The tours offered at Disney's Animal Kingdom offer a different and often educational look behind the scenes of Disney's unique park.

“The two tours offered at Disney’s Animal Kingdom offer a different and often educational look behind the scenes of Disney’s unique park.”

Hello! Adam here again, offering a biased tip to continue the week of Animal Kingdom focused tips. I tend to believe that Disney’s Animal Kingdom is the culmination of everything the Imagineers have learned in working at Disney and that the park itself is not just a place where one can go to see art, but is itself genuinely artistic. Not only does every land have a theme or every restaurant have a theme, but every store and kiosk. In few other places at Walt Disney World does the story of a place come alive quite as it does at the Animal Kingdom, which is why I love to learn more about it at every turn.

There are three tours that are offered only at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, the Backstage Safari, Wild By Design and the recently added Wild Africa Trek. Your normal host (and my abnormal fiancee!) is not exactly a tour-loving girl, often feeling that time spent on a tour could be better used riding Expedition Everest over and over until the lettuce cups and potstickers consumed earlier threaten to take their own trip down the Forbidden Mountain. And then ride ONE MORE TIME! Still, I’ve managed to drag her on both tours, and neither time did she regret going.

Wild By Design is exactly what it sounds like, but it’s also so much more. It is a walking tour through the various lands of the park where your time will be split between the guide offering you insight into the story behind the land as well as offering more reality-based looks into what was involved in the creation of the various buildings, how the Imagineers prepared for the tremendous project before them and then executed what we finally see before us. Africa and Asia seem obvious here, as there is so much to see and learn about Harambe and Anandapur, but even the much maligned Dinorama has a story to share and once you know a little bit more about Chester and Hester you might even grow a certain fondness of the beautiful park’s tackiest spot.

Unlike Wild By Design, Backstage Safari takes you, you guessed it, backstage. You get to see what goes into the day to day activities of keeping the animals healthy and entertained. The animals on display aren’t there to perform for you, they aren’t animatronics ready to start a show whenever people come by, so you learn how it is that Disney coaxes the animals out so they can be appreciated by people on the safari and walking the trail, while also keeping the animals stimulated. When we took the tour our trip included a visit to the rhino paddock, where we actually came face to face with a rhino and got to pet her on the rump and touch her horn. As someone who truly loves rhinoceroses, it was an amazing experience I will never forget. We also got to go by the elephant paddocks but did not get to pet them. As your usual tipmaster, who has summered in South Africa and gone on more than one safari, can tell you, elephants are kind of jerks. The tour continues on to the kitchens, where the food the animals eat is prepared every day and a new appreciation is gained for the sort of culinary achievements that even Epcot’s World Showcase doesn’t approach. Frozen mouse-cicles, anyone? Finally you go behind the scenes at the veteranarian facilities, where the animals are taken care of when they grow sick and have their regular checkups. In the end is a brief, not overly-preachy lecture about animal conservation. It’s really amazing that what seems to many people as just a theme park or just a zoo is actually a genuine, working research facility where people every day are working to help the cause of animals worldwide. 

The last and most recently added tour, the Wild Africa Trek, is an extreme version of the Kilimanjaro Safari. It is the closest you’re likely to ever get to some of the animals that populate Disney’s Pangani Forest, including hippos, Nile crocodiles and more as a personal guide takes you from one amazing sight to another. I haven’t done this tour and I understand it’s one of the more expensive ways to spend a day at Disney, but just reading the description at the Disney World website and the reviews over at Allears has me certain that it will be the number one thing I whine and beg for next time we head down to the World.