Disney's Animal Kingdom: Encyclopedia - Disney's Animal Kingdom

Disney's Animal Kingdom

Disney's Animal Kingdom is a theme park at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. It opened on April 22, 1998. Covering more than 500 acres (2 km²) in size, it is themed around live animals and extinct dinosaurs.

The park's advertising makes frequent use of the made-up word "nahtazu", pronounced "not a zoo," to emphasize that it offers more than animal displays and that the it aims for more of an open and free 'safari' feel in regard to the animals.

Disney's Animal Kingdom - Attractions

The park is made up of seven themed lands.

This area, immediately inside the park's entrance, contains exhibits of live animals including macaws, anteaters, babirusa, and muntjac.

Disney's Animal Kingdom - Discovery Island

Formerly Safari Village, this is the center of the park, the hub from which all other lands can be reached. Its centerpiece is the "Tree of Life", a fourteen-story-tall (145 feet, 44m) artificial tree on which are carved images of more than three hundred twenty-five animals.

• It's Tough to be a Bug!, a 3-D show with special effects (similar to Honey, I Shrunk the Audience), located beneath the Tree of Life.
• Animals located on Discovery Island include lemurs, flamingos, otters, kangaroos, storks, cranes, and deer.

Disney's Animal Kingdom - Camp Minnie-Mickey

• Pocahontas and Her Forest Friends, a show for children about the importance of nature
• Festival of the Lion King, a live show which guests consistently rate as the best live show on Disney property

Disney's Animal Kingdom - Africa

• Kilimanjaro Safaris, a safari in an open-air vehicle through an area made to look like an African savannah in which animals roam freely. Elephants, giraffes, lions, rhinoceroses, zebras, impala, crocodiles, hippopotamuses can all be seen. The ride also displays a moral involving animals being illegally hunted and killed. Halfway through the trek it is reported that a female elephant and her baby have been kidnapped by poachers and your safari party must rescue them.
• Pangani Forest Exploration Trail, displaying exhibits of birds, fish, gorillas, hippopotamuses, okapis, black-and-white colobus monkeys, and naked mole rats.

Disney's Animal Kingdom - Rafiki's Planet Watch

Formerly Conservation Station and still accessible by train only, this area contains small animals, a petting zoo with domesticated goats, and exhibits teaching about conservation efforts. The veterinary hospital's viewing window allows guests to watch medical procedures conducted by the veterinary staff.

Disney's Animal Kingdom - Asia

• Flights of Wonder, a show of bird behaviors
• Kali River Rapids, a white-water rafting ride. The moral in this ride is about rainforest destruction as your boat passes by an abandoned illegal logging camp and a destroyed, burning forest.
• Maharajah Jungle Trek, a walking tour of Komodo dragons, bats, tigers, exotic birds, tapirs, and other animals
• Expedition Everest, a rollercoaster housed in a two-hundred-foot-tall mountain (currently under construction and not yet open to guests)

Disney's Animal Kingdom - DinoLand U.S.A.

• The Boneyard, a playground where parents can relax while kids play on slides and "excavate" fossils.
• Tarzan Rocks!, a stage show featuring roller-skating actors and live rock music. The attraction will close in August 2005, to be moved to Hong Kong Disneyland with the same cast.
• DINOSAUR (formerly Countdown to Extinction), a thrill ride using ride technology similar to Disneyland's Indiana Jones Adventure. Guests are taken into the past to see the meteor that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
• Animals located in Dinoland include an American Crocodile, Abdim's Storks, and Asian brown tortoises.

DinoLand also contains "Dino-Rama!", an area made to look like a tacky 1950s roadside attraction built on an old parking lot. Dino-Rama! has been criticized by Disney fans for containing only "off-the-shelf" attractions (whack-a-mole and other carnival games) similar to what other parks offer, and for charging guests money for each play.

• Primeval Whirl, a Wild Mouse roller coaster with spinning ride vehicles.
• TriceraTop Spin, a ride similar to the Magic Kingdom's "Dumbo" ride.

Disney's Animal Kingdom - Trivia

Though offering several counter service restaurants and snack stands, this park contains only one table service restaurant, a Rainforest Cafe, located just outside the park's gates.

Disney's Animal Kingdom closes earlier than other parks in the Walt Disney World Resort, usually at five or six o'clock in the evening. The animals are said to require a strict schedule to avoid stress, so even on nights when the park is open later, animals will still usually be brought inside around five o'clock. Another notable difference from other Disney parks is that Animal Kingdom does not have a fireworks show in consideration of skittish animals.

Originally the park was divided into three sections: live animals, extinct animals (dinosaurs, etc.), and mythical animals (dragons, unicorns, etc.). The area for the mythical animals was to be called Beastlie Kingdomme, to have contained a dragon rollercoaster and a unicorn hedge maze and have been located where Camp Minnie-Mickey is now. [1] Plans for this area were scrapped when the park's development budget became tight, and the Imagineers who had been working on it were laid off and quickly hired by the Universal Orlando Resort to create the Dueling Dragons coasters for its Islands of Adventure theme park. Though Disney's Animal Kingdom does not contain any attractions featuring mythical animals, the theme lives on in the park's logo (which contains a dragon) and its parking lot (which has a Unicorn section). Also, dragon sound effects and even an occasional fireball emanate from the trees nearby the footbridge leading to Camp Minnie-Mickey.

Development costs for this park up to the time of its opening are estimated to have been US$800 million.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Disney's Animal Kingdom", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Kingdom, used and available under the GNU Free Documentation License.