Disney's Animal Kingdom Park
Our visit to the Animal Kingdom park was eye opening. It also coinceded with
the purchase of a nice digital camera, so that may also have something to do with
it. There is something special about this park/zoo that I seriously doubt
anyone will every able to reproduce. Here are some highlights.
First off, let's talk about the weather in Florida. It is hot. The sun
is actually fairly dangerous if not attended to. This is where trees come
in. The designers of the animal kingdom did a great job making sure that your
walk throughout was nicely shaded, making it comfortable for you to stop
and view animals without wanting to run for cover in the mid day sun.
Disney's Animal Kingdom fearlessly
brings a tremendous and varied supply of wildlife. From the big cat family, numberours
simians, lots of various four legged herd animals, a fantastic aviary and
so much more.
Next the animals need to be displayed in a natural way that makes them comfortable
enough to be active. As you strole through the park you begin to feel like
you are the ones in the zoo and the animals are the ones watching us from their
living rooms. Watching a full grown adult tiger play with a 3 foot diamter
rubber ball it's own personal swimming pool is breath taking. If your house
cat were only 8 feet long.
Most importantly you need to be brought close to the animals. This is generally
a safety issue addressed by putting up ugly fences or other barriers to protect
animals from people and in some cases people from animals.
Disney approaches this by having a large staff of zoologists monitoring open pens
to make sure everyone behaves. The staff is also, of course, an enthusiastic
wealth of knowledge for any visitor to take advantage of. I will leave the
safari ride for you to discover on your own, but wow.
Now, if that wasn't enough, Disney has mixed this learning environment with a most
excellent theme park with world class attractions like water rides, a great roller-coaster,
and others experiences not unlike what you would find in the other Disney World
parks.
For us, visit made us view other zoos differently and honestly, we began seeing
the way even famous old standby's have embrassed a more civilized and integrated
approach to zoology. If the days of the concrete jail cell for animals are not over,
they will be soon.