Disney loves its theme park boat rides. The most famous ones are It’s a Small World, Jungle Cruise, and Pirates of the Caribbean, of course, but they’ve built several others such as Living with the Land, Storybook Land Canal Boats, and Grand Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Caballeros. These attractions are one of their core concepts, as they provide a gentle ride with steady traffic throughput.
When Imagineers planned their latest themed land expansion, Pandora – The World of Avatar, they appreciated the advantages of a new boat ride. They could display the spectacular bioluminescent special effects that permeate throughout Pandora. Also, this sort of attraction could siphon some of the crowd traffic off the streets, keeping the crowds under control. Most importantly, it was a major attraction that Disney could use to as a selling point for their high-priced expansion.
You’ve heard all about it for years now. Let’s take this opportunity to go Behind the Ride to learn four amazing aspects of Na’Vi River Journey.
The experience: a journey through the heart of Pandora
The trick: building another unforgettable boat ride
Image: DisneyImagineers have crafted so many boat rides over the years because they’re extremely functional. The water rides are gentle and breezy for park guests i.e. they’re comfortable.
For Disney, they’re controllable. Cast members know where each person will be throughout the ride. With a large enough man-made river, they can flood the seas with boats, too, thereby servicing hundreds of park guests simultaneously. On each boat, Disney hosts 6-8 guests on each vessel, which means the rides aren’t as populated as It’s a Small World or Pirates of the Caribbean. Disney makes it up in volume instead. That’s the functional side, but it’s not why park planners loved the idea of a boat ride at Pandora, though.
Image: DisneySince the announcement of the themed land expansion in 2011, Disney dreamt big about their new land. They understood that the waters of Pandora are important in the movie, Avatar, and they wanted to recreate that experience. They used the boat ride as the means to give guests an unprecedented view of the world of Pandora, so that people would feel like they were exploring it just as Jake Sully once had.
Theoretically, theme park tourists are on a canoe ride down the sacred Kaspavan River, which is part of the Mo’ara Valley’s rainforest. By using boats, Disney can show action and scenes at the various set pieces on this Na’Vi River Journey. And they have several tricks up their sleeve to achieve this goal…
The experience: beauty as far as the eye can see
The trick: bioluminescence throughout the journey
Image: DisneyIn speaking of Pandora prior to its opening, Disney executives sounded unusually confident. They’d seen the aspects of the land that would differentiate it from anything that had come before…at Disney or anywhere else.
People familiar with Avatar the movie know that one of the distinguishing characteristics is the colorful illumination. Director James Cameron wanted to introduce creatures that would emphasize the beauty of the then-nascent 3D technology. He settled on bioluminescent ones, with the result being the most popular global release of all-time. Movie-goers loved Avatar for its breathtaking visuals. Disney wasn’t about to slack on the themed land that mirrors it.
Image: DisneyAnd that leads to the logical question. What’s bioluminescence? There’s a simple, not-too-science-y answer to this, too. These are lights produced by living organisms. Some creatures emit this light as part of a biochemical reaction. When you hear the phrase bioluminescence, what you’re really hearing is bugs, plants and animals that naturally create light. And you’ve seen an example of bioluminescence your whole life. You just didn’t know the name.
The most famous such creatures are fireflies and jellyfish, but literally thousands of other examples are likely to exist. Most of them are underwater, a place mankind is just now understanding thanks to new camera innovations, some of which were championed by…James Cameron. So, he’s legitimately one of the world’s foremost experts on bioluminescence and someone Imagineers could lean on while spitballing ideas. And these discussions led to…
The experience: shiny animals frolicking in their “natural” environments
The trick: integrating set pieces and projection televisions to bring Pandora to life
Image: DisneyThe canoe ride down the Kaspavan River is magical due to the way that Disney presents the various set pieces. Some of the constructs are real pieces that you can reach out and touch. These elements like mushrooms and flying fan lizards provide the backdrop for the ride, but they do more. They also provide the artificial illumination that brightens the path through the darkness.
Disney recreated many of the creatures seen in the movie for this reason. The animals add to the illusion that you’re taking a tourist cruise on an exotic planet. According to the Avatar wiki, the list of bioluminescent and native animals of Pandora includes hexapedes, prolemuris, panoprya, and sturmbeests, plus the flying fan lizards and woodsprites. During the ride, you’re most likely to notice the lizards since they seem like spinning discs, but everything has a purpose straight down to the mushrooms.
To accentuate the perception of a real trip through Pandora, Disney uses video projection mapping akin to what you’ve seen in the Happily Ever After fireworks exhibition. As you drive past certain points, you’ll see Na’Vi hunters and some of the most dangerous fauna in the background. It’s an adrenaline surge on an otherwise laid back ride.
Disney even pulls out one of its oldest tricks to bring Pandora to life. Some of the leaves above the boats have shadows on them. The blue of the vegetation meshes with the black shadows to create a specific illusion. It looks like creatures are walking on the leaves. Since this vegetation is basically on the ceiling, such a thing is impossible. Imagineers again use projection to cast these skittering shadows. They make every “living” creature on Na’Vi River Journey seem real, especially…
The experience: a spiritual leader of the Na’Vi welcomes you to her humble abode
The trick: the most realistic Audio-Animatronic (AA) ever created
Image: DisneyThe climax of Na’Vi River Journey sees the boat reach its destination, the Na’vi Shaman of Song. She’s currently leading a hymn whose lyrics are discussed in the next section. This Audio-Animatronic reflects a decade of technological innovations that surpass what was universally regarded as the best previous one, the famously broken Disco Yeti.
In the 11 years between the construction of the two AAs, computer advances gave Imagineers unprecedented leeway in building the Shaman of Song. Her movements are the most fluid of any AA to date. She also has countless simultaneous moving parts. When you see her, you may feel overwhelmed in choosing which part of her to watch. Both of her hands have individual gestures rather than symmetrical ones. Her tail flicks like a frisky cat, and she gyrates as she sings her song. It’s stunningly life-like, although the Shaman is also gigantic at almost 10-feet-tall.
The experience: a soulful rendition of the Na’Vi people’s favorite hymn
The trick: a new language and a terrific sound system
Sounds play throughout the ride. Early on, they are standard jungle sounds that highlight the various forms of communication that animals use. About a minute into the journey, tribal music begins to play, and it rises to a crescendo as guests approach the Song of Shaman.
Her song is important, although you won’t understand it. Cameron hired a linguist to build an entire Na’Vi language. Dr. Paul Frommer then had the honor of crafting the companion song for Na’Vi River Journey. While the song is in Pandoran, he was kind enough to provide a translation of the final version, even as he noted that he’d written several different iterations of the lyrics. He wrote the first set more than two years prior to the opening of Pandora, which speaks volumes about the level of preparation required for an attraction of this scale.
Here are the translated lyrics of The Shaman’s Song:
Stanza One:
O beautiful forest,
There are tears in the forest.
Woodsprite(s).
We cry out, calling,
“O Eywa!” (3X)
Stanza Two:
Connected as one,
O Great Mother.
Woodsprite(s).
We cry out, calling,
“O Eywa!” (3X)
Stanza Three:
By the People’s will,
the forest is singing.
Woodsprite(s).
We cry out, calling,
“O Eywa!” (3X)
Disney had a simple goal in constructing Na’Vi River Journey. Famous Imagineer Joe Rohde describes it as, “Just plain beauty.” When you ride it, you’ll appreciate how the Imagineering tricks listed here elevate it to something spectacular. The attraction has the task of accentuating all the spectacular sights of Pandora, and it does this in a subtle, almost poetic way. While Avatar Flight of Passage gets most of the headlines, Na’Vi River Journey is the better example of life in Pandora.
