Expedition Everest is one of the most popular attractions at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The thrill ride sends guests into the Himalayas on a thrilling excursion and brings you face-to-face with one of the most impressive audio-animatronics ever built, even if the Yeti’s never quite worked right.
But of all the things you see on your Everest Expedition, one of the most curious may be the immense number of hair ties that can be found at the peak of the attraction. So what’s the deal with all the hair ties? Here’s what’s going on, and what the Expedition Everest designer, and the Cast Members who deal with it, think about it all.
What Expedition Everest’s Lead Imagineer Joe Rohde Thinks About The Hair Tie Situation
If you’ve ever ridden Expedition Everest, especially if you’re lucky enough to be near the front, as you reach the summit of the ride, you’re likely to be looking forward. The track ends, the ride vehicle stops, and if you look outward, you can see Disney’s Hollywood Studios in the distance. But if you look down, you’ll see a lot of discarded hair ties.
Joe Rohde, who was the lead Walt Disney Imagineer on Disney’s Animal Kingdom, as well as on Expedition Everest specifically, has remarked about the hair tie situation before on Instagram. While Rohde left Imagineering a few years back, he still clearly has a deep love for the place. He laments the fact that the hair ties break immersion from the story being told and that somebody has to clean it up, but calls it a “ritual” and admits that it’s not far off from ritual behavior that occurs on the actual Mount Everest.
Nobody knows where this hair tie thing started. Did somebody happen to lose one while on the attraction? Or perhaps the first person simply wanted to leave something behind, and the hair tie was what was available. Either way, what seems likely is that after the first person did it, others saw it, and followed suit.
It’s certainly not that surprising to see a ritual spring up among Walt Disney World fans. For many, the resort itself is a ritual experience. There are places people have to go on each trip, special experiences they feel they must have.
Why Doesn’t Walt Disney World Clean Up The Hair Ties?
Joe Rohde himself specifically calls out the fact that somebody has to clean this up, which raises the question. Why doesn’t somebody do that? It’s just short of impossible to go on Expedition Everest and not see a mass of hair ties at the top, so why isn’t this being dealt with?
As it turns out, it is. The hair tie question was brought up on Reddit a few years back and somebody who claimed to have been an Expedition Everest Cast Member reported that the hair ties actually are cleaned up on a regular basis. It’s just that the dropping of new ties happens so often that it’s impossible to keep the area clean of them. He explained…
When I worked there, i actually asked why they weren’t cleaned up regularly. Turns out, they are. It’s just that SO many people throw them out there, Disney has found it impossible to keep up. I don’t remember how many hours he said it takes for the area to “fill up”, but I remember it totally blowing my mind.
It is pretty wild to realize that there are so many of these ties getting tossed out that what you see is the cleaner version of what it would look like if literally nothing was done. There are probably people who make a point to leave a hair tie every time they go on the ride. As Joe Rohde says, it’s become a ritual.
And to be fair, dropping hair ties on Expedition Everest isn’t the worst thing people have done in Disney Parks. We know some people have tried to leave ashes in the Haunted Mansion and other places at Disney World so that a loved one will always be part of the most magical place on earth. A hair tie is far less likely to get you banned from Walt Disney World.