Watch James Cameron tour Disney’s new Avatar theme park

By Rick Marshall March 1, 2015

Bringing the World of AVATAR to Life | Disney’s Animal Kingdom

The sequel to Avatar is scheduled to hit theaters in 2017, which also happens to be when the Avatar-inspired addition to Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park is expected to open its doors (or whatever passes for doors in the wilds of Pandora). In one of the first looks inside the theme park, a new video features James Cameron himself getting a tour of the attraction.

The video tour of Pandora was posted by the Disney Parks Blog, and shows the Avatar director exploring portions of the attraction and inspecting the alien flora and fauna that Disney created (or in many cases, re-created) for the new addition. The largest expansion of Animal Kingdom in the park’s history, the Avatar attraction is expected to open just before the Avatar sequel hits theaters December 25, 2017.

The Pandora portion of the theme park is the product of a partnership between Disney and Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment, and is expected to showcase the fantastic environment of the alien planet Pandora in an interactive world that lets the park’s guests “fly with banshees and explore a rich natural environment with mountains that float and interactive plants that glow at night.”

Some of those glowing plants can be seen in the video, as well as some of the other surreal elements of the attraction.

“I think one of the things that people loved about the movie is that they felt as if they had visited Pandora,” said Cameron in a statement about his tour of the attraction. “Thanks to Disney’s amazing Imagineers, people are going to truly experience Pandora firsthand. From the details in the plants to the production and design, extraordinary thought and care has gone into this entire world.”

“The teams have really created something special, and it’s not going to be like anything else.”

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