Since 1970 – fueled by the Clean Water Act and the movement toward environmental education – April 22 has been celebrated as Earth Day: a borderless celebration of the power of environmental protection and our one planet. But for Imagineering fans, there’s perhaps been no bigger celebration of this international holiday than the opening of Disney’s Animal Kingdom in 1998.
Considered a masterwork of Imagineering, this magnum opus of themed entertainment design was made possible by a team of dedicated researchers, designers, engineers, animal care experts, and scientists often exemplified by the park’s lead designer (and the Lost Legend: The Adventurers Club), Joe Rohde. A scholar, a philosopher, an artist, and a true-life adventurer (literally serving as the inspiration for several members of S.E.A.), Rohde is an icon of modern Imagineering… and he’s letting us in on his thought process.
Thanks to the worldwide closure of Disney Parks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Disney’s Animal Kingdom isn’t open to guests for its 22nd anniversary – April 22, 2020. But thankfully, Joe Rohde has been leading us on a roundtrip tour of the park via his personal Instagram, sharing his own photographs from inside.
Here, we’ve collected a handful of the sensational lessons we’ve learned from this makeshift social media tour, and we’re sharing them here with the hope that – like us – you won’t see Animal Kingdom the same next time you step inside. Note that here and there, we’ve edited Rohde’s original comments for clarity or brevity, but we’ll link to his original for every lesson we’ve learned. We didn’t think it was possible to appreciate Walt Disney World’s fourth gate more, but wow… Do these comments make you see Animal Kingdom differently?
1. An ideal icon
When you’re designing an icon that has to hold its own against Cinderella Castle, Spaceship Earth, and the Hollywood Tower Hotel, you have to bring your A-game. The “Tree of Life” is the term used for a 19th century diagram depicting shared ancestories and the variations and adaptations of life on Earth through species. But in 1998, it also become the undisputed icon of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The 145-foot tall sculpture of a baobob tree is actually built around the refitted base of an oil platform, boasting 8,000 branches and 102,000 leaves. But how did the Tree of Life come about conceptually?
What we learned from Rohde: “Because the park is dedicated to the themes of animals and their relationships to humans (good and bad), we needed a non-architectural icon… something “natural.” Since nature is everywhere anyway, we also need to signify that this place is exceptional… in some way “magical.” Thus… a strange tree. A tree whose body disappears under patient observation to become nothing but animals. A metaphor for the rewards nature can provide to the careful observer.“
2. A curious collection
Radiating outward from the Tree of Life are some of the first animal exhibits guests encounter in the park. These naturalistic habitats are carved out from the roots and tendrills of the tree. Unlike the park’s Asia and Africa areas, whose animal inhabitants are dictacted by geography, there’s seemingly no thread that connects the animals housed in the Discovery Island habitats. Unsurprisingly with Joe at the helm, though, there is a connection between the Discovery Island animals.
What we learned from Rohde: “When we originally chose animals just around the tree, we chose them for their physical diversity, as demonstrations of the vast differences in shape as animals adapt to their various ecosystems. Kangaroos, porcupines, flamingos, macaws. Each of these animals has strikingly unique adaptations. A marsupial deer with the body of a giant hare. A rodent with really pokey hair. A bird with an upside down mouth. A giant parrot with nutcracker jaws. Something is at work here. A principal of life.
These are observations which can be made but are not required. Because this is not an educational facility per se, we want people to pursue ideas at their own pace.”
3. Discovered details
Surrounding the Tree of Life is the park’s central land, Discovery Island (originally named Safari Village until enough folks who couldn’t find Kilimanjaro Safaris prompted a rewrite). Unlike Africa, Asia, Dinoland, and even Pandora, Discovery Island doesn’t need to represent a real place. Instead, it’s “a place that represents an idea;” a neutral port from which to depart to the park’s more grounded lands.
What we learned from Rohde: “Discovery Island “is basically an architectural revisitation of the same themes expressed by the Tree of Life in its center. The beauty, diversity, the importance of animals, only this time instead of being expressed as a natural object, the same idea is expressed as art on the surface of buildings and around them. The buildings are not from any particular region but are reminiscent of tropical architecture around the world. I know a lot of people spend time looking at the animals on the tree… But I bet far fewer people take the time to look for all the animals on the buildings, both inside and outside.
And if you pay close attention, there are these very subtle groupings to the design. Animals who migrate. Animals who eat each other. Animals who disguise themselves. The murals inside Pizzafari have pretty obvious underlying themes. In this case, rather than tell you exactly what, I think would be interesting, when the park reopens, to go check and see if you can figure out what the groupings might be.”
4. Shuffling shows
Continuing the artisan depiction of relationships throughout Discovery Island, the spectacular Flame Tree Barbecue is packed and two- and three-dimensional depictions of predator-prey relaltionships – a pretty funny thing to surround you while you eat barbecue, when you really think about it… Yet somehow, the Flame Tree Barbecue area is restful and relaxing. It turns out that the area doesn’t look at all the way that was initially planned, even if in true Imagineering form, the final product is all the more spectacular because of it…
What we learned from Rohde: “Early in design of the park there was a shuffle of programming. The Tree originally had a restaurant under it with a view of the river. The Flame Tree location was an amphitheater. We decided to put a bigger show under the Tree so we abandoned the amphitheater and moved the restaurant to the amphitheater location.
Because this happened after our landscape design was pretty well defined, we had to fit the restaurant into the amphitheater shape. That could have been a design problem, but it ended up creating a really wonderful space. It’s loosely inspired by some of the places we visited in Bali…little pavilions surrounding a reflecting pond.” … “The architectural ornamentation is inspired by colorful folk art mainly Oaxacan carvings, Peruvian Moche ceramics, and American folk art carvings…not Balinese at all.”
5. Bridges between
Discovery Island and the Tree of Life together act almost like a “Hub” for the park, with the “spokes” radiating outward into the Oasis, Pandora, Africa, Asia, and Dinoland. Because of the encircling Discovery River that flows around the Tree, any journey forward meaning crossing a bridge (a narrative tool used in Universal’s Islands of Adventure as well), instantaneously “flashing” guests between continents, planets, and worlds. As you can imagine, that’s no accident.
What learned from Rohde: “Crossing a bridge is one of the time honored narrative symbols of change. It is such a common metaphor that it has passed into normal language… we talk about bridging between subjects, music bridges, etc. So it’s not just for functionality that bridges separate us from the four main narrative lands of the park. It’s symbolic, like a gate or tunnel. The river itself may change over time and has already, but I think the bridge motif is likely to remain.”
6. Creatures with context
Harkening back to the park’s opening motto, Animal Kingdom spent much of its early life convincing guests that it is “Nahtazū.” And despite its focus on live animals and its practice of arranging its animal collection by continent (a favorite organizing principle of zoos), it’s easy to see what makes Disney’s park different. It’s not just the hyper-detailed environments built by true artisans after extensive research and consultation, or the rides and attractions… it’s the context; the story; the deeper themes of the inherent value of nature of humanity’s relationship alongside and within it. Turns out, there are threads connecting animals within each of the park’s lands.
What we learned from Rohde: “If you pay attention to most of Disney’s Animal Kingdom You’ll see that when you come up on animals, it is usually in the context of some story. In Africa that story ultimately reflects upon the question of resources, like ivory and rhino horn. Asia is chiefly concerned with habitat loss and habitat use and how animals and humans can live side-by-side; in Pandora, with pollution.”
7. Fiction, but not fantasy
What we learned from Rohde: “People who know the park will comment on its “authenticity. “This word makes me a bit uncomfortable, since the entire thing is fictional. I think accuracy and realism are more apt terms. The stories that we tell are pseudo-documentary. They relate to real ideas, but are artificially constructed. We want you to understand that you are inside of a story, just like at the Magic Kingdom, but you are not inside a fantasy.
So let’s go to theme and talk about why the design reflects particular themes. One of the most important themes underlying all of Disney’s Animal Kingdom is the supremacy and intrinsic value of nature. A highfalutin’ theme is useless unless it is so clearly expressed through Design and action that you don’t need to say it. In this case, the supreme value of nature is expressed by the dominance of landscape over architecture, the dominance of organic forms over geometric forms, the dominance of accident and improvisation over plan and design, and the dominance of the forces of nature over man made objects.”
7. Really reality?
Crossing the literal and metaphorical bridge from Discovery Island to Africa begins a change in the park’s design and the emergence of something vastly different from Discovery Island: realism. Its lands are real and habitable, packed with nuance and detail. But even though they may look like postcards of real places, they’re still fictional; passed through a lens of fantasy. And even here in this photorealistic imaginary place, we – the visitors – have a role to play.
What we learned from Rohde: “None of our lands are supposed to be geopolitically real like say, Kenya. Harambe looks a lot like Lamu in Kenya, but not in a replicative way, and there are substantial stylistic departures. It’s more like a smash-up of Lamu-Kenya and Arusha-Tanzania. Both are a kind of mercantile border town, as is Harambe.
The word Harambe means “let’s work together or pull together.” Implicitly on behalf of wildlife. What can we read in this environment? Clearly multiple levels of history and conquest, as with Lamu. There’s a Portuguese fort, some remnants of Omani reign, a British Colonial era, and Independence in 1961. Must be a valuable place. The building are old and weathered, but not intended to look neglected, and there’s lots of evidence of reutilization and upcycling…from economic stress? So people are striving here. I mean, the municipal logo is a Maasai shield and an industrial gear with the word ”enterprise.”
8. Living village
What we learned from Rohde: “Our little town of Harambe has gotten bigger over the years. Now it’s nearly the size of a real African town. It has a few neighborhoods. Over by the theater in the old fort is kind of the Arts district. Then there the Main Street. Then there’s the market street over by the train tracks. The vibes are pretty distinct. It’s not like we had this plan at the beginning. But as challenges or opportunities arise you have to engage them using what you have. The Market street was really just a way to add dining.
The Festival of the Lion King show used to be in a land we totally got rid off, Camp Minnie-Mickey. It was still super popular and it went better in Africa anyway, so we added it. Any of these assignments could be done to the letter of the law with no deeper consideration and the same functions would exist without any added cache, but why do that? It’s going to take the same amount of time and cost the same amount of money. So why not line up and organize your thinking before you begin work, so that the end result is more powerful than just adding another thing.
None of our designs are as simple as the execution of some ancient plan from 1991. They are a blend of creative intention and practical realities. Intentionally not change, but reality changes every day… As we see right now.”
9. Thoughtful tourism
In broaching the sensative subjects of conversation and culture, even Animal Kingdom’s “ficiton, but not fantasy” recreations like Harambe still must contend with the real geopolitical happenings of the real world. Colonialism – the practice of occupying, controlling, and exploiting other countries – isn’t just a historical menace… it’s a very real practice in the world today. How can we – visitors to Central Florida – see ourselves in Africa or Asia with a positive, productive role to play in aligning with the park’s theme?
What we learned from Rohde: “We are going on Safari. We are not going into the wilds of Africa (colonialist concept [by the way]) but into Harambe Wildlife Reserve, a presumptive government entity. We are clients of a commercial entity Kilimanjaro Safaris…I mean, the attraction marquee is just a billboard at the edge of town.
Now, here’s why that’s all relevant. In such a palpably commercial place, where people are clearly striving to get ahead, what is the value of elephants vs elephant ivory and rhinos vs rhino horn? This is what wildlife conservation is… A value equation. And the value at Disney’s Animal Kingdom is The Intrinsic Value of Nature as supreme and untradeable. However subtle and nuanced, that is conflict, which drives narrative.”
10. Staggering Safari
There’s not just a hefty conceptual lean to Kilimajaro Safaris; there’s a logistical one, too. In fact, in creating the park’s opening day anchor attraction, Kilimanjaro Safaris, Imagineers balanced immense scale, realism, pacing, efficiency, and experience…
What we learned from Rohde: “The Safari alone is bigger than the guest circulation area of the park. This may be obvious, but Kilimanjaro Safaris is laid out just like any theme park ride, just on a bigger scale. The ride path curves back and forth not unlike the ride path of Pirates of the Caribbean, and the land rises and falls gently but enough to block the view of how many vehicles are really out there. So there are scenes, just like in a ride.
The vehicles we use are reminiscent of South African vehicles serving the lodges at Krueger National Park. A real Safari is so much more than we can offer, in time and scale. This, like the rest, is a fictional representation. But it’s a pretty good visual approximation.
There are real Safaris you can take where it’s just you and your private driver. But the middle class version of Safari in Africa can involve pretty big crowds…and unlike a theme park…nobody manages throughput. There could be upwards of fifty cars surrounding a cheetah and her cubs. So, after our first trip we knew we could beat that kind of crowding just by having a dispatch interval.”
11. Stop and see
What we learned from Rohde: “Gorilla Falls Nature Trail is a pedestrian experience into the jungles adjacent to our wildlife reserve. On a real safari in Africa […] you have the opportunity to stop and look as long as you want. We can’t offer that to thousands of guests on a safari that is actually a theme park ride. So we have a nature walk which allows you to see small creatures, and allows you to take your time.
It features a family of lowland gorillas, which are sexy and impressive, yes, but I don’t know how often you’re ever going to get a chance to see an African Weaverbird make a nest, or ever see a naked mole rat, or a jacana. Because there is no ride system, people often undervalue these experiences… But, at a place like Disney’s Animal Kingdom, where the best rewards come from slowing down and observing closely, the nature walks are some of the highest value for the investment that you can get.
Data from zoos suggest that people spend an average of 30 seconds looking at an animal exhibit. That’s really not enough time. If you wait for mother nature, she will put on a show. But you have to wait.”
12. Harmonious cohabitation
Crossing another bridge to the park’s Asia, guests encounter a very different world. And though you may not have recognized it before, there’s a brilliant thematic differentiation between the relationship of people and animals in Asia compared to Africa…
What we learned from Rohde: “Africa is meant to show a strong contrast between where the humans are and where the animals are. In Asia there is no such place. Animals are everywhere and humans are everywhere and they have lived together in some kind of not-always-harmonious balance for a very long time.
Some of this is due to spiritual and religious ideas about non-violence, and so our Asia features a lot of representation of shrines and ritual structures. We also try to keep these from being overly specific…A bit like the real country of Nepal where it’s sometimes very hard to tell if something is Hindu or Buddhist. As with Africa, we are not depicting famous places, nor particularly urban places. These are more rural traditional places, out at the edge, where the world of animals and people come together most vividly.”
13. Cultivated kingdom
What we learned from Rohde: “At Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Asia really means South Asia and Southeast Asia… Where are you find tigers. We try not to use geopolitical boundaries because those aren’t relevant to animals. So our Asia is where you might go if you expected to see Tigers.
We have styled the entire thing as The Kingdom of Anandapur. It’s something like India something like Nepal and something like parts of Indonesia. As with Africa, we want everyone to have a sense of going on an adventure, so even if you were from India, you walk around here going “I haven’t been to this part of the country”…”
14. Native narrative
What we learned from Rohde: “It’s important to remember that all of these lands are fictional. And because they are fictional, they have been edited and focused in an artificial way. Our Africa is deliberately hyper-commercial. Our Asia is focused on the harmony and disharmony of use of space. Habitat competition vs accommodation.
The tigers live in an abandoned hunting lodge. The white water raft trip goes through an illegally logged Forest. The train in Expedition Everest cuts through a forbidden part of the mountains. The Gibbons and Siamangs live right in the middle of town amidst ruins under restoration. This is a bit of design hyperbole, but it’s meant to indicate this idea of humans and animals living cheek by jowl in the same spaces. In the real south and Southeast Asia, leopards live under your porch, monkeys steal food out of your kitchen, swallows make nests in the ceiling of your shop.”
15. Shrine of the bronze yeti
What we learned from Rohde: “I think most fans of the park are aware of the other peculiarity in this area, which is the shrine associated with Expedition Everest. This shrine, which is also a composite of styles mimics the silhouette of the mountains and holds a statue of the yeti as a protector spirit. This protector spirit motif is pretty consistent across a huge area. It’s usually a fierce looking being striding sideways, with one arm raised and one extended downwards, sometime holding ritual items or with an open palm. In our case the upraised arm of the yeti is holding the mountain itself.
We adopted this motif for the yeti statues because the yeti is perceived in some oral traditions as exactly this kind of protector spirit. There are no real yeti in this pose because of the concept of an avatar. When the yeti is acting as a defender of sacred places it is an avatar of one of the divine protectors of the four directions. They look human. So we worked with Nepalese artists to create a fusion of the two ideas, the actual yeti and the yeti as divine protector. Bronze casters in Kathmandu made the statues.”
16. Cheaters never prosper
Moving closer to the Modern Marvel: Expedition Everest, guests enter the village of Serka Zong at the base of the Forbidden Mountains. Rohde and his team layered on design work to make the village and the mountains “visually rhyme,” with “crusty, ragged, irregular” construction that would show that the buildings had been made of the same earth that formed the Himalayas, with the mechanical train of Expedition Everest looking out of place, and like an “intervention.” But the story of Serka Zong is, at its heart, one of respect for tradition, sacred places, and the hard-faught pilgrimages it takes to reach them.
What we learned from Rohde: “A lot of the stories at Animal Kingdom contrast commercial values with the intrinsic value of nature. This story contrasts the commercial appeal of a rapid shortcut with the whole idea of pilgrimage and restricted sacred spaces. In Tibetan culture these are real things called begyuls. They are areas considered to be so sacred that nothing human can happen in them: no hunting, no agriculture, no buildings except perhaps a single temple.
In our story, Entrepreneurs have revitalized an old tea train and are using it to run a bypass route to get up to the Khumbu region below Everest. Otherwise you’d have to walk and it would take many days. But the train goes through the Forbidden Mountains, a begyul, guarded by the yeti.”
17. Dead dinos
Perhaps the most controversial and misunderstood land at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Dinoland gives us a way to see non-avian dinosaurs as a pop culture creation as much as extinct creatures. Speaking of which, the design of Dinoland represents some of the last pop culture work around dinosaurs before their physical image changed in pop culture to incorporate feathers.
What we learned from Rohde: “The interesting thing about dinosaurs is that they are created by our imagination as a result of research and speculation. The soft tissue and bone of dinosaurs is replaced by mineral in the process of fossilization… Making them officially “rocks.” We turn them back into dinosaurs by thinking about them.
Because of this, there is always debate about their true nature. That debate is embedded in the land in the context of many of the graphics. Now, we haven’t updated those graphics since 1998, but the spirit is still there. Dinoland has a lot of humor and because of that I think we can relax some of the seriousness of some of the other themes and get away with some hijinx.”
18. Storyosaurus
Admittedly, Dinoland USA is not quite like the others… A pastiche of small town, U.S.A. caught in the midst of a fossil discovery and the invasion of (and tet-a-tet between) tourists, archaeologists, and locals, every detail in the land is part of a story that, arguably, too few guests pick up on.
What we learned from Rohde: “It’s a quirky little world we’ve imagined for Dinoland USA. Diggs County must be somewhere between East Texas and Florida on a highway where folks might stop with the kids to spend a day. (I think we started with Texas and settled on Florida.)
There is an owner called the Dino Institute. It seems to all be run by a more corporate entity. There must be college students everywhere, because they form the working class of any excavation. In theory Restaurantosaurus must also be the dorm, with rooms out back because it’s virtually become their clubhouse/frat house. The -OSAURUS, part of the sign is supposed to be a college prank. I assume that the building is older, like it used to be a fish camp or something.”
19. Which came first?
In our in-depth Imagineering look into the Modern Marvel: DINOSAUR, we brought up the long-running question around its origin. Was it merely a coincidence that the 1998 ride – then called Countdown to Extinction – featured the same protagonist (an iguanodon) and antagonist (a carnotaurus) as the CGI film DINOSAUR that would debut two years later and that it would be renamed for? Thanks to Joe, we have our answer…
What we learned from Rohde: “Dinosaur is one of our few IP-based attractions [at Animal Kingdom]. At the time, the film had groundbreaking CGI effects. Originally there was a Styracosaurus out front for no better reason than it’s my favorite dinosaur…and the attraction was called Countdown to Extinction. We renamed it when the film came out, but the link to the film was already there. It may not be obvious, but such decisions have to be made years in advance. You don’t get a figure that looks like a character in a movie unless you start way before you open.”
20. Definitive dinosaur
It’s not unusual for Disney to create the “definitive” version of a public domain character. While Cinderella existed long before Disney’s film, few people picture anything but Disney’s character when they imagine Cinderella. See also, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Snow Queen, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, and more. But could Disney accidentally create pop culture’s definitive version of a dinosaur?!
What we learned from Rohde: “The Carnotaurus in the ride is substantially bigger and wider than a real Carnotaurus would be. This is because we had to fit a whole bunch of machinery inside of it. So we invented a new species, Carnotaurus robustus. The film Carnotauruses were very similar to our version.
Also… many plastic toy Carnotauruses seem to be based on our interpretation which is odd because it’s so specifically distorted for our own attraction reasons. Many toy Carnotauruses are red… why?!? That’s a weird color for a big predator. We chose it for narrative and scenic reasons. They are often thicker and toad-faced like ours. Go check. Just do image search on Carnotaurus toy. Then look up Carnotaurus sastrei, the scientific specimen. Sometimes a popular image just takes over. Shows you the power of art.”
21. Folk art follies
In our in-depth look at the real story behind Chester and Hester’s Dino-Rama, we defended this often-derided corner of Animal Kingdom for the authentic charm and placemaking that gives it such vibrancy and life. The mini amusement park on a cracked blacktop parking lot is meant to be Disney’s version of a so-bad-it’s-good roadside attraction. Unfortunately, they did such a great job recreating the low-cost carnival that most guests seem to think it was an actual cop-out rather than a clever homage. But boy did we learn something cool…
What we learned from Rohde: “When we were building Disney’s Animal Kingdom The House of Blues was being built at what was then an expansion of Downtown Disney. They had employed a prominent folk artist, Gregory Warmack, who went by Mr. Imagination. We enlisted him to create an actual work of American folk art in front of Chester and Hester’s Dinosaur Treasures. He came out to our site and created the concrete dinosaur in this photo.
I believe that the work he created for us is not actually included in his curriculum vitae. It should be. So I hope some art historian is looking. He has since passed away, but I think it’s kind of interesting that our tribute to the unsung folk arts of America includes an actual work of unsung Folk art.”
22. Poetic Pandora
Frankly, it feels appropriate that, on Animal Kingdom’s 22nd anniversary, we end our list with 22 entries, peaking with Pandora. Of course, there’s so, so much to be said about this immersive world and mythology that we have to beg you to make the jump to Joe Rohde’s Instagram to explore his multiple entries on Pandora yourself… But in the interest of picking just one of his insider tidbits to share…
What we learned from Rhode: “Pandora is one of the many moons of Polyphemus, which is a planet, presumably among other planets, some, with their own moons, orbiting Alpha Centauri, a star. It is hard to imagine how bizarrely eccentric the movement of these heavenly bodies would look from a moon like that. All of our astrology is based on the observation of the strange movement of heavenly bodies from earth, a planet. Something similar but weirder must exist on Pandora. These markings in the cave of the queue for Flight of Passage are basically astrological images of Polyphemus and other moons as heavenly personalities in a family.
Then there is a Na’vi hand with a songcord draped beneath it to indicate a specific person who has undertaken the challenge. The song cord is a autobiographical piece of jewelry worn by the Na’vi. There is no cave in the movie. We made it up in collaboration with the filmmakers because we we needed it for several reasons. To bridge the distance from the land to the building. To create shade. And to create a sense of ceremony before the real business of loading an attraction begins. Presumably we all get the pun of Flight of Passage relating to a rite of passage. We actually structured the ride on the arc of real rites of passage… Disorientation, challenge, revelation, and Release.”
