Disney's Animal Kingdom: The Realistic Plan

Last in my series of new plans for the Walt Disney World parks are two plans for Disney's Animal Kingdom: this realistic plan posted today and a dream plan that will follow in a couple of weeks.

This follows up my plans for Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, and Hollywood Studios posted over the last half year. These are my for fun, hypothetical plans for how I would expand and improve the 4 parks of the Resort. I last published plans for these parks 3 years ago, and a lot has changed. New attractions have opened and are coming soon to the parks, and I think I have improved as a designer as well. Plus the maps are a jump in quality.

This realistic plan is maybe a little ambitious, but because this is my favorite park, I had a lot of ideas and had a lot of fun putting this plan together. My goals were to add at least one new land and new attractions across the park, add some properly placed IP, and reinforce the animal concept of the park.

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Here's the map with all the text labels and a second image with some enlarged areas with more detail and description.

Starting at the front of the park, I added one more major attraction to finish out Pandora. I wanted to reinforce the animal element of the land and the park, so the attraction is a trackless dark ride where guests explore the forest searching for the variety of exotic animals of Pandora. The dark ride vehicles are ACE all-terrain jeeps that can go anywhere in the jungle to find even the most rare creatures. The queue leads into an indoor bioluminescent cave, like the one featured in Flight of Passage, where guests load and start to explore. The unique element of the trackless system is that guests can make choices along the way as to which direction they will actually go. A "nightvision" system on the jeep gives a look at what animals are ahead at a few splits in the path, and guests can chose which animals they would more like to see. The animals themselves would be a mix of practical figures and screen elements, and the climax of the attraction would be the discovery of a full size sleeping banshee in its cave, forcing us to make a quick escape before waking it up.


Across the park, I made some significant changes to Dinoland, including an update to its backstory. The Dino Institute half remains but the Dinorama half is gone. The new story:

A world renowned conservationist/explorer/collector has seen every kind of animal and been to the most remote corners of the world, but he realizes that there is one major group of animals he has never been able to see: those that are extinct. He decides with his wealth and connections, he is going to do whatever he can to fix that problem. He moves to the middle of nowhere, founds the city of Dinoland USA, and funds both an excavation operation to find fossils and the Dino Institute research operation to find actual living dinosaurs. His house sits above the excavated dig site, filled with his worldwide collection including plenty of extinct animal artifacts. Once the time travel tech is perfected, the dig site is abandoned, but on the day of the Dino Institute Open House, he decides to open both the dig site and his house for tours. That day is today. Dinoland USA is open for exploration. 

So this new story allows me to introduce two new attractions to the land and some smaller changes as well. The first change is to the pathways of the land. A new direct path is cut through the existing vegetation to lead to Dinosaur so that it is easier to find and more visible.

The rest of the land is redeveloped as a dig site with an excavation themed "wooden" rollercoaster running through it. The dig site and coaster is set down below grade, running below the wooden boardwalk style pathways through the land. The entrance and load to the coaster is set in dig site tent structures. The coaster starts with a lift hill and a short segment of banked turns before entering a fossil filled cave for some quick dark ride scenes. The coaster the launches out of the cave for a speed run through the excavation site in the center of the land, with a lot of banked turns and straightaways.

In the excavation area, there is also a classic spinner themed to excavation equipment.

The last attraction for the land is a variation on Mystic Manor that is very rethemed for its new home. The facade is different, the style is different, and the scenes are different, all changed to fit the Dinoland story and style. The scenes focus on the conservationists collection of art, artifacts, and fossils of extinct animals from around the world, all of which begin to mysteriously come to life because of the power of an idol. It includes a huge dinosaur skeleton come to life, woolly mammoths, dodo birds, and other weird extinct animals.


The next change is in Asia and the space between Asia and Africa. This area is redeveloped to include a pathway north to the expansion plot and a new land. The current Up bird show theater is removed and in its place is a Jungle Book omnimover dark ride with the classic animated characters. Like the use of Lion King in Africa, I think IP can work well in the lands of Animal Kingdom if the setting makes sense and if the exterior is treated with the same level of realism and detail as the rest of the park. So it is hyper-real on the exterior and animated on the inside.

The path leading north leads under a train trestle and then through a tunnel under the existing backstage road. Adjacent to this path is a new smaller theater space for animal shows that are not necessarily Asia or bird specific. The small theater could have hourly rotating shows with a closer look at various types of animals.


The new land to the north is another continent for the park, North America. Of the 4 viable continents left (North America, South America, Europe, and Australia), I decided on this option because I wanted to highlight the animals and natural environments of the continent that are so often overlooked in favor of more exotic options. After passing through the tunnel, the path passes under the trail again and opens up into a Redwood Forest style setting with a large wooden National Park style lodge ahead. The path first goes past a log cabin counter service location and along a stream that we then cross.

Just past that is the entrance to the animal trail for the land. I am unsure if in reality there will ever be any more animal trails built, but I felt the need to include it. The Red Creek Trail winds through the forest, first passing a raccoon habitat, then going through a bird enclosure, followed by environments for elk, beavers, and foxes. The feature animal of the trail are bears, who have a very large habitat to look into. The trail then concludes with otters before exiting back to the land.

Inside the main Lodge building is the majority of the retail for the land and the main attraction, a balloon simulator that flies guests through the wonders of many National Parks. Guests fly over a variety of settings including canyons, deserts, forests, and mountain ranges. Native animals are featured elements in many of the settings. This is a ride system that I detailed in a post earlier this year.

The last attraction of this land is a Pocohantas boat dark ride. Guests ride in 8 person canoe boats down the river and around the bend into the story of the movie. Again animals and our connection with nature are featured elements of the story.


The last changed area in this plan is a reimagining of Rafiki's Planet Watch as the city of Zootopia. The train takes guests from Africa but now unloads in Bunny Burrow, a suburb area of Zootopia. The path leads past a couple local produce stands and a Bunny Burrow themed carousel on the way to the main city. Guests enter the Zootopia central Train Station, where there is a large retail space and then pass into the central plaza of the city. Straight ahead is the Zootopia Police Department where the main attraction is, to the left is a counter service restaurant, and to the right is the Hospital, which is the existing animal care building, rethemed to be in story for the city.

The attraction is an indoor family coaster dark ride where guests join a ride along with ZPD for a trip through the different districts of Zootopia.

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That completes this "realistic" plan for Animal Kingdom and its a plan that I really like.

A much more ambitious dream plan will be following in a couple of weeks. For the past parks, I've had all versions done at the same time, but wasn't able to do that this time and didn't want to make you wait.

So follow me on twitter for updates about when that next plan will be up, and let me know with a comment what you think about this version.