Not a Half-Day Park

Today is, as I’m sure you’ve heard, the 50th Earth Day. We never cared about the Earth before 1970, and we certainly care about it a lot more now. Ahem. That anniversary aside, I wanted to talk about another anniversary today, though one that’s a bit too bittersweet to celebrate remotely. 22 years ago today, the fourth and currently final theme park of the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando opened: Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

The title of today’s post is a reference to a fairly well-known phrase bandied about regarding Disney’s Animal Kingdom, that it’s “not a zoo”. And it’s also a reference to the fact that, for a long time, the easy criticism of DAK, as the acronym goes, was that it was the kind of theme park you could experience in full in less than a full day. (This is not a good thing.) That perception has long ago changed, thanks to the arrival of an Avatar-themed land, a nighttime entertainment show, and other flashy add-ons.

My potentially unpopular opinion is that Disney’s Animal Kingdom was always a full-day park. It just required its guests to accept that part of that full day would be spent not riding really fast attractions. I, sadly, can only base my assertion on the pre-Avatar world: I last visited Walt Disney World in 2012, before Avatar getting a theme-park area was more than a gleam in Bob Iger’s and James Cameron’s eyes. (At that point, there were just going to be two Avatar sequels, and the first of them was definitely coming out in theaters in 2015. Ahem.)

While Camp Minnie-Mickey was in place of Pandora — and as you can imagine from the land name, it was more geared towards kids, and my wife and I were childless at the time — the only thing that kept Disney’s Animal Kingdom from running into the late-night hours then was the lack of a nighttime show. Rivers of Light is there now, and from what I’ve seen online, it’s quite a lovely experience. While I wish I could have enjoyed it back in 2012, what I did enjoy at the park had little to do with identifiable intellectual property and everything to do with the basic concept underpinning the park’s existence.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom boasts two wonderful, calming walking trails. While the idea of spending time on walking trails may seem antithetical to maximizing all the time you have on a big vacation, going through the Maharajah Jungle Trek or the Gorilla Falls Expedition Trail (it used to be called the Pangani Forest Expedition Trail when my wife and I last visited) and seeing so many of the animals who live permanently in the Kingdom can be as much fun as experiencing the Expedition Everest roller coaster.

And one of the park’s major attractions is the Kilimanjaro Safaris ride, in which you sit in an oversized jeep and are taken through the massive amount of open land dedicated in the park to lions, elephants, and other majestic animals. Another fun experience my wife and I took advantage of in 2012 was the Wild Africa Trek add-on (a phrase which here means “Yes, you have to spend more money to do it”). The Wild Africa Trek is a multi-hour experience in which you and a few other guests are led through parts of the park that let you get a lot closer to many of the animals you might otherwise just hope to see on the Kilimanjaro Safaris. My wife and I got perilously close to some crocodiles, walked over a rickety old rope bridge (with full awareness that it’s really not that rickety or old), and generally managed to enjoy ourselves while learning something in the process.

Even now, I feel like Disney’s Animal Kingdom is a bit underrated. It’s not perfect — the Dinosaur attraction is still themed to the 2000 animated film of the same name barely anyone remembers, and the Kali River Rapids water ride is too similar to the Grizzly River Run at Disney’s California Adventure for my tastes. (You could say the same about Dinosaur and the Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland.) But this park’s charms are many. The richly detailed design, the 360-degree atmosphere, the thrill of its best attractions, the food evoking different continental cuisine, and more all add up to a wonderful experience that can’t be completed in a half-day.

I know none of us can be there today. But happy birthday anyway, Disney’s Animal Kingdom.