The "Disco Yeti" is retiring — Disney is finally fixing the Yeti at Expedition Everest
For years, the giant Yeti inside Expedition Everest hasn't really moved. It runs in what Imagineers call B-Mode: a strobe light flickers over a frozen figure instead of the full lunging animatronic that greeted the ride's first guests back in 2006. Fans nicknamed it Disco Yeti, and pretty much every trip report has a joke about it.
At D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event on August 15, Disney Experiences Chairman Thomas Mazloum told the crowd, "We're bringing the Yeti back to life inside Expedition Everest at Disney's Animal Kingdom." That's the entire announcement. No repair timeline, no scope of work, no explanation of what's changing this time.
The Yeti has run in its limited mode for so long that the cause has become something close to park lore: fans have long attributed it to structural strain the fully animated figure was putting on the mountain, though Disney has never laid out the technical details in public. Whatever the fix ends up being, it's the kind of news longtime Animal Kingdom guests have been asking for since the mode change first appeared.
Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent: Harrison Ford becomes an Audio-Animatronics figure for the first time
Disney's new Indiana Jones attraction at Animal Kingdom now has a name: Indiana Jones and the Myth of the Jade Serpent. Imagineers Michael Hundgen and Chris Beatty walked the D23 crowd through the details, and the animatronics side of it is substantial.
Harrison Ford confirmed by video that he's serving as the physical model for the attraction's Indiana Jones Audio-Animatronics figure, the first time anywhere that an Indy animatronic has actually been built from Ford's own likeness rather than a generic stand-in. The ride sends guests into a Maya temple near a cenote that supposedly opens into the Maya Underworld, guarded by a serpentine creature called the Tsukán. Disney showed a first look at the Tsukán's Audio-Animatronics figure at the event: a giant hand-sculpted snake head that towers over the Imagineers standing next to it. The team is sculpting the figure by hand rather than relying purely on digital fabrication, aiming for a more lifelike finished creature. Guests encounter the Tsukán throughout the ride, building to a finale confrontation with it.
Carousel of Progress is reopening with an Audio-Animatronics Walt Disney and a two-Oscar-winner voice cast
Magic Kingdom's Carousel of Progress closed on July 5 for a full rebuild, and D23 filled in a lot of the blanks. The show now opens with a new cold-open scene built around an Audio-Animatronics figure of Walt Disney himself, set inside a recreation of the 1964 television special "Disneyland Goes to the World's Fair." Disney Legend Jamie Lee Curtis and Emmy winner Bryan Cranston will voice Mom and Dad for the rest of the show.
The four acts have moved forward in time. Act I is now the summer of 1969, with the family gathered around the television for the moon landing. Act II jumps to Halloween night 1985, with Sarah taking over the spotlight to show off new appliances while John hands out candy and Uncle Orville, predictably, complains about the lack of privacy. Act III lands on New Year's Eve 1999, mirroring a gag from the current show where Grandpa dozes off before the countdown while Grandma sneaks the TV over to wrestling. The closing act sends the family off-planet into "the possible future," joined by a helper robot, with Imagineers pulling from Disney Legend John Hench's original concept sketches for inspiration. Disney is targeting a late spring 2027 reopening.
Miss Fritter is getting a school-bus-sized Audio-Animatronics figure for Magic Kingdom's new Cars land
D23 also brought titles and details for the two Cars rides coming to Piston Peak, the new land replacing Frontierland's former Rivers of America. The smaller of the two, Miss Fritter's Daredevil Spin-Along, centers on the demolition-derby school bus from Cars 3 as a "huge school-bus-sized animatronic" hosting what Disney is calling her "wildest demolition derby yet" on a spinning flat ride.
The bigger attraction, Cars Ridge Run Rally, is a racing ride built around a genuinely new vehicle system: Imagineers say the cars are designed to actually drive over bumps and terrain rather than simulate the motion, with real tires and suspension reacting to the course as riders climb Piston Peak's snow-covered summit and drop through a geyser field to the finish line.
Dreamfinder is heading back to EPCOT, reunited with Figment
EPCOT's Journey Into Imagination is getting reimagined, and Dreamfinder is coming with it. The character was cut from the ride in a 1999 overhaul and has been absent ever since, while Figment stuck around through a further rework in 2002 and has spent the years since as an EPCOT merchandise mainstay. In the original 1983 version of the ride, Dreamfinder himself was an Audio-Animatronics figure piloting a hot-air-balloon-styled vehicle called the Dreamcatcher alongside Figment. Disney hasn't said whether the reimagined ride brings him back as a physical figure again, but the character's return alone was enough to bring the house down at D23's Disney Experiences Showcase, where Neil Patrick Harris appeared in costume as Dreamfinder holding a Figment puppet, collecting on a promise Disney Experiences head Thomas Mazloum reportedly made if NPH agreed to host the event.
No concept art, storyline details, or opening timeline have been released yet.