The attractions of today; in fact, everything done after 1967, when Pirates of the Caribbean finally opened its doors at Disneyland, follows similar models. There are notable exceptions (and not-so-notable ones, too). The Great Movie Ride operates on a similarly inherent contradiction, and employs basic narrative, but also relies on a plot that hangs heavy in the air, and is never resolved. Part of the reason not to include plot as a story-telling device is because in an experience versus a two-dimensional medium, resolution can be difficult.
Every major attraction, commonly referred to since The Matterhorn as “E-Ticket” attractions, follows similar methods to Pirates and Mansion. These were the pioneers in their forms, nearly a decade after Disneyland opened. The Jungle Cruise does some of these things, but the extent to which Montage, Contradiction, Surprise & Suspense and the power of narrative over plot are practiced is nowhere more apparent than in New Orleans Square at Disneyland.
The major attractions, up until the 1990s, followed suit with these ideas. A major return to form was made with Expedition Everest in the new millennium, but that attraction proved difficult due to its nature: a roller coaster is offered as a continuous experience, where a cut can be much harder to achieve, and far more terrifying for the riders.
This is one of the reasons Rock N' Roller Coaster is a very short experience, like the blast from Marty McFly's amplifier at the beginning of Back to the Future- we don't have the mechanics to stop, and if we did, we couldn't achieve the speed within such a confined, indoor space necessary to match the high adrenaline in the music.
Still: We approach a high mountain, at the far edge of a small, provincial Nepalese mountain town. In the town itself, contradiction helps tell the story. Generations and regions and traditions all clash and mingle within the architecture, where an internet café sits peacefully next to a gear shop, and a we travel through a traditional courtyard and follow it up with a gift shop, and then a museum. Finally, a Tea Train approaches (our contradiction). We have come to this mountain in search of the Yeti. We wish to see him, in his natural habitat. Brilliantly, the “plot”- the false front that the attraction puts to guests, provides another major contradiction. The “plot” here tells us we have come to climb Everest, and that the tea train will take us to Everest Base Camp.
Almost always, the "plot" is used as a false front in themed design, and often doubles as the hook. Mansion and Pirates are probably still the only attractions bold enough to operate without the pretense of a false front: from the beginning, we accept our reasons for being there. We know we are boarding a batteau that will carry us deep into the mischievous realm of the pirates, and we know our "Ghost Host" has brought his carriages to give us a tour of this strange, haunted mansion. These stories are rooted so firmly in the collective conscious that they need no further introduction.
At Everest, the subject matter is far less universal to its audience, and so the basic premiss must be derived from what our audience knows: they see a large mountain, purportedly the largest in the world, and expect that if they are invited into the area, they will in one way or another experience the climbing of said mountain because they know that this is the thing people do with large mountains.
We move first through a climbing shop, but we dispense with that idea rather quickly, and we find ourselves waiting the majority of the queue out inside a museum space dedicated to the Yeti. There is a little bit of Hitchcock in this attraction; the voyeurism, the cast (us) being interested in the wrong thing, and the other side giving in and offering us the chance to do something terrible (see the Yeti), which we view as being a “disruption” to our trip, though we (and they) all know, why we are really here is to see this Yeti.
We know this not because of our immediate connections with the Yeti or his legend upon first sight of the majestic mountain; (those are instead reserved for the "climbing" pre tense that draws our guests into the story), but we know this from the clever marketing. The bottom line is that in all great theme park attractions, something usually goes horribly wrong. We are confronted by some major apparition or monster or fear - and have to escape. We know this in the same way we know that if there is a mountain, chances are something related to climbing it will be explored.
Another attraction that uses this concept very well is Revenge of the Mummy at Universal Studios Florida. Here, we find ourselves along New York Street, and before us is the front of the Museum of Antiquities. This being a backlot, is it a film set? It is...but our immediate visual associations with the material provide our minds with the idea that this is a museum. We see Mummies in a museum. We don't expect them to be alive, and we don't expect them to attack us- yet the whole time, we know full well that this is a story in a theme park, and there is always something that goes wrong, because thats part of the fun- so, our subconcious mind validates the idea that there are mummies in the museum, and that the museum itself could be a film set based on the surrounding area and the structure of the story the park is telling, and we then accept that we know, in reality, what we are coming to see.
This suspension of disbelief, this willingness to believe that inside we will likely be menaced by a mummy or some other as-of-yet unseen force- is what drives us to want to experience a theme park and its "attractions". Its a unique form of storytelling where we aide the audience in every way we can to make the decision to believe, and yet at the last moment it is ultimately their own decision to do so.
The tea train is a contradiction because tea trains do not travel to high altitude. It’s not so much what they do not do as what we do not perceive them to do, and we do not perceive that trains can travel on Everest, because it is infinitely too high in our imaginations to accommodate trains- yet, here it is. This train will take us to Everest Base Camp, though we will be interrupted on the way by the fearsome growl of the creature. Notice how this moment always brings a smile to guests’ face, even though we all know its coming. We knew it the second we saw that foreboding mountain, and if not then, certainly when we entered the Yeti museum- not surprisingly the very last room of consequence in the waiting area before we board our tea train.
Now, we journey chronologically through the lowlands, up through a mountain monastery and into a high and icy mountain pass. Unlike Mansion and Pirates, Everest does not use montage to tell its story. The reason for this is that its constant forward motion cannot be denied: the ride system has been associated with moving forward from the beginning, where as in a fully controlled “dark” environment the system itself may move forward, but the viewpoint may move sideways (as in the library scene in Mansion) or even vertically (as in the final scene of Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland).
Although we follow a linear progression from the time we leave the station onward, the story itself- the moments that are being chosen for us to see- can utilize montage. Moving up the mountain pass, we are menaced by the destroyed track and the yeti’s growl, and the only way to go is backwards – and down. In moving backwards is not only a surprise, which is built by the suspense of not knowing where we are going to go, or what we are going to see- and down. Moving down makes sense; because we have reached the highest point that the track can reach, because the Yeti has destroyed the route to “Everest Base Camp”.
This is the moment when our minds place together those disparate elements we have been mulling since our approach: we are here to climb Everest, the tea train will take us to base camp, yet there is something strange happening in "them" showing us all of this Yeti-related information. If we hadn't put it together yet, now it will be impossible to ignore. This is the part the guests love, because it confirms what they wanted to see happen: We all traveled up that mountain wanting to see this creature, wanting to experience the raw power of nature, and now we may just get that chance.
The tea train catapults backwards in the dark- it seems to have become a runaway train. Here is another small element that separates Everest’s narrative from its plot. Once we leave the station, the plot of us traveling to base camp is no longer pursued. One device that may have bordered on a plot point would have been the idea of a driver.
This train, apparently, is automated. How did it get that way? Is it possible to fold this kind of complicated automation into such old technology? If not, then do we have a driver at the beginning? If so, does that driver abandon us high on the mountain after seeing the twisted remains of the track to base camp, and why do we not see or hear this happening? Because it is a detail that is not important to the scene. What is vital is, we are as high as we can go. We know that the train cannot come back down the way it has come up, because from the ground the ascent and descent moments are visible to everyone passing by in Anandapur.
So, we all know that the train must be able to escape somehow, or else the forward motion of this narrative would be impacted. Just as when a slightly too logical person asks of a character in a film why he or she did not choose a particular action, the unavoidable answer comes up: “There wouldn’t have been a film.”
In this case, if we did not know that the train would and must continue to move, “there would not have been an attraction.”
So, Everest is full of inherent contradictions. The next moments in the attraction use montage in terms of the story, but not in terms of the physical movement like Pirates and Mansion. Here, we come to a stop in a dark cavern, and in front of us the shadow of the Yeti rips apart another length of track and lets out a menacing howl.
We find ourselves outside the mountain and then back inside very quickly. The tunnels of the first (backwards) drop are pitch black, while after our second encounter with the Yeti, there is light, and we can see the narrowness of the icy caverns twisting all around us as we fly down through them.
Here, the use of lighting to tell the story and partially confuse the audience is the illusion that has been chosen.
Because we begin our journey in the shade, move into sunlight, into brighter sunlight and then into pitch black after we first hear the Yeti, then into a minimally lit environment in the second show scene where the Yeti rips apart another length of track, and into broad daylight, we have covered a wide variety of lighting setups that match our emotions for each of those moments. The pitch-black backward moments are exactly how me might feel after an encounter with the Yeti- or just the sound of him, echoing off the ice. The daylight after the shadow scene is our moment of escape, the Yeti growling menacingly behind us, we must move forward into the light.
But the mountain has other ideas- just when we have reached the lit safety of the ground; we are twisted back up into the darkness. This time, we are given some light, but it only reveals the extremely narrow and twisting tunnels our tea train is navigating.
This subconsciously tells us that we are not finished- that there must be another encounter of some kind up ahead, less why would we need to move back into the mountain, the darkness, the tunnel? We wouldn’t, unless we are going to see the thing we have really come to see, in full, for the first time.
With so much time in Everest’s preshow dedicated to putting the Yeti into our minds, it would be treason for him not to be revealed. The “story” of Everest- the point of making the attraction, much as making a film, is that the Yeti is not a creature to be feared. He is the protector of these lands, protecting them from us- for the first time in a Disney attraction, mankind becomes the enemy. We interpret the Yeti as frightening because we cannot possibly understand him, and we fear that which we do not understand.
This ideal is the through-line of our experience. We go to Pirates of the Caribbean because we want to see pirates and have an adventure. We visit the Haunted Mansion because we seek ghosts. We board our tea trains because we want to see the Yeti, but also because we know we should not. We know that the tea train is polluting the Yeti’s environment, and we know that the reason he is angry is not because he is a blood thirsty beast, but because we have ventured onto the sacred heights of the world’s highest mountain and its neighboring peaks- the land that he protects in traditional Nepalese folklore.
We know the tea train is “polluting” because of the all-to-important puffs of steam it emits when it cycles back into the station. The steam serves as the “Fire & Water” element- the train, remember, in our psyches, should not be taking us to base camp, because trains cannot do such things- but there is the steam, to prove to us its reality. The steam serves a dual purpose as the “Fire & Water” and evidence of the contradictory statement- that we are threatening the Yeti’s sacred lands in order to catch a glimpse of him.
Now, finally, we see him: he is massive and terrifying, lit like a monster in a horror film. This is yet another contradiction, since we are being told he is the “protector” of the highlands, but he is shown to us here exactly the way we want to see him: as a monster, as a giant and terrifying beast attacking something he cannot understand, where we are really the ones not understanding him.
His overall appearance, especially his fur, is another piece of fire & water. Animals have fur. Yetis are not real, just as pirates are not real, yet here is one with real fur! Pirates are not real, yet here is one spitting water, or with hairs on his leg that appear very real. Ghosts are not real, yet here is one actually seated next to us.
Our encounter with the Yeti is brief, but does him justice because he is gigantic and very close. The same reason that the dinosaurs in Animal Kingdom’s other “E” Ticket attraction appear so frightening and realistic is taken in similar approach here. The dinosaurs and the Yeti are both viewed for a very brief time, like a flash memory or an image from a dream or nightmare, and both are massive creatures.
Another element that proves vital to Expedition Everest is an idea we haven’t discussed much, and that is the Surprise and Suspense element of design. Everest, time and again, builds suspense with situations and movement and then offers us surprise as to the solution. Most of the time, we are put in peril and the surprise is how we are removed from that peril. We find ourselves without a place to ascend. The Yeti’s sounds are all around us, and he may appear over the rise at any moment. Where are we to go? Backwards, and down. It seems improbable, but that is usually the solution.
It’s the one thing we don’t want the train to do- indeed, it cannot do, because this is a roller coaster, and those (our subconscious is screaming) can only move forward! Wrong. Typically, the surprise element is the one thing we have dismissed as entirely impossible, because our minds tend to impress logical and physical limitations of time and space and gravity on such things as thrill rides or themed entertainments.
In his wonderful and bible-like "Designing Disney", Imagineer extraordinaire John Hench discusses the danger of contradiction. When I talk about the "Inherent Contradictions" present in many of the modes of themed design that allow our story to move forward, its not exactly the same kind of contradiction. Hench talks about the Long Shot, and how the close-up (the details) must never betray what our guests experience in the long shot (the big picture). An inherent contradiction might better be described as "our brains taking a right where in normal, everyday life we might take a left". These are the flourishes, often in major experiences the modes of transportation, that enhance the reality our guests have come to experience. These are the carriages moving through the houses, the batteau departing from a quiet bayou and suddenly finding itself in the middle of a pirate showdown- these are the contradictory statements that we as designers work so hard to make real.
If we can make them believe that the carriage is really traveling through the mansion, we have achieved our goals, and their reality has been enhanced. Now, if we can tell a great story that people can relate to within that frame, we've achieved a part- albeit a very small part- of the Disney Magic.
This is the beauty of Expedition Everest: The Legend of the Forbidden Mountain. This is an experience in the grand, narrative tradition of Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion. We have a false front that draws us into the experience, we have a menacing character study that is at once mysterious and powerful, natural and yet removed, and we have a mode of transportation that is inherently impossible and yet it exists before our eyes- and we end on "ah" (that is to say, an open note, which allows guests to question the experience much as we might question a dream).
We question the ghosts in the mansion because as we exit we are confronted with a series of silent crypts. We question the pirates because we have returned to the above-ground world where we started, in the quiet, pirate-free bayou. We question the Yeti because we saw him so briefly, and this is what draws us back: we have a desire to see and experience these things again not only for their value as pieces of entertainment, but because we want to know if we really, truly saw these things that cannot possibly exist.
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