. We do these series as a tribute to those who dedicated their work to these attractions that would never see the light of day. Hopefully, the work they did on them is at least appreciated, even if it is never properly enjoyed in the intended medium.

Be sure to check out all of our Never Built Disney articles from all the Disney Parks around the world.

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