Review: Up Close with Rhinos tour at Disney’s Animal Kingdom

Have you ever wanted to pet a rhino? I didn’t know I did until I joined the Up Close with Rhinos tour at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and got a chance to do just that.

Up Close with Rhinos takes you backstage to get a crash course on the park’s white rhinos. The highlight of the tour? If all goes well, and the animal is in the right frame of mind, you get to give him a rub.

But more importantly, it’s an opportunity to get to know more about an animal that is in deep trouble around the world because of poaching and loss of habitat. At Animal Kingdom, Disney has both white and black rhinos. The black rhino is critically endangered, with only about 5,000 individuals left in the wild. The white rhino is “only” near threatened, with about 20,000 individuals in the wild.

On the tour, we talked about how the rhinos are cared for at Animal Kingdom and how Disney is taking part in conservation efforts around the world. There have been nine white rhinos born at Animal Kingdom, two of which have been re-introduced into the wild in Uganda.

The tour is a bit perfunctory — you go backstage and hop on a bus that takes you to the rhino enclosure behind Kilimanjaro Safari. You get off the bus at the white rhino enclosure and then take turns giving the big guy a rubdown. That’s about it.

I was ok with perfunctory — I got what I wanted, which was to pet the rhino, and it only took an hour out of my day at Animal Kingdom. I also got something I didn’t know I wanted: a new appreciation for rhinos.

One thing to remember — and it’s why the tour information doesn’t promise the personal rhino encounter — is that it really is up to the animal whether it wants to come up to the fence for rubs. The keepers don’t make these animals do anything they don’t want to do.

A similar tour, Caring for Giants, gives you a close-up look at the park’s elephants — but not within arm’s reach.

Need to know

When: 11 a.m. daily. This tour books up early, so call (407) 939-7529 about 3 months in advance for reservations. The tour goes rain or shine — unless there is severe weather.

Cost: $40 for an experience that lasts about an hour. You can cancel until 48 hours before your tour and get a refund.

Photos: Nope, sorry. No photos or videos allowed backstage. I really expected a PhotoPass photographer to snap pictures of us with the rhino, but no.