The Engineering Behind Disney's Floating Mountains

A look at the design and construction of Disney’s floating mountains located within Pandora – The World of Avatar.

Support Art of Engineering on Patreon:

Shop Art of Engineering Merchandise:

Video Attributions:
“Dazzling drone flight over Pandora - The World of Avatar at Walt Disney World” by Inside the Magic
“Zhangjiajie Forest Park after the rain” by hamsterSapience
“Pandora: World Of Avatar Review | Animal Kingdom | Walt Disney World” by DisKingdom Extra

Still Image Attributions:
All construction photos by Blog Mickey
“Track of Valravn” by Gregory Varnum
“Cinderella Castle” by Katie Rommel-Esham
“Expedition Everest” by Benjamin D. Esham
“Tower of Terror” by Alexf
“SpaceX Factory” by Bruno Sanchez-Andrade Nuño
“Steel Frame Building” by Dwight Burdette
“One Liberty Plaza” by Ken Lund
“Catenary” by Stamcose
“Holding the eiffel tower” by Vincent Lock

Music by Bensound and Vibetracks

#Pandora #Disney #ArtofEngineering

[ArtofEngineering]

The floating mountains are one of my favourite landmark structures at Walt Disney World. What is one of your favourite Disney attractions?

[overmanna]

The reason it was built at ground level was for structural support. There are many access doors throughout the floating mountains which are cleverly hidden within the rockwork exterior. Some even hidden beneathe vines. I helped sculpt many of the hanging vines, seeing the drone shots made my day since I could recognize some of my work. Thank you for

[tomjones]

It's far more impressive when you are there in person. My first emotion was, "how in the world did they build this"?

[TheRoneZone]

The Flight of Passage ride is probably my favorite in all of DisneyWorld.

[Laursie]

TBH I didn't even realize the structures were supposed to be "floating" until after I visited Pandora and was looking up more info online.

[Drebe]

Funny, I never view them as floating mountains, but rather as floating boulders.

[pariscloud]

I wish I could see the forced perspective better, or maybe I can and just don't realize it.

I went to college for mechanical engineering. Instead of enjoying Disney like normal people, I end up trying to figure out how they make the magic happen.

I couldn't really see the "far away" mountain ranges at the top of the mountains. The whole thing is impressive, but I wish I could see it the way the engineers and artists intended.

[StorytellerStudios]

Interesting well done video. The floating mountains of Pandora have to be seen to be believed. The entire world is so impressive. In your analysis, I found the "box beam" supports to be the most interesting- how something so irregular and "crooked" can give such support. Great job!

[wavelength]

Wonderful video!! I love how you described both the illusion and the physics behind this landmark structure - as well as the tricks that were used during its construction. That's 12 minutes VERY well spent.

[dorkinabubble]

Please do more Disney stuff! You break everything down so neatly 😊

[GarryDKing]

yea, there's one big flaw that really takes you out of the immersion with the pandora area: from the parking lot as you enter animal kingdom, you can see the back part of pandora and they do not do a good job of hiding the actual structural supports on the back end.... like no effort whatsoever behind it all.

[mrmaniac]

The waterfalls also break the illusion. Think about it, any of the world's largest waterfalls appear to flow fairly slowly, due to the massive scale that they are at. When you shrink the waterfall, it doesn't hold the same animation and appearance as the massive one.

[phillipb]

Also they had to build a bathroom on top of the mountain structure for the construction workers, The construction workers had to be taken down there was no path down. I talked to the accountant that did budgeting.

[MezzoForte]

It would've been better if the lines for both Avatar rides didn't have a 220+ minute wait time the ENTIRE DAY.

[mikejrexec]

I wish they had been able to incorporate some movement of the mountains. It is impressive but a slight movement would have been really cool.

[ashsanders]

it sounds like hes saying "meow-tains"

[trevenscott]

Great video, and great presentation. Cool "engineering" note: We built the steel structure using shoring (look at old YouTube videos of the construction site), then applied the carved plaster, polygem and artificial foliage before we removed them. The lead structural engineer correctly determined the amount of deflection that would happen once the post shoring was removed to within 3/8". Still blows my mind, and she was amazing to work with.

[tylertheimagineer]

Great video! I love pandora! It’s an amazing land! It’s crazy to think of the size of screen in Flight Of Passage! Once Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge opens you should make a video on the petrified trees!

[johnmabe]

It is truly an amazing attraction to see, if any of you have not gone, go, you won't be disappointed.

[framespersecond]

It doesn't exactly pull off the floating and forced perspective effect, but it's still a beautiful and stunning structure in person. I'm not sure how anyone who has seen it in person could go "meh, this isn't that good."