Avatar Flight of Passage opened as the E-ticket 3D flying-simulator centerpiece of Pandora - The World of Avatar at Disney's Animal Kingdom.
Everything that changed here
across the land, newest first- 2017
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Pandora - The World of Avatar opened on the former Camp Minnie-Mickey site on May 27, 2017, with Avatar Flight of Passage and Na'vi River Journey.
No single attraction succeeded the greeting trails; the land was razed and an entirely new land built across and beyond the ground, which is why this is filed as a closure rather than a reskin and no replaced_by is set. Yesterland notes the camp site now represents the Valley of Mo'ara. -
Na'vi River Journey opened with Pandora - The World of Avatar at Disney's Animal Kingdom, a slow-moving boat dark ride drifting through a bioluminescent rainforest and ending at the Shaman of Songs audio-animatronic.
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Pandora - The World of Avatar opened on May 27, 2017 over the former Camp Minnie-Mickey land that had held the show's theater.
Yesterland states Pandora replaced Camp Minnie-Mickey and the vacant parcel adjacent to it. The land absorbed the site; no successor attraction is claimed for the theater itself, so no replaced_by is recorded.
20143 changes
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Construction of Pandora - The World of Avatar began on the former Camp Minnie-Mickey ground on January 10, 2014, five days after the trails closed.
Wikipedia dates the start of construction work to January 10, 2014. Disney had already held a ceremonial groundbreaking on the shuttered site earlier that month - Attractions Magazine (published January 13, 2014) describes Disney and Avatar officials, including producer Jon Landau, digging in with 'Na'vi-sized shovels' and notes 'The land takes the former place of Camp Minnie-Mickey' - but that report does not state the ceremony's day, so no separate dated beat is filed for it. -
The Greeting Trails closed permanently on January 5, 2014, when the whole of Camp Minnie-Mickey shut down to clear the site for Pandora - The World of Avatar.
AllEars' Deb Wills wrote on January 7, 2014 that 'the camp's last day was January 5, 2014'; Attractions Magazine reported on January 6, 2014 that 'Yesterday, Jan. 5, 2014, Camp Minnie-Mickey ... closed'; Wikipedia gives the same date. Yesterland instead states January 6, 2014, so the day is reported one apart across strong sources; January 5 is used here on the strength of two contemporaneous next-day reports plus Wikipedia. Festival of the Lion King also ran until closing day but later reopened in Africa's Harambe Theatre and is not defunct. -
All of Camp Minnie-Mickey, including the former Grandmother Willow's Grove theater site, closed permanently in early January 2014 to clear the land for Pandora - The World of Avatar.
Sources differ on the exact day: Wikipedia gives January 5, 2014 and Yesterland gives January 6, 2014, so only month precision is claimed.
20131 change
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Mickey and Minnie left the greeting trails on May 15, 2013 for the new Adventurers Outpost meet-and-greet on Discovery Island, which opened in the former Beastly Bazaar gift shop.
Attractions Magazine states the new venue 'opened May 15, 2013 in the former Beastly Bazaar gift shop, is the new official meet and greet for Mickey and Minnie, relocating them from their Camp Minnie-Mickey location.' The trails lost their headline characters roughly eight months before the land closed.
20111 change
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Disney publicly announced an Avatar-themed land for Disney's Animal Kingdom on September 20, 2011, a project later built on the Camp Minnie-Mickey acreage that held the greeting trails.
Wikipedia dates the exclusive licensing agreement with 20th Century Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment to September 17, 2011 and the public announcement to September 20, 2011. The announcement did not name Camp Minnie-Mickey as the site; the siting is stated here retrospectively. Nothing changed for guests on this date.
20082 changes
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The final performance of Pocahontas and Her Forest Friends took place on September 27, 2008, ending a run of more than ten years for a show Imagineering had originally planned as a roughly two-year placeholder.
September 27, 2008 is given independently by Yesterland, Walt Dated World, Jim Korkis and TouringPlans. Korkis states the show was 'intended to be just a placeholder to run for two years or so'. Yesterland attributes the cut to the 2008 economic crash prompting Disney to review Parks and Resorts budgets for fiscal year 2009, which began October 1, 2008. The closure predates the March 2020 park shutdown by more than eleven years and the show never returned. -
After the show ended, Grandmother Willow's Grove became a smoking area and a stroller parking lot rather than hosting another production.
Yesterland places the conversion after the show ended but does not date it, so the year of closure is used as the anchor rather than being sourced directly.
19983 changes
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The Camp Minnie-Mickey Greeting Trails opened with Disney's Animal Kingdom on April 22, 1998, as wooded paths in the Camp Minnie-Mickey land leading to open-sided shelters where Disney characters posed for photos and signed autographs.
0→4 greeting trailsDisney's own website listed the attraction under Animal Kingdom entertainment as 'Camp Minnie-Mickey Greeting Trails' (archived 2009): 'Each Disney Character has a path along the Camp Minnie-Mickey Greeting Trails.' Trade press and fan sites more often called them the 'Character Greeting Trails'; that is a descriptive variant of the same attraction, not a rename, and is carried in former_names so a search finds this page. Attractions Magazine describes four such trails, but that count describes the land's run and is not confirmed as an opening-day census. The trails' own first day is not documented separately from the land's, and the date the 'Greeting Trails' name came into official use is not established. -
The show opened with Disney's Animal Kingdom on April 22, 1998, playing in the 350-seat open-air Grandmother Willow's Grove theater in Camp Minnie-Mickey under the title Colors of the Wind, Friends from the Animal Forest.
Sources differ on precision: Wikipedia and Disney historian Jim Korkis both give April 22, 1998, while Yesterland and Walt Dated World give only 'April 1998'. All four agree on the 350-seat Grandmother Willow's Grove venue. The original title is carried by Korkis, Yesterland and Walt Dated World. Yesterland adds that the grove reserved its first four rows for children. -
Within the park's first months Disney retitled the 12-minute production Pocahontas and Her Forest Friends, because guests were already calling it simply the Pocahontas show.
Colors of the Wind, Friends from the Animal Forest→Pocahontas and Her Forest FriendsWalt Dated World dates the original title to 'the first few months of the park's opening in 1998'; no source gives an exact changeover day, so this is recorded at year precision. This rename is an alias on the same show, not a separate attraction.
19971 change
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Disneyland's The Spirit of Pocahontas stage show closed in September 1997, and its props were reused in building Camp Minnie-Mickey at Disney's Animal Kingdom.
Yesterland's Camp Minnie-Mickey page states the land was assembled from floats from the defunct Lion King Celebration parade at Disneyland, props from the defunct Spirit of Pocahontas stage show, and a mandate to provide character meet-and-greets.
That's every change on the record in Pandora since 1997.
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