Disney announces new ride in Animal Kingdom

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Walt Disney World officials marked the fifth anniversary of Animal Kingdom on April 22 by announcing plans to build a new coaster-like ride for the park, which has lagged behind its sister parks in attendance.

The "Expedition Everest" ride will open in 2006.

Disney officials also announced that its NASA-inspired "Mission: Space" ride would open Aug. 15 and that the much-delayed opening of the first phase of the Pop Century Resort would be Dec. 14.

Animal Kingdom opened in 1998 to much hoopla. At 500 acres, it is Disney's largest park and boasted a large menagerie of exotic animals. Despite beating rival parks at Universal Orlando and SeaWorld, Animal Kingdom was never able to match the attendance of the other Disney parks in Florida: Magic Kingdom, Epcot and Disney-MGM Studios.

The story line of the 200-foot Expedition Everest has riders boarding a fake mountain railway destined for the foot of Mount Everest. The train rolls through thick bamboo forests and waterfalls until the track ends in a mass of twisted metal. The train then shoots through mountain caverns and canyons until the riders meet an abominable snowman.

Mission: Space will allow visitors to board a four-person simulator where they will be flat on their backs for liftoff. Using hydraulic lifts, the ride will create the feeling of intense G-forces as a spacecraft escapes Earth's atmosphere.

Disney postponed the opening of the 5,760-room Pop Century Resort in the wake of the tourism slowdown caused by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

England cathedral to charge admission fee

YORK, England -- York Minster, one of the most visited cathedrals in Britain, will impose an admission charge because voluntary donations are leaving a huge deficit, church officials say.

"It is a very difficult decision but we really have no alternative," says the Very Rev. Raymond Furnell, dean of the cathedral church. He said the city of York in northern England had to overcome a deficit of $950,000.

The amount of the charge was not immediately announced. York Minster had been asking for voluntary donations of $5.50, but found that three-fourths of the 1.3 million visitors per year paid nothing.

Archbishop of York David Hope says he was "deeply saddened" by the decision.

"Cathedrals are places for prayer and worship -- a house of God -- and our nation needs sacred space more than it has for many centuries," Hope says.

"I hope this decision will be reversed at some time in the future when the Minster is back on a firm financial foundation."

York Minister is one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in northern Europe and its construction dates from the 13th century.

-- From wire reports