“Nature is a Supreme Value, it cannot be traded, it can’t be replaced… all of us in some way, can be part of this conservation story.” -Joe Rohde, Imagineer, Executive Designer and Vice President, Creative at Disney, responsible for much of the design of Animal Kingdom Park
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| Perhaps my most favorite picture from our vacation |
What an incredible park! If anyone tells you that Animal Kingdom is just a glorified zoo, know that they must not have visited at the right time, or they're just not into animals, or they don't really care about the earth and conservation and you shouldn't be friends with them anyway.
We LOVED our day at Disney's Animal Kingdom - and I can't help but wonder if it's because this was park number four (or 6 if you count both Universal Parks, 7 if you add in Kennedy Space Center) or that the night before was a torrential downpour or that we were starting to feel the true tiredness of being out of our normal routines for over a week.
None of that tiredness much seemed to matter when we turned the corner at the park entrance and there was the Tree of Life standing tall before us. RDB and I were up _early_ to catch the first bus over to the park for rope-drop/early entry. We made a beeline straight to the back of the park for Kilimanjaro Safaris. and were cued up by cast members at the bridge leading into Africa, as they were not starting the rides until 8am (there went the benefit of early entry!) But honestly, it was a short wait and we were still in the first run of vehicles that left the station.
The 20 minute trek thru the African outback will be a different ride every time simply because you're engaging with live, wild animals. For us, this early in the morning, there were a few fun creatures out an about early to snap photos of. Like the wildebeast, the white rhinos, African painted dogs, giraffes, and long-horned cattle (feeling right at home! Yee-haw!)
After we exited the safari, we waited for the Wildlife Express Train to take us over to Rafiki's Planet Watch were we were going to attend the Animation Experience.
We literally rope-dropped the train at 9:30a and were in the first audience of the day to learn how to draw a famous cartoon character: Pluto!
It was neat, not only to hear about how Walt Disney purposefully brought live animals to the animators to help them draw life-like creatures for the silver screen, but how this was the beginning of the theme of conservation that the Disney Company still pursues thru The Conservation Fund.
A real Disney animator (Mike, for us this morning) takes you thru the steps to draw the character. He joked: you'll noticed that your pencil has no eraser - that's because this is a drawing class, not an erasing class. Easier said than done, Mike! But after about 25 minutes of instruction, RDB and I were both pretty pleased with what we walked away with.
Random tip if you're planning to do this experience: bring an empty paper towel tube with you to roll your art work up and slide into to protect it. Toss that in to your backpack and you *might* be able to get it home without too many dings or dents. (Or just take a few pictures of it with your camera and enjoy your digital version instead!)
We rode the train back over to the main part of the park and walked right in line to the show for It's Tough to be a Bug. Did you know: the Tree of Life actually has a 400-seat theatre inside?! The show itself is in 4-D and I won't spoil any surprises, but I'll tell you this - the audience full of kids around us was riotous and really having a great time! It might be tough to be a bug, but being an honorary bug for the morning wasn't all that difficult at all. In fact, I think we look pretty darn good doing it!
From there, we quickly walked over to our last event of the morning, the Feathered Friends in Flight bird show.
It was a worthwhile half hour to sit and enjoy the insight and humor that our two show hosts provided. Lots of messages about conservation and the importance of doing our part in the effort to keep the wild wild.
One of the tricks that they had taught a bird was to go untie the shoelace of the other host - which was funny as we weren't sure if it was a gag and part of the show or if it was happening in real time - but the bird, instead of grabbing a shoelace, managed to grab the wireless mic cord and ran off stage with it, rendering one of the hosts, well, speechless!
So our other host had to improvise for a bit to fill in space while they got the mic situation figured out. As a professional presenter, I could tell when he 'hit his marks' again and was back into the flow with the cockatiel that a helper had brought out. Though you could tell that it was not in the 'script,' they did an incredible job of 'the show must go on' and we enjoyed the remainder of the exhibit.
From here, RDB and I took a quick trip over to Pandora land to see it during the daylight, knowing that we'd be back to experience the rides there in the evening. After that, we took a break back to the camper during the hot and sunny (and humid, after all that rain!) mid-day hours, before returning in the early evening for our dinner reservation at Tiffins.
Tiffins is an interesting restaurant, it's almost an art gallery and is certainly a feast for the eyes. The sketches above were from Joe Rohde, the main designer of the park. We were grateful to have our reservation at the exact time we did, as the skies opened up and down poured again while we were enjoying our very delicious surf and turf. At the end of our meal we were given the camel drawing on the left. I ask our waiter if I could keep it - yes! In fact, they're a series of 12 drawings, so we need to come back again 11 times to collect the others.
I'm not against that idea!
We opted out of a dessert at Tiffins- though there was plenty choose from, they all had some form of chocolate (chocolate had caffeine, so it's a no for us) and instead went back over the market in Africa and enjoyed our first Mickey-shaped treats! They were cute, and perfect!
I couldn't catch a picture of one, but in the photo above of the big leaves, six-legged frog-like creatures were hopping from one to another; you could see their shadows and the leaves would bend each time they jumped from one to another.
Our first time thru it was 35 minutes in the standby line (though the app said 65 minutes - I wanted to see how accurate their estimates were), but we could see that the line was much shorter, so we went thru a second time and it was less than 7 minutes! The rain earlier, and the fact that it was the last hour or so of the day really made a difference.
Pandora at night was truly magical; the lighting and colors, the damp from the rain and all the lush landscaping - it really felt like you had stepped into another world. It's amazing to think of all that there is out there in the universe, and after a day in Animal Kingdom you really leave with an appreciation of how important it is to protect and conserve this incredible earth we live on.
From rope drop to fireworks (kinda - we did technically take a mid-day break, and technically, they don't have fireworks at AK (for obvious reasons: the animals!)) It was a long day, but a really good day, and we definitely got in everything that we wanted.
This marked the tipping point of our Disney park days: 4 behinds us, and now only 3 ahead..... but oh, there was still so much fun and so many adventures to have in that time!
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Be sure to check out our other posts from Tent On Wheels at DISNEY!
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