Pandora: The World of Avatar construction update (July 2016)

    As we get closer and closer to the opening date for Pandora (still officially listed as 2017), we’re able to see less and less progress. We’ve been pretty quiet on the progress photos for the past weeks simply because there wasn’t much to show. That said, we made it out to Animal Kingdom yesterday to put together some photos of what is visible from the ground.

    First up is a look at some of the “floating mountains” added to the top of the show building. These are new to the blog, but have been up for some time now. They look more like lollipops to us than actual mountains. I hope the view of these is limited from within the actual land.

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    Moving closer to the entry touchpoints, we can see a much more mature looking mountain.

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    Comparing these pictures with those we took in April, we can see that quite a bit of scaffolding has come down.

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    Making our way to the Rainforest Cafe entry touchpoint, we can see some hardly touched parts of the project. My assumption is that this will be nearly impossible to view from within guest areas once the land is open.

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    A look at the face of one of the facades, covered in rock, used to hide the show building. A large portion of the show building is visible here, but the working theory is that the angle that I’ve taken these pictures from will no longer exist once the land is opened.

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    Another look at the “lollipop mountains” from the Rainforest Cafe touchpoints. Zoomed in and then the wider shot to give perspective.

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    The most obvious change since we last posted an update is a very large amount of foliage added to the top of a building within the land. This all but blocks our view of the rock work and face of the support mountains.

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    Here’s a photo from the beginning of this year, giving you an idea of the amount of the structure that we used to be able to see.

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    That said, a little bit of walking, but still in the Rainforest Cafe touchpoint area, allows us to get a good look at the largest of the visible floating mountains. The vine work used here to cover up the support beams looks AMAZING!

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    Here’s what is under the above vines.

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    A zoomed in look at the top of the floating mountain.

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    Here’s the walk we made from the Oasis back to Tiffins where the bridge to Pandora is located. This is believed to be the main entrance to the new land.

     

    A look at the wall.

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    A look at what’s visible from the Tiffins entrance to Pandora.

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    Like we said at the start of this post, progress isn’t very visible due to the stage at which this project is at. Earlier in the project the efforts were focused on the large rock work that we’ve been covering. Now, the construction is moving to the ground and areas that we aren’t able to see. We hope to get updated aerial photos from Nearmap in the near future, and will post them as they become available.

     

     


    What we used

    GoPro Hero 4 Black
    Feiyu Tech handheld gimbal to steady the shot
    Nikon D7200

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