Safari Reflections

Walt always wanted to create an attraction that featured real animals. He even floated the idea during the design of Jungle Cruise for Disneyland, but practicalities made animatronics the inventive better choice. When he started his Florida Project, he famously said that “here in Florida, we have something special we never enjoyed at Disneyland… the blessing of size. There’s enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine.” On the long list of ideas that came true with that land–Kilimanjaro Safaris at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Bigger than all of Magic Kingdom and a fifth of its own theme park, at 110 acres the attraction has room (and a few tricks up its sleeve, like hidden moats and barriers) to allow 34 species, from giraffes to lions, to coexist. Hippos are considered among the most dangerous animals on the African continent but they’re among the animals living peacefully on the reserve. They don’t swim–walking instead along the bottom of their wading pools–a