20 little-known facts about Animal Kingdom on its 20th anniversary

On April 22, 1998, Animal Kingdom, the largest theme park ever constructed by Disney, opened at Walt Disney World Resort with great fanfare.

“Welcome to a kingdom of animals… real, ancient and imagined: a kingdom ruled by lions, dinosaurs and dragons; a kingdom of balance, harmony and survival; a kingdom we enter to share in the wonder, gaze at the beauty, thrill at the drama, and learn,”  Disney’s then-CEO Michael Eisner said during the dedication.

At over 500 acres, the park is home to more than 1,700 animals and 250 species. As we approach the park’s 20th anniversary, we decided to pull together some little-known entertaining facts about the park you can use to amaze your friends.

Enjoy!

1. The current park location was not the first one Disney explored. The area now inhabited by the community of Celebration—you know, the town Disney built—was on the list of possible homes for the new theme park, according to Chuck Schmidt’s book “Disney’s Animal Kingdom: An Unofficial History.” 

“I remember being totally enamored with the huge oaks that were on the Celebration site, but it really had some de-watering problems, in terms of the amount of water that was on the site that would come to the surface of the ground,” Paul Comstock, Animal Kingdom’s lead landscape architect, is quoted in the book.

In addition, the Celebration site “is facing the wrong way. When you’d be driving on the Osceola Parkway, you’d be driving into the sunlight. The way that Animal Kingdom is oriented, you enter and the sun arc is behind your back, so it illuminates the trees, the structures, the Tree of Life, all the waterfalls,” he said.

2. The area chosen for the park was particularly flat and sandy. To build up the ground, 60 dump trucks of dirt were delivered to the Animal Kingdom construction site every day for two years straight, equaling 4.4 million cubic yards of dirt.

3.  More than 4 million trees, plants, shrubs, ground-covers, vines, epiphytes and grasses from every continent on Earth — except Antarctica — were planted in the park.

4. 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 Discovery Island.

5.  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 each finished image before the plaster hardened.

6. The Tree of Life is 14 stories high and 50 feet wide at its trunk.

7. The Tree of Life is topped with more than 103,000 transparent, five-shades-of-green leaves that actually blow in the wind.

8. The rutted safari road on the Kilimanjaro Safaris is part of the landscape design. The 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.

9. In order to support the incredibly large and sophisticated dinosaur Audio-Animatronics at DINOSAUR in DinoLand U.S.A., their dino-sized bases were built through the structure all the way down to their own large foundations in the ground.

10.  At just under 200 feet tall, Expedition Everest is the tallest attraction at Walt Disney World Resort, followed by The Twilight Zon Tower of Terror at Hollywood Studios (199 feet), Magic Kingdom’s Cinderella Castle (189 feet), Spaceship Earth at Epcot (183 feet), Space Mountain at Magic Kingdom (180 feet) and The Tree of Life at Animal Kingdom (145 feet).

11. The landscape around Expedition Everest was created specifically to emulate the lowlands surrounding Mount Everest. More than 900 bamboo plants, 10 species of trees and 110 species of shrubs were planted over areas of the 6.2-acre terrain.

12. The mountain village anchoring the Expedition Everest attraction was built with architectural authenticity. The three-story mandir, a pagoda-type building, was hand carved with 1,000 yeti images in Nepal, then shipped, aged and re-assembled at the village, which is known as Serka Zong.

13. At least 8,000 props purchased mostly from Nepal add a lived-in look to the village and other areas of the Expedition Everest attraction.

14. In Pandora, there are 22 floating mountains in the Valley of Mo’ara and peak at about 130 feet above the valley floor.

15. 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.

16. The first birth at Animal Kingdom was a kudu, a large African antelope.

17. More than 150 species have reproduced at the park since it opened.

18. Animal Kingdom scientists have discovered two new vocalizations never before reported in elephants.

19 There was a boat ride at the theme park, but it was very short lived. The Discovery River Boats opened the day the park opened but was re-themed twice during the next year until it finally closed for good on Aug. 21, 1999. The ride was not a hit with guests. It did not provide any additional entertainment or views that could not be seen on the walkways.

20. The original design for Animal Kingdom included a themed section called the Beastly Kingdom devoted to creatures of legend and mythology. Pandora – The World of AVATAR eventually was built in its place. The Beastly Kingdom was supposed to feature animals such as unicorns, dragons, and sea monsters with three different rides.