Review: Try your hand at Disney’s Animation Experience at Animal Kingdom

There’s a famous photo of Walt Disney sitting in front of two tiny spotted fawns, drawing inspiration for Bambi. Disney animators have been sketching from live animals ever since, and now visitors to Disney’s Animal Kingdom can try their hand at it too.

The Animation Experience at Conservation Station, which opened early this month, lets guests take a lesson from an animator and try their hand at drawing a Disney character. I decided to give it a whirl on a sweltering day last weekend.

It happened to be opening weekend for “The Lion King,” which provided our subject for the session: Timon, the wisecracking meerkat. The class switches subjects each session, so you might instead be drawing Simba, Zazu or Pumbaa, or an animal from another classic Disney film.

Our 25-minute session started with a collection of videos of the meerkats living on the savannah. Sadly, we didn’t have a live meerkat as our model, but I suspect most of us would not have fared very well if a live specimen was all we had to work from.

Instead, we started with a clipboard, a pencil, and a piece of paper with guidelines printed on it. Those guidelines take this from a precarious activity for someone with limited drawing skills to something closer to a sure thing.

The animator/instructor walks you through the drawing one simple line or shape at a time — an upside-down Nike swoosh here, a blueberry sized circle there. They demonstrates live, and their work is projected on large TV screens for guests to follow along. If you want a front-row seat, you can use a FastPass, but any seat in the house gives you a good enough view of the screens.

At the end of the class, you walk away with a sketch signed by the artist — you. And, of course, Disney would be happy to sell you a frame for your creation for $39.99.

The class is offered nine times a day, on most days:

• Morning: 10, 10:45 and 11:30
• Afternoon: 12:15, 1:45, 2:30, 3:15, 4 and 4:45

If others in your group aren’t budding artists, they can spend the time exploring the rest of the Conservation Station — perhaps watching a surgery in the veterinary treatment room, or visiting the Affection Section for some one-on-one time with the goats, sheep, donkeys, cows and pigs.

To get to the Animation Experience, you need to hop the Wildlife Express Train from Harambe to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. On your way, you pass the back of the rock formation where the lions live on the savannah of Kilimanjaro Safari, and you may get a glimpse of cheetahs, rhino and elephants in their backstage enclosures.