Interactive Banshee

Interactive banshees inside the Rookery.

The Interactive Banshee is a Pandora: The World of Avatar exclusive toy, sold at Windtraders. The banshee can be "adopted" at the Banshee Rookery experience, or bought pre-packaged for prices ranging between $59.99 - $79.99, depending on park season.The updated version upon arrival was $89.99.

The interactive banshee is normally a Windtraders exclusive product, but limited stock has been occasionally sold online through ShopDisney for $84.99 and a limit of one per customer. Interactive banshees are also sold outside of Pandora: The World of Avatar at The Outpost, a merch store outside the entrance of Disney's Animal Kingdom.

Product Description

The replica mountain banshee is described as "an interactive toy with sounds and movement." The toys are remote-controlled with a "leash" that lets you move the puppets with a hand unit and feature three ranges of motion in the mouth, head, and wings. The banshee sounds in the toy are provided by Lightstorm Entertainment. A button on the toy's belly lets you enable and disable the sounds. The toy can either be perched on one's shoulder or held in one's arms. The magnetic pad that keeps the banshee on the owner's shoulder and a belt clip for the controller are provided with the banshee. The banshee comes with a Certificate of Authenticity featuring a special message from the Pandora Conservation Initiative and packaging featuring Na'vi weaving designs by Daphne Yap. Yap previously worked on the first Avatar film as a concept artist, providing textures for creatures and designing Na'vi costumes & jewelry.

An option for a banshee perch is also available, sold for $14.95. An Alpha Centauri Expeditions branded banshee carrying bag is also available for $12.99.

A limited release green/purple color variant banshee was sold for $99.99, along with perch and certificate, on April 22, 2018, as part of their 20th-anniversary celebrations. A limited release dark blue/magenta/light blue variant was sold on May 27, 2018, for Pandora: The World of Avatar's first anniversary. Disney Parks annual passholders could purchase it early at a pre-park opening shopping event.

In March 2019, a new purple/orange/green color scheme based on the popular Night Blossom drink from Pongu Pongu was added to the permanent lineup of available colors.

Banshee Rookery

Adopting a Banshee from the Rookery - Pandora-Adopting a Banshee at the Banshee Rookery

Video of the Banshee Rookery experience.

The Banshee Rookery experience, originally announced as Banshee Connect, allows guests to adopt a replica banshee. In a special rookery area of the store, naturalists assist guests with finding their personal banshee from 11 unique styles, with guests determining the banshee's personality through a combination of hand movements and sounds. Guests are then "bonded" to their banshee by taking an oath to protect the environment on both Pandora and Earth. The naturalist also explains the Na'vi pronunciation and significance of the term "Oel Ngati Kameie" ("I See You" in English), encouraging them to use it to greet other banshee owners. While often described as baby banshees by visitors, the toys are described by employees in Pandora: The World of Avatar as scale-models used by conservationists to assist in their banshee studies.

Previously, guests (with aid from a cast member) were able to remove and handle banshees in the rookery to test them out. This practice ended around December 2020. Since then, the display banshees in the rookery have been zip tied to their perch. Instead of guests being able to purchase one of the pre-used / non-boxed banshees out on display like before (during purchase receiving an empty carboard box with no protective filler or restraints to put the loose banshee in), guests now receive brand new (non-handled) banshees fully prepackaged in a sealed manufacturer box after browsing the rookery.

Updated Banshee Version

An updated banshee version was released on November 21, 2024 for about $90 USD. Their accessories seem to be based on the Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora video game.

List of updated futures:

• Bioluminescence (glowing under black light, but not glow-in-the-dark).
• New wireless remote controller.
• Banshee-to-banshee communication.
• Interaction with wrist banshees and shoulder banshee it is unknown whether or not they will be able to recognize the older banshees.
• Reaction to being pet on the back or chest.
• Same movements of the head, wings, and mouth.
• New accessories.
• All-new packaging.

The updated remote controller as well as the new wireless remote controller both have an added button that is for your banshee to send out a “call” to other interactive banshees; if those banshees are in communication mode, they will respond unless currently being petted. This can only be done in interactive mode, not communication mode in which the user has no control over the banshees movements.

When banshees are in interactive mode, users will have full control over their banshee with input prompting from the remote controller. At the front end of the remote controller in place of a pull trigger is a button (pressed by the user's index finger) that opens the mouth, and unlike the previous version, the sound cannot be toggled off. On the top of the remote controller are three buttons (pressed by the user's thumb); two are arrow shaped and the third is "U" shaped. The arrow buttons (one for left and the other for right) control neck movements; a difference from the previous banshees, which had a slid lever to change the position of the banshee's neck (push up for right and pull down for left). The "U" button below the two arrow buttons controls the wings, which unlike the previous model, has an accompanying sound effect that plays.

Banshee Hatchling

In June 2021, a new banshee themed puppet toy was previewed.

In January 2022, Windtraders introduced an interactive banshee hatchling toy, a mini-version of the regular size puppet. The toy comes with the egg that the banshee is in, a wristband that the banshee can be attached to, and a toy grub. The toy also makes noises like the regular banshees and can communicate with other hatchlings in range. The head and arms can be moved. The interactive hatchling toys cost $39.99. At launch, the banshees sold were red-orange and blue-green. In April 2022, a new blue-purple variant was introduced.

Reception

The interactive banshees are the most popular toy at Pandora: The World of Avatar, having sold out several times since the attraction's opening. Wait times to get a banshee through the Rookery during opening week averaged around 15-30 minutes on top of the 30-60 minute long wait to get into Windtraders. Disney made "grab-and-go" prepackaged Banshees available during opening week for those who didn't want to go through the Rookery. Other sold-out periods after the opening involved 2,000 banshees in stock on one day, but entirely sold out the following day and were replaced with assorted plushies. Scalpers sold the toy on eBay for significant markups after they sold out initially. The popularity of the toys was mentioned by theme park blogs and mainstream news outlets like the LA Times, who previously covered the launch of the attraction.