By Fantasmic Diva
Fantasmic Diva here with some more facts about the Walt Disney World Resort! This time we are focusing on Disney’s Animal Kingdom or DAK for short. It’s one of my favorite parks (ok let’s be honest, I say that about all 4 parks) and there are some real hidden gems there! Let’s dive in!
- Look out for DeVine! Keep your eye out in the trees for a special visitor named DeVine. She is a stilt walker who hides in the shrubbery. The key to finding her is to actually look for a character attendant, the people who travel with characters or members of entertainment with the blue shirts on. She makes a great photo op and she’s really beautiful!
- It’s a wild and crazy tree! The classic tree in the center of the Animal Kingdom has over 250 hand carved animals on its trunk. How many can you find?
- Sweep up the leaves…no wait, don’t! Custodial actually doesn’t actually clean up the leaves on the concrete of the Animal Kingdom. Since they make the atmosphere more authentic looking, you will see them sweeping up straws, napkins and other things that don’t belong in the jungle or savannah but not the leaves!
- Don’t fast pass Everest if you don’t have to. It actually has an amazing queue that ends with a trip through a mini museum dedicated to the legend of the Yeti and those who have gone looking for it. It really puts you in the spirit of the attraction and is incredibly fascinating.
- Developing the park was a wild ride! We all know that Animal Kingdom can be one of the hardest Disney Parks to navigate…well it was originally going to be a lot harder, there was originally going to be no signage throughout the park so that guests felt as though they were really on an adventure…I know I’m glad that they decided against that idea…I get lost enough as it is!
- It’s missing part of the original design. The park was originally going to have a land dedicated to mythical animals like dragons and unicorns. This is the reasoning behind the dragon being on the sign you see when you exit the parking lot and also the reasoning behind parking lots like the Unicorn lot. The land was never build…however, the new Avatar expansion could certainly fulfill part of that original concept.
- The Restaurantosaurous Restaurant has a story! It is modeled to be the dining hall of the research team that came to do the excavation of the Dinoland area. There are chairs on top of the building where they would relax and clothes hanging on the clothesline outside.
- Why are there weird straws and no drink lids? The safety of the animals is of the utmost importance to the cast members of the Animal Kingdom, and hence to cut down on littering that might cause harm to the animals, the cups and straws are biodegradable and the plastic lids are no where to be found.
- What’s with the flags? The flags hanging in the Asia area are replicas of the prayer flags common in that area and they represent earth, water, fire, cloud and sky!
- Look carefully, science nerds! There are three lines of tubing in the loading area of the Dinosaur attraction…look closely at the colors and the chemical formulas on those lines…they are the chemical formulas for ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise!
Hope you enjoyed my little tidbits of trivia for Disney’s Animal Kingdom! It is definitely a full day park if you take your time, relax and really enjoy everything the park has to offer. Have a wild day!
