Rafiki's Planet Watch Lets You Get Up Close with the Animals

“Rafiki’s Planet Watch lets you get up close with some (barnyard) animals and offers lots of opportunities for conservation education.”

Rafiki’s Planet Watch is pretty easy to miss as you go racing towards Expedition Everest, but don’t pass it by! We had always skipped it both because we were in a rush to get somewhere else and we had no idea what it really was. So this time after wandering the trails for awhile, we decided to get on that funny looking train and head on over to see what all the fuss was about.

The train lets you out at a part of the park that you can only get to by riding it, which is pretty cool.  A path then leads you to a building where they have TONS of displays about animals and the environment.  I recommend skipping the one on the bugs if you don’t like bugs.  Ugh. There’s chances for character meet and greets too: Jiminy Cricket was there signing autographs and taking pictures with people when we showed up!  Among the many exhibits they have, they actually have a huge windowed area where you can see people working behind the scenes to care for the animals.

Once you get your fill of the exhibits and all that learning, you head outside to the petting zoo area! This is where sheep and cows and llamas and goats and probably things I don’t remember actually just sort of walk around, chilling with you.  When they get too fed up of being pet, they head into a small roped off area to chomp on some hay, then it’s out to walk around with you again.  It’s really pretty cool.  I was totally going to hug a goat until I looked into its eyes.  Have you ever looked into the eyes of a goat?  Well, I was not at all terrified of it and even petted it as you can see from the picture above.  Kind of.

It really is a great part of the Animal Kingdom that often gets overlooked, so don’t miss it while you are there!