Disney Animal Kingdom

Animal roaming seemingly at will in Disney's Animal Kingdom park

Backstage animal cages at Disney's Animal Kingdom park

The Animal Kingdom theme park at Disney World in Florida has an official goal, to teach respect for the environment and knowledge of how you can help wild animals. But it gets its impact from invoking other themes and narratives, fantastic or real. There are dinosaurs, African animals, and so on, some real, some animatronic.

What interested me most was the park's on-stage backstage. Riding a little train you see the hidden cages where the animals return from the supposedly wild African section to be fed at night. You are told about the cleverly concealed barriers that keep the different animals apart on the wild plains of the exhibit. You arrive at a building where there are environmental exhibits, a window into a room where the animals are given their physical exams, and staff who explain the mechanisms of the park and its problems (such as keeping native animals out).

This is doubled inhabitation made official, and itself presented.

There is an online map of the Animal Kingdom park, and an online photo tour of the park.

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