Project Announced: June 5, 1995.
Construction Began: August 1995.
Disney's Animal Kingdom opened on April 22, 1998.
Size: More than 500 acres
The Tree of Life is 145 feet tall, and the trunk is 50 feet wide.
There are over 320 animals carved onto the Tree of Life,
with over 103,000 leaves on approx 8,000 branches.
The tree is made of concrete, over a modified oil rig.
Ten artists and three Imagineers worked full-time
for 18 months to create the 325 animal carvings on The Tree of Life. Sculptors
had between six and 10 hours to create the finished image before the plaster hardened.
The
Tree of Life is topped with more than 103,000 transparent, five-shades-of-green
leaves that actually blow in the wind.
The safari covers over 110 acres.
There are climate-controlled rocks on the safari, to encourage the lions to sit
in view of the safari vehicles.
The safari vehicles are modified GM trucks, and go a maximum of 10mph.
Planting Kilimanjaro Safaris was a challenge. With
a ride-through attraction and live animals roaming about, planting patterns were
based on what designers thought the animals would do, and what the guests will
experience. Paul Comstock, principal landscape architect, laid out the plant bed
lines on a motorcycle (using spray paint) riding at the same speed as the ride
vehicle, “because guests will experience the landscape at that speed,” he said.
The
rutted safari road also is part of the landscape design. Imagineering’s design
team matched concrete with the surrounding soil, then rolled tires through it,
and tossed stones, dirt and twigs into it to create an appropriately bumpy experience
duplicating a remote African road.
There are over 300 species of animals, mammals, birds, reptiles,
amphibians, fish and insects represented at Animal Kingdom. There are over 1100
animals in total at the park.
More than 4 million trees, plants, shrubs, ground-covers, vines, epiphytes and
grasses from every continent on Earth -- except Antarctica -- were planted, with
over 4,000 different species.
There are 19 dinosaurs on the 'Dinosaur' ride.
'Sue' the dinosaur, on display in Dinoland, is a replica of the most complete
T-Rex ever found, which was 65 million years old.
The village of Harambe is based on the Kenyan town of Lamu.
There is only one live baobab tree in Harambe, outside Tusker
House restaurant.
The largest tree replanted in the park is located
in Harambe village, and tipped the scales at 90 tons . . . that’s equal to the
weight of 16 male elephants.
Anandapur means "place of all delights" in Sanskrit.
Here's the story behind Anandapur (the mythical kingdom
in Animal Kingdom's Asia) - "It was established in 1544 as a royal hunting
reserve. Over the years a colorful village grew up around the royal park. Today,
the village thrives, while the reserve itself, dotted with ancient ruins, has
been converted by Anandapur's current royal family into a conservation area."
Chakranadi River means "the river that flows in a circle".
A
core team of seven Walt Disney Imagineers, led by executive designer Joe Rohde,
crisscrossed the globe in search of the essential look of life in the wild, amassing
more than 500,000 miles in the last decade . . . a distance equal to circling
the globe 20 times.
Sixty dump trucks of dirt were delivered to Disney’s
Animal Kingdom construction site every day for two years straight, equaling 4.4
million cubic yards of dirt.
Some 1,500 2-to-3-foot long fanciful hand-painted
wooden folk art animal carvings -- a fusion of pre-Columbian, Peruvian, African
and Polynesian forms -- were crafted on the island of Bali by native craftsmen,
and can be seen adorning the architecture of Safari Village.
In order to support the incredibly large and sophisticated
dinosaur Audio-Animatronics® at DINOSAUR in DinoLand U.S.A., their dino-size bases
were built clear through the structure down to their own large foundations in
the ground.
There’s one million square feet of rockwork at Disney’s
Animal Kingdom . . . that’s twice the volume of rockwork in the Mt. Rushmore sculptures
or a volume that could create a monolith 10 feet by 10 feet by two miles high.
To
keep 1,000 animals happy takes about four tons of food a day . . . that’s a four-and-a-half
year supply for the average person.
There are 27 million gallons of water in Discovery
River . . . that’s an amount equal to 1,800 average-sized backyard swimming pools.
There
are 2.6 million gallons of water contained in various water features that come
in contact with animals. On average, the entire volume of water is treated and
filtered five times daily, which means that 15.6 million gallons of water are
treated and filtered every day.
The cycad collection along Cretaceous Trail in DinoLand
U.S.A. represents the third largest such collection in North America, including
direct descendants of the four botanical epochs of plant evolution dating back
hundreds of millions of years, including ferns, mosses, conifers, broadleaf plants
and the first flowering plants on earth.
Like a snapshot from an African safari, towering
acacia trees and tall grasses paint a familiar picture of the Serengeti on a vast
stretch of rolling landscape, but this is Central Florida, not east Africa, and
the acacias are really 30-foot-tall Southern live oaks with a close-cropped crew
cut.
Company founder Walt Disney’s love of animals began
when he was four years old and his family moved from his Chicago birthplace to
a 45-acre farm in Marceline, Missouri, where he helped take care of farm animals,
as well as learned to draw pictures of his animal friends.
Disney’s Animal Kingdom is home to the largest groups
of Nile hippos and African elephants in North America.
The first birth at Disney’s Animal Kingdom was a
kudu, a large African antelope.
The number of species that have reproduced since
the park opened is 116.
Two Micronesian Kingfisher chicks were hatched at
Disney’s Animal Kingdom, raising the world population of these birds by 3 percent.
The
arrival of a black rhino calf born at Disney’s Animal Kingdom made him one of
only 250 worldwide.
Animal Programs veterinarians have successfully performed
surgery on a tarantula spider, placed an artificial eye in a fish and removed
a golf ball from a hungry snake rescued at a Disney golf course.
The Animal Programs team performs more than 600 wellness
checks per year.
Lab technicians have analyzed more than 10,000 samples
of animal poop since Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened.
More than 2,000 pounds of vegetation and browse is
fed to the animals every day, and several varieties of worms are provided to the
animals, including super mealworms, yellow mealworms, red wigglers, night crawlers
and wax worms -- 40,000 in a week! Dieticians also order 80,000 crickets per month
as part of the healthy diet for the animals.
Disney Animal Kingdom scientists have discovered
two new vocalizations never before reported in elephants.
Since 1995, the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund
has devoted more than $6 million to conservation efforts around the world and
has supported more than 230 projects.
Recommend
this page to a friend
Discuss this at the message
boards.
