So the idea is we should be able to find something at our house
that matches stuff, where we've been and seen and stuff that's
at Animal Kingdom.
Like, that's the Animal Kingdom. That's Drinkwallah. That's
gorgeous. That was a Mustang.
And you don't have this but
No, but that's the Himalayas
That's the FastPass building
Yeah, this is like the thing on the patio.
That's cool. These windows. Yeah.
Windows, windows, windows, windows, windows. windows.
And these are the windows at Animal Kingdom?
Okay, cool. That's not Animal Kingdom. That's Nepal.
What? Yeah. Okay, cool. That proves it. We're gonna do
windows.
The Kathmandu Valley is the source of a woodcarving
tradition that dates back probably 2000 years
and has served not just the people of Nepal,
but the cultures of Tibet and India, even Bhutan.
Newari is the name of the people
and they have exported themselves for centuries and
centuries as woodcarvers
all through the Himalayan region.
So this is a classic Newari-style window
with a little carved skirt on the bottom
and these elaborate columns on either side,
this very characteristic set of capitals,
and then this sort of carved openwork screen.
You see hundreds and hundreds of these in the Kathmandu Valley
everywhere.
And it's a living tradition today.
So the woodcarvers still work today
carving columns and lentils and windows like this,
huge architectural pieces.
So when it was time for us to do Anandapur at Disney's Animal
Kingdom,
rather than us doing a whole bunch of designs
based on us studying these windows,
we went directly to these woodcarvers in Nepal
and commissioned all the wood from them.
Columns, lentils, bases, window frames, whole entire balconies.
And that's what you see mostly around Anandapur in the area
around Kali River Rapids,
or over especially at Expedition Everest.
The whole area around Expedition Everest
was carved by these Newari woodcarvers from the Kathmandu
Valley.
One of the most extraordinary pieces is the Mandir
which is that multi-story pagoda structure.
Almost the entire surface of what you see in that building
came to us from Nepal.
Now it came in this condition.
This is a window from Nepal.
Brand new, fresh new.
I got it at the Rose Bowl Flea Market here in Pasadena.
But then we would age it and distress it
to make them look old and weathered as if they've been
there for centuries.
And that's the environment you see now
when you go to Disney's Animal Kingdom and walk around.
So, it's interesting because it's not really, exactly, a
fantasy.
It represents kind of a real place,
Anandapur and the area around Expedition Everest,
which we call Serka Zong.
They aren't real, they are fictional,
but they represent real places because we want to talk about
real things.
And the level of realism partially comes from the fact
that these objects
are real made by real people in real places.