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Animal Kingdom’s Lost Attractions, Broken Yeti, and Dino-Rama Secrets

Jim Hill

In this episode of the Disney Dish walkaround series, Len Testa and Jim Hill explore Disney’s Animal Kingdom while uncovering the stories behind the park’s abandoned concepts, broken attractions, and forgotten design ideas. From the original plans for Discovery River boats and Beastly Kingdom to the troubled history of Dino-Rama and Expedition Everest’s infamous “Disco Yeti,” this episode dives deep into the creative compromises, budget cuts, and Imagineering decisions that shaped Animal Kingdom into the park guests know today.

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Episode Highlights

Animal Kingdom’s Lost Attractions, Broken Yeti, and Dino-Rama Secrets Transcript

Len Testa: This is Len Testa. We’re here at Disney’s Animal Kingdom for another exciting podcast with Jim Hill. It’s part of the Unofficial Guide to Disney Dish series. I gotta start off by saying it’s incredibly hot here today, so you’ll hear me sweating and panting along the way. But without further ado, here’s our good friend, Jim Hill. Jim, first, I know you want to thank your parole officer for letting you back out here. Is there anything you’d like to say to the governor?

Jim Hill: You know, it’s so nice that they dropped the charges. Nobody saw me do it. You can’t prove anything.

Len Testa: Alright, so we’re here at the beginning of the Animal Kingdom at the Oasis. It’s what we call in theme parks, the transition area.

Len Testa: into the rest of the park.

Jim Hill: And like Vlad Ziplin said, there are two paths you can go by. In the long run, you’re still on Discovery Island. have to this story. First of all, around. Right here, there’s a gentleman. Go crazy, he walked away. The survey taker.

Len Testa: right. My guy’s taking surveys at Disney?

Jim Hill: OK. My Disney’s Animal Kingdom story, first one, starts with a survey taker. It’s 1993. Everyone do the flashback.

Jim Hill: I am walking into the Magic Kingdom.

Jim Hill: And here is a survey taker. And again, everyone else on the planet, with clipboard, they’ve got leprosy. It’s like, have learned, critically Disney, you walk up to them, and in this case, Optimus said, oh hi, what are you doing? He said, well, we’re surveying for a potential fourth theme park. And I was like, really? Really? You say, did you stroke your beard like at a fourth park, you say? And it’s like, they literally take us into the Walt Disney Store. Over on Main Street, where the exposition hall.

Jim Hill: Now we sit down at the theater, it’s myself, Jeff Lang, and my then wife Michelle Smith, and we proceed to watch the concept film for what was known then as Disney’s wild animal kingdom. And they literally, it’s all this amazing concept. Now of course, me being the weasel that I am, they’ve painted me a survey with a pencil that I’m to be filling out. I’m I’m notes. I’m reading it. notes. Doing sketches. and of course, the the fucking survey. I’m gonna need another one of these.

Jim Hill: No, it gets better, we’re so literally, you know, you know, it’s over. It’s like, oh, I’m brain full. But it’s like, I didn’t take it any damn it. It’s like, it’s a hard conversation. So, well, can get on. Then the people go, well, you know, we’re doing service here today, and tomorrow we’re doing over at Disney MGM. Really? Really? Approximately what time would you be staffing this particular endeavor? So that’s the thing. So Jeff and Michelle and I then go, and we literally sit at a table and do a brain dump, like, OK, then we say this, then we say this, this.

Jim Hill: literally the next day, Jeff and I are over in MGM. What a We’re walking around, head swiveling, somewhere here there will be a person with a clipboard and sure enough a little plaid shirt suddenly standing at the corner and so we walk in, this time we’re prepared. Alright, Jeff has his video camera. This is the big shoulder mounted one back in day, right?

Len Testa: Absolutely, but what Jeff does is he puts his camera back on the floor and hits record so we don’t get pictures.

Jim Hill: but we get full audio. Alright, so, so, again, now we have the full concept, the full information, but of course, this is back in the Gutenberg days, there was no internet, you had to literally go from Idaho South.

Len Testa: You said, Gutenberg like the Bible, not Steve.

Jim Hill: yes. Alright. As I was saying, he’s…

Len Testa: Police Academy have anything to do with the story, Jim?

Jim Hill: I just think that he’s going door to door now as well, that could well be. So, anyway, jump ahead, it’s March 18th, 1994, day my daughter is born. And I’m literally sitting in Arnold Palmer Hospital in downtown Orlando, and it’s this wonderful day and I’m filled with benevolence, know, and it’s happy spirits. And I open the Orlando Sentinel and they have a cover story about the Four Theme Park. And it’s like, and the thing is that clearly somebody talked to them but didn’t have all of the information, but it’s Leslie Doolittle, used to be the tourism reporter for Orlando. And it’s like, happy, I’ve had a child.

Jim Hill: I pick up the phone that’s there in the Hey, what is it? Guess what we have? And that was the thing. Literally a day, day and a half later, I’m in the offices of the Sentinel. it’s like, in fact, where this gets interesting is one of the people I dealt with that day was Craig Duzern, who’s now the head of PR.

Len Testa: yeah. That’s right. He went from the Sentinel to Disney.

Jim Hill: That’s exactly right. So I’m in a room with Craig Duzern and Leslie Doolittle. It’s like, well, here’s everything. It’s a transcript of the next day.

Len Testa: That’s probably an awkward thing when he works for Disney.

Jim Hill: Well, that could well be.

Jim Hill: But no, we were intimate with this park. fact, one of my favorite photos, ended up at Disney magazine during the construction phase from the tree farm, the road all the way through to 1-8-2 was open. So one day Michelle, Alice, and I, along with our friend David Schiller, drive through the construction site. And it’s like literally at this point, all they had were giant plywood signs up saying like, one, this is where the Tree of Life was going to go, two, this is where Asia.

Jim Hill: the first family. I’m kidding, because we have a picture of us standing next to the one. There was no tree, but we were first in this park.

Len Testa: can put a time capsule there.

Jim Hill: That would be funny. So I want Disney to recognize that at point.

Len Testa: did you get onto the construction site? Did you play lost tourist?

Jim Hill: Well, know, it’s… We’re sorry, we’re Canadian.

Len Testa: What is the phrase? It’s better to ask forgiveness?

Jim Hill: beg for forgiveness. Tom said not entirely unknown here.

Jim Hill: Anyway, all right, so back to here at the Oasis. it’s different than any transition that you’ve got in any other theme park. There’s no Main Street, right?

Len Testa: That’s the big thing, right? So the studios, you’ve got Sunset Boulevard, or sorry, Hollywood Boulevard, Magic Kingdom you’ve got Main Street, Epcot you’ve got sort of the Future World Plaza.

Jim Hill: And here’s the problem though, that because people here at Walt Disney World have spent the week being trained by those, this facility confuses them. and in fact, you know, and in fact, to be honest, when you’re here in the morning, where people are going, the safari is open, run to the back, you know, they lose out on, this is supposed to, according to Joe Rohde, this is the area that’s supposed to teach you that as you go through Animal Kingdom, you’re supposed to move slowly, you’re supposed to take in your environment, notice that…

Jim Hill: you there were small animal clothes and closes off to the side. It teaches you the go capillary for the rest of the theme park.

Len Testa: It does actually. I mean, if you’re, if you walk slow enough, you totally get it. I mean, the fact that there’s, there’s a tree canopy, right? There’s no, there’s no tree canopy anywhere else. And if you did your point, I mean, if you go left and right, you look left and right, you can definitely see that there are, that there are animals in both places.

Jim Hill: But I think in fact, in hindsight, in fact, a lot of imaginers have talked about as a standalone attraction, this would be so much more successful. But when people come down here and stay in Disney hotels and go to the other, parks that’s the vocabulary they bring in. I must march to the first thing. And of course not that anybody would be suggesting a way they could move to the path or quickly.

Len Testa: No I don’t know how that would ever happen. don’t know. This simply can’t exist for that.

Jim Hill: but no it’s Rody worked hard. mean they worked on the entrance for this thing that multiple iterations. fact it’s beautiful. You know the thing that amazes me about the entrance is so they’ve mixed trees but notice how much bamboo is here.

Len Testa: Yeah and the bamboo is here because it grows like weeds, right? mean, essentially it’s hard weed. But it’s really nice when storms kind of roll in. At the end of the day, you can hear the bamboo clinking together. It’s a nice effect, actually.

Jim Hill: Well, the other thing, frankly, I don’t think they took into account when they were building this park is that the canopy that they’ve created, as beautiful it is, does hold the heat, does hold the humidity.

Len Testa: A little bit, yeah. It’s honestly all that’s in here today. Yeah. But again, just a wonderful area, beautiful design, but in a lot of ways confusing for a lot of guests.

Jim Hill: And again, we’re gonna be dealing with the confusion issue a lot in this same park.

Len Testa: In this particular park? Should we walk to the right?

Jim Hill: Sure.

Len Testa: So we have two paths, we’re gonna go to the right. As we’re walking, White Stork is walking across our path. It’s amazing how realistic and lifelike they make those things. It’s really nice. You mentioned though that if the Oasis was its own attraction, would be much more successful. I think that’s true with the trails over on Discovery Island behind Tree of Life.

Jim Hill: Those are amazing.

Len Testa: are. They’re beautiful and no one sees them.

Jim Hill: No, absolutely. that, again, this is the problem with this park. In a lot of ways, they did their job too well. It’s so unstructured that people don’t know what to do and they miss out on some of the more beautiful things. And look, a survey guy.

Len Testa: A survey guy, Okay, nevermind. It’s be good. distracted. Fist in park, he could be the guy. Squirrel.

Jim Hill: All right, anyway. No, it’s… It’s because people, you know, it’s just, they’re looking to bring their Disney visual vocabulary and it’s like, okay, that’s the entrance and I exit through the gift shop. And this is not that part.

Jim Hill: This is the park where it’s like, well, what’s over here? Well, what’s over there? And, you know, have a strolling unstructured day.

Len Testa: Right. On top of, you know, big attractions that drive you deep into the park. So that’s it. That’s the other than the tree of life. really is no we need it. Here’s an architectural element I wanted to call out. So we’re walking underneath a small rock bridge. And if Sam Genoway were here, Sam Genoway, our urban design guy, if Sam were here, Sam would say that the purpose of the two rock structures that we’re going through are served to constrain your view so that as you get through the second one everything opens up like a huge panorama. This is actually a visual trick you see in lots of theme parks. You actually see it on roller coasters too.

Jim Hill: no no absolutely.

Len Testa: On California Screamin’ in Disneyland, they the same thing with the canopy. So as you go up you’re under the canopy and then as you reach the top the canopy ends and you see nothing but blue sky. It’s an amazing effect. So we’ll pass that now.

Jim Hill: It’s a great storytelling, and again, the notion here that you’ve come through the Oasis and you’re about to get your big reveal of the tree

Len Testa: It is, it’s the big reveal. This is other thing I think is interesting, on the way out of the Oasis, you can actually walk through a path that doesn’t lead you back to the entrance, it’s a circle.

Jim Hill: Well, that part in and of itself is moderately surprising. The fact that there’s not a cart at either end of it, I think is the more surprising thing. Well, give them that. There’s a certain level of purity to this park. We don’t entirely pick you up by the ankles and shake you, but oh god, if they could.

Len Testa: We’re walking over the bridge on… What’s name of this river?

Jim Hill: Discovery River.

Len Testa: Discovery River and Discovery Island. that makes sense. Almost like they thought of it that way. So we’re walking onto Discovery Island. We see the Tree of Life off in the distance. We’re gonna go counter anti-clockwise, as they say, because the Coriolis effect is strong with us.

Jim Hill: Yes, we are north of the equator.

Len Testa: right, Tree of Life. So actually we’re coming up with the Discovery Island character landing.

Jim Hill: is the aborted boat for ride, yes, so yes.

Jim Hill: So many, you know, again, so many opening year attractions that never quite worked out.

Len Testa: it was a boat ride that just went around the island, right?

Jim Hill: Well, it slowly, it was supposed to introduce you to the world. In fact, you know, the in theory between introducing you to, you know, they had the wonderful Iguana done a figure down by the river and they were supposed to have the, the dragon that was going to come out of the cave and breathe fire at you and you were supposed to, you know, have your boat bumped by a horrible, horrible sea monster that the guy… the guy was actually going have to play a liar to put back to sleep. I mean, there were all these…

Len Testa: A liar, like a small harp?

Jim Hill: There go. I swear, I’m not a liar. Anyway. No, mean, it’s… It was a park that… it’s strange. They’re…

Jim Hill: This park turned out to be so much more expensive than Disney ever anticipated and

Jim Hill: What’s frustrating is that so much of the money, at least for the opening, it went back to the of the house because you don’t like the elephants to get out. It’s problematic,

Len Testa: Yes. When the lions eat the tourists, that’s a bad thing. It’s going to drop revenue.

Jim Hill: think it’s not in the short term, in the long term. But with so much money spent on back of the house issues with elephant barns and enclosures where you can medicate your giant cats and that sort of thing, it meant that when the park opened, they had to kick

Jim Hill: And one of the places they did it was discovery, you know, riverboat ride and tourists were furious because they’d stand in line for 45 minutes and they’d get on a boat and they’d frantically be whipping their heads from side to

Len Testa: Are we missing something?

Jim Hill: Yeah, I mean it’s like where is the thing that we’re supposed to be seeing? And it’s like well, there is no thing. So it’s just a boat ride.

Len Testa: we’re at the end of the sort of the retail area on Discover Island. We’ve come to a junction now where to our left is the entrance to it’s tough to be a bug. To the right is Dino Land USA.

Len Testa: I actually like the retail area here quite a bit. It’s unassuming. And they’ve got some really cranking AC, which I think are really the two things I look for in a Disney movie.

Jim Hill: But at the same time, the wood carving, they actually bought in upwards of 60 wood carvers who all they did were create these wonderful art pieces that are used to decorate the columns and that sort of thing.

Len Testa: So I heard something interesting and I don’t know if it’s true. We’ll walk to the park and we’ll see if it is. That the carvings on the, on the retail establishments are all herbivores and the carvings on the restaurants are carnivores.

Jim Hill: I had heard that.

Len Testa: It’s that kind of detail that I love. We’ll walk over to Flame Tree and see if it’s true. I’m looking at an owl. We could be there. That’s right.

Jim Hill: But anyway, just off to our left here is… It’s tough to be a bug. And… Here’s the thing. What do do for… So eventually when it’s tough to be a bug ends its run, what are you going to put in there?

Jim Hill: They…

Len Testa: You’re not gonna go Space Invaders.

Jim Hill: No. No. And what’s interesting is that there were two iterations of the show ahead of them. There was literally a Mother Nature show where literally a willowy blonde was going to tell you about… In fact, they had started using a little bit of the artwork from Fantasia 2000.

Len Testa: From the… The Firebird Suite. then Tissue 2000 being a movie no one saw about music no one listens to. Well there you go. Okay. I remember there were five of us in the theater. Anyway, yeah, I’m looking at herbivores. Okay. Yeah, so on Flame Tree there’s an alligator, an owl, a crocodile, an owl. It’s definitely all carnivores. That’s scary.

Jim Hill: Okay. Next, they were working on a Lion King show. It was Rafiki talking to Simba and Nala.

Len Testa: Oh, that would make sense.

Jim Hill: And it’s like around Lion King 12 is that when that’s gonna but this is where it interesting is it that

Jim Hill: anybody who worked with Michael Eisner back in the day always feared the meeting where things would change because Michael had the attention span of a hummingbird all right and just sort of you know he’d come into work and he would have seen something and it’s like you know hey we should do horses.

Len Testa: Horses.

Jim Hill: You know and.

Len Testa: It’s gonna be big.

Jim Hill: And Michael evidently came from you know and they were literally they had boarded they were getting work on the Lion King version I think Robert Guillaume actually had already come and recorded a temporary track and you know Michael’s like looking at early you know rough stuff on it’s a bugs life and it’s like bugs live in trees we should do that we should do bugs and it’s like really okay because now the guys from Pixar it’s like we understand we’re still making the movie and we don’t have the people to spare to make your movie. So that’s the…

Len Testa: You want us to make a movie while we’re making your movie.

Jim Hill: That’s right. Okay. So they actually…

Len Testa: could possibly go wrong with that?

Jim Hill: They farmed it out to Rhythm and Hues.

Len Testa: that’s right, that’s right. Yeah.

Jim Hill: So… Anyway, now…

Len Testa: Now we’re entering… So we’re entering Dino Land and the interesting thing about Dino Land is again, there two paths, right? You can go off to the left to Theater in the Wild and then you can go off to the right and go underneath the Sioux, the giant that…

Jim Hill: No, sorry, this is the Brontosaurus. Sue is in dinosaur.

Len Testa: But you’re going underneath the bridge, you get the boneyard on your left, you’ve got retail, restaurants on your right.

Len Testa: But again, so you see this repetition of a pattern where to get where you want to go on a land, you could go two ways. And again, coming up here, right? once we’ve gone past that fork in the road, we come to another fork in the road. You can go left to Dinorama. You can go right to Dinosaur. We’ll go right to Dinosaur.

Jim Hill: And again, this is another park that from what, and again, I can tell you, fact, I, it’d be fun to put in the show notes. Let me see if I can chase down the actual transcript of the original presentation of the park.

Len Testa: Oh, that’d be hysterical. Let’s take a look. Is there a giant crocodile here still? Let’s see.

Len Testa: vacation usually this pool is filled with no there he is he’s he’s underneath the the shade he’s hot as well they are cold-blooded anyway this is we’re passing a dino bite snacks we’ve got restoranosaurus

Jim Hill: They worked so hard on the theming for this. mean the whole-

Len Testa: Restaurant Osoris is actually really well themed. It’s- layout inside is a little confusing.

Jim Hill: No, I just- it’s- you’re supposed to get the sense that this was a dinosaur dig that just sort of built out. And again, you when you look at, for example, the detailing up here, these are supposedly where the people who working on the dig, you know, during the day, this is where they hang out at night. And you can see like their cocaine pyramid and all that.

Len Testa: So we’re looking at- we’re looking at Restaurant Osoris and on the roof of Restaurant Osoris are a couple of lawn chairs, with a small cooler that is suspended. So it looks like two kids from college are able to put seats on the roof of their building to look out over the park. really, it’s actually a good effect. Is it an Airstream trailer as well?

Jim Hill: That’s it exactly. Nice. But again, what was supposed to, the component that’s missing here, in fact, the very thing you were supposed to see when you pulled into the parking lot to the back of Dino Land USA, was going to be the excavator. was this, you know, the idea is that…

Len Testa: The excavator.

Jim Hill: Literally, it’s a roller coaster.

Jim Hill: The gimmick is that the backstory on this is that this was a sand and rock quarry they had been digging. They discovered the fossil. So there’s a backstory.

Len Testa: Right. OK.

Jim Hill: So they had to stop. And so this is what compelled the archaeologists to come here and work. So it’s a dig site in the site of like a giant sandpit that already has all of this heavy duty track work and all that. And it’s an old fashioned wooden roller coaster.

Len Testa: sense as a story yeah you can actually fit Dinarama into that too if it’s a giant construction site for a road it could actually work together actually that’s kind of funny because then then Dinarama would sort of kind of make sense whereas now it’s just bad

Jim Hill: well see it just came down to the fact that they were looking at they could spend

Len Testa: $120 million dollars. We’ve got a great $120 million dollar project for you. You got 15 and a half.

Jim Hill: Well, actually, you know, that’s the interesting thing about…

Len Testa: Boy. We’re walking by a dinosaur right now. We’re at the T-Rex Sioux station.

Jim Hill: But you ended up, at least in that case, it was like you could spend $120 million dollars on one ride, over 120 million dollars you could have multiple rides and expand Dynorama and that’s what they did it was more a thought about capacity

Len Testa: yes they spent the money on capacity rather than on the one good ride

Jim Hill: that’s it that’s it but they’re doing the exact opposite there’s actually with the exact opposite way that universal did with potter potter went with one you know one really good ride one mediocre ride and

Len Testa: And you know, it’s made all the difference now in the case of dinosaur.

Jim Hill: Well, thing is, you know, it’s a question of we don’t have enough money to do it right, but we have enough money to do it over later. That’s the that was what they were betting.

Len Testa: So we’re up at the now, Matt Hochberg’s favorite ride. And the thing that I love most about dinosaur is Felicia Rashad from the 80s in the if you ever want to know what the Cosby show looked like, all you have to do is come back here. You don’t have to go watch TBS. For me, it cuts down on my cable bill.

Jim Hill: All right. And again, I can tell you this because again, I have the I saw the art. This wasn’t the ride we were supposed to have.

Len Testa: The what? I’m shocked. Shocked, Jim Hill.

Jim Hill: The ride we were supposed to have was at this ingenious marriage of the Star Tours…

Len Testa: Simulator?

Jim Hill: Yeah. But it had a movement component. In fact, they’re…

Jim Hill: you were supposed to be in a vehicle attract vehicle like a like a bulldozer and again you were sent into this environment sixty seconds before you’re supposed to retrieve a specimen wasn’t a question about which is going to go back and it was going to be like the jungle crews as in you would turn corners and it would be a question of its dark out it’s like it’s it’s in that moment before the sun goes down so it’s full twilight scenes and they had for example the

Jim Hill: That wonderful moment in the jungle was returned and it’s the veld and you have all of those things. They did that with dinosaurs. fact, I…

Len Testa: like a sweeping panorama?

Jim Hill: And you’re looking out at, you know, 30, 40, 50 different species interacting. And again, they took this idea from the art, from the actual dinosaur movie. And in fact, one of my favorite pieces out of…

Jim Hill: my Desiana collection is a friend who worked on this when they pulled the sequence out of the movie, one day a box shows up at the house and it’s this beautifully little sculpted log with this beautifully little sculpted dinosaur with a tiny little fur on it. He literally pulled it out of the one inch to one foot model of the attraction. It’s like I want this to go to somebody who will appreciate it as opposed to when I throw everything out in the dumpster. no, it was, but again, it was just one of these things where as the back of the house began

Jim Hill: consuming you know what they had to and again real is that you cannot shortchange you know animal you know keeping the public away from animals keeping the animals away from the public they had a choice right it’s it’s it’s substandard animal enclosures or you know cutting

Len Testa: cutting budgets on animal enclosures or cutting budgets on rides. People wouldn’t tolerate the animal abuse though. I you could tolerate DinoRama a lot more than you could tolerate ill-treated elephants.

Jim Hill: That’s it, exactly. So the borders of this just crept in and it just then became, okay, it’s at night. Okay, now it’s really at night.

Len Testa: To save on lighting.

Jim Hill: Exactly.

Len Testa: The other thing I like about Dinosaur is you notice the plant changes to ferns because ferns are supposed to be more representative of the Cretaceous period.

Jim Hill: So again, they’ve kind of hit that. They’re trying.

Len Testa: They’re trying. that’s what I enjoy about Disney, the notion that they will in fact revisit an attraction and try to tweak. In this case, I don’t think a planter counts as a tweak. Well, the thing that I understand about the planter is, mean, normally water is used to convey dynamism, right, to make things dynamic. But then, so they’ve got this water feature, smacked up in the middle of the entrance to the park, to the attraction. But then they cover it with ferns that are six feet tall, so no one I don’t know where they’re going with that. Well… Let’s go this way. We’ll walk this way through Dinorama. This is one of my favorite paths through the Animal Kingdom. It’s one of the things I like about the park. We talked about multiple ways to get through places. The exit to Dinosaur is actually a very nice walking path over to Dinorama. Have you been this way?

Jim Hill: It’s been a while. To quote Bill Murray, sure there are lots of ways I’ve gone that you haven’t, ma’am.

Len Testa: Stripes, the greatest movie of all time. Absolutely. It’s beginning of that movie.

Jim Hill: Army training!

Len Testa: Alright, we’re walking out of the retail area, we’re walking back towards the exit to the dinosaur. Again, it’s shaded. This is sort of like a contemporary Cretaceous, so it’s kind of like Tomorrowland meets, well, Sandstone really, but it’s an interesting sort of place. It’s not bad. I like the way they executed it.

Len Testa: It’s the chunky sort of triangular and square shaped rocks. They’ve got water fountains. And again, notice the more ferns here and actually less bamboo than in other places.

Jim Hill: No, it definitely nails home the idea. But anyway, back in the day when this first opened, the whole notion of… I’m blanking the name of the couple.

Len Testa: Laverne, surely.

Jim Hill: Chester and Hester.

Len Testa: Chester and Hester.

Jim Hill: The idea was that Chester and Hester, this was opportunistic. They had found out about the dinosaur dig. So they took their establishment, which was at the edge of the dig, and just tried to turn it into a tourist trap.

Len Testa: Is that the backstory?

Jim Hill: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Len Testa: You summarized in two sentences something I actually never understood. That’s beautiful.

Jim Hill: But then to decide, okay, well they really went nuts and built a carnival.

Len Testa: Okay. You know. Alright, if you say so. It’s not what Stucky’s would have done, Jim.

Jim Hill: No, no. That’s tasteful kind people.

Len Testa: Well, I was thinking more about the lack of pecan log rolls, but your thing works too. How about taste? So, alright. So we’re walking through the Chester and Hester retailer right now. A little bit crowded, but the bonus here is the air conditioning, I think.

Jim Hill: Yes, yes.

Len Testa: We’ll walk straight out. This is the park for you. Really value the air conditioning opportunity.

Len Testa: Alright, so we’re walking through lots of dinosaur models, of retail stuff, and a little bit of noise, a little bit of noise from the kids. So we come out of the retail and we immediately see the sign for Chester and Estra’s Dinarama. We’ve got Primeval Whirl to your right, we’ve got Tristar Top Spin to your left, and a giant yellow dinosaur straight ahead of us. And as somebody who actually…

Jim Hill: The number of times I drove back and forth to Florida and didn’t stop at South of the border and long to… am I missing? What am I missing? Every single time. When I finally stopped and actually went to the top of the San Perro, it was greatly disappointing.

Len Testa: You’ve done it now. You’ve checked it off the box.

Jim Hill: But this is that. I mean, they’ve done a wonderful job, but it’s it’s kind of funny.

Jim Hill: Frank Oz, Disney actually had a meeting with Frank Oz about having him actually come back and direct the new Muppet movie. But at this point, were doing, the movie they were doing was the cheapest Muppet movie ever made. The gimmick was that Gonzo had spent all the money on the credit sequence. they had to shoot the film gorilla style. And Frank, who hadn’t actually been working with the Muppets since like 90, 91, loved this idea. So he said, give me the script, go home.

Jim Hill: So he has this meeting with Dick Cook and he comes in the door and he says, okay, all right, to shoot this movie, I think we’re gonna need to spend like $30 million. And Dick Cook kind of blanches and is like, well, what are you thinking, more like 10 or 15? And says, do you realize how much money you have to spend to make something look cheap? And that’s actually, I tell that story from here. That’s the theme of this.

Jim Hill: You know, I mean, this is $120 million worth of ride shows and attractions. That, you know, you have to, in fact, we’re about to walk by the Orange Dinosaur that because it’s not a Florida-friendly color, you know, you have to spend all of this time, you know, painting just to maintain. So a faded, you know, actually works for a roots. It’s a faded yellow. It’s a, you know, if Ralph Lauren actually could come up with that color for walls, he’d be richer than he is now.

Len Testa: I think that’s amazing.

Len Testa: So the background noise you hear is kids playing Whack-a-Mole. But it’s Whack-a-Pack-ea-a-a-a-

Len Testa: You gotta figure, you’re working in Animal Kingdom, right? You walk in on a Tuesday, you punch your time card, they give you your assignment for the day, it’s this primeval world. That’s a message for management, isn’t it Jim?

Jim Hill: you and this is, know, just…

Jim Hill: Right now it’s literally in the hand of the magic eight ball that the Disney lawyers have. That they let it reopen, but they are really not happy. I heard literally as early as the weekend before it opened, were cast members that were working there who were told it may never open again. It kind of sort of reopened on a Monday, I think because Disney had actually told the Sentinel that it had opened the previous Friday and it didn’t. But as of that weekend, were cast members being told that it was officially or unofficially.

Jim Hill: but that it would never open again. It’s still out. And again, that’s another thing that’s fascinating about Disney.

Len Testa: It’s an off-the-shelf ride though. That’s thing I can’t figure out. And the cast members were actually in an unauthorized area, right?

Jim Hill: They were. They were. But the concern is, it happens once it’s an accident. It happens twice. It’s bad design. And so it’s like, all right, and can we fix this? And the reality is…

Jim Hill: For what we’d spend to fix it, could put it into attraction that wouldn’t kill people. that’s kind of where we are right now.

Len Testa: So we’re walking, we’ve left the Dynorama part of Dynaland. We’re coming up on the Finding Nemo show building, which by the way is huge.

Jim Hill: yep, mother is…

Len Testa: And it’s extremely popular, right? It continues on, in fact I was… and a steel band, a steel drum band. I love a steel drum band. I do.

Jim Hill: This one is here for a while. Bobby Lopez and his wife Kirsten Anderson did the score and did a wonderful job.

Len Testa: Which I can know about Nimo, right? And, do you remember the first show in here? Did you see that? Tarzan.

Jim Hill: Tarzan? No, Jungle Book.

Len Testa: No, I missed Jungle Book, no.

Jim Hill: It was literally, it was Disney Jungle Book meets Cirque du Soleil.

Len Testa: Really?

Jim Hill: They had a stage that was made out of a trampoline.

Len Testa: Like Festival of Lion King does?

Jim Hill: But what was cool about it was that they had, you know, people in jungle book costumes had been designed specifically for the show that had lots of yarn and fake fur and they’d throw themselves on the trampoline and they’d leap on it. So it was like this really active show that was very entertaining for five minutes.

Jim Hill: Went on for 45, but you know, just…

Len Testa: That’s my whole thing with, I mean, my thing with Cirque du Soleil. It’s fabulously talented, very bendy people jumping around. I can take that for maybe five minutes, the length of one music video, and then after that it’s like just different ways that you can contort yourself. I get it, you’re flexible. You probably make some people very, very happy. It’s just not for me.

Jim Hill: Well…

Len Testa: Good night everybody. I so. I think so. we’re walking past Nemo. Nemo is actually, the other interesting thing I think about the Nemo show is that it bucks the trend that you see in Disney shows being seven and a half minutes long. This thing’s a good half an hour, right?

Jim Hill: Absolutely. Actually closer to 45.

Len Testa: 45, that’s right. Yeah, we need to talk about that. And it works. mean, people like it. They’ll line up at the door.

Jim Hill: Actually, it works so well. Disney Theatrical has been by here a couple of times to kick the tires that

Jim Hill: You just it’s like…

Len Testa: an imitating on the road?

Jim Hill: Yeah, I mean it’s it’s one of these things where it’s it’s it’s solid you know in fact everyone just sort of like you musicalize that and it works. What? So you know it just but in the end it’s just sort of like how do you take something out of a theme park and put it in a theater that the belief now is that at some point they will close down the show, wait a few years and then expand it out to a full-blown theater piece.

Jim Hill: The good news is they’ve got the properties, they can go out and essentially musicalize pretty much anything. They’ve got a lot of stuff to work with and the theater space is huge.

Len Testa: So we’re crossing over the bridge now from Dino Land into Asia and in the background you can hear the screams of tourists who are getting their bills for their t-shirt- no, it’s Expedition Everest. the background. And again, notice the plants have changed. We’ve got the prayer flags.

Len Testa: up we’ve got strung from trees but you notice there’s a there’s very little if any I can see any bamboo actually and lack of ferns as well.

Jim Hill: No horticulturally this is is an incredibly sophisticated theme park you know and but again that kind of brings us to the interesting thing about expert genevers it’s like you know this is an attraction right now that is running without the Yeti working. The Yeti has the Yeti’s broken down more than

Len Testa: Well, Paris Hilton. yeah, it’s amazing. The thing never works. They’ve tried different effects, right? They’ve tried strobe lights on it to make it look like it’s moving. They’ve tried darkening the,

Jim Hill: It’s essentially it’s like this is they’ve tried every trick that you would do if you’re if you’re trying to get your ugly sister a date right you you dim the lights you You you try different sort of settings everything but a double scotch I think and they’ve they’ve tried giving to guests to make it make it look more realistic

Len Testa: Sorry, I’m still kind of fixating on my sister being a Yeti

Jim Hill: Jim’s often a far away look about it. would explain the hairy lip Anyway, no, but here’s the thing with this major broken effect which again which was the driver I mean if you remember the

Jim Hill: publicity. the publicity was like my god it’s the most advanced jetty we’ve ever had it’s amazing it’s amazing you see for two seconds and now it’s even broken. But now I mean look at we are looking at this you know it’s what a fast pass return time at two o’clock you know it’s what one something like that yeah this is not impacting

Len Testa: No it’s not, people started going on the ride. The Yeti actually, for all it’s build up, the Yeti wasn’t the major draw for this attraction. It really is the fact that it’s the park’s only roller coaster.

Jim Hill: And that, is the takeaway to Disney management. It’s like, it hasn’t impacted attendance.

Jim Hill: Why should I fix something that literally, you know…

Len Testa: I could spend the money and get exactly the same result as if I did nothing.

Jim Hill: No, that’s exactly. So that’s where we are right now. And I know for all of the noise about the Disco Yeti and you know that they…

Len Testa: Nobody cares.

Jim Hill: Yeah, I mean nobody… It’s… the guests aren’t voting with their pocketbooks or their feet.

Len Testa: And that’s Or maybe they are actually. They’re just voting the way that some people don’t like. But yeah, it’s true. mean…

Len Testa: To me, I also go on it, the effect doesn’t really… I I like to complain about it that it doesn’t work, but in the end it’s six to one, half a dozen, it doesn’t really matter.

Jim Hill: Absolutely, absolutely. But the flip side of this though, is that because… The one thing that the expedition efforts didn’t do, and they now realize it was a mistake of placement, is that this was supposed to help this park. mean, if we’ve got restaurant complexes, we’ve got everything.

Jim Hill: But this was supposed to help this park bump out its operating hours to 7-8, you know, 9 o’clock at night.

Len Testa: Every night?

Jim Hill: That was initially the hope and the plan and you know, they saw the attendance jump. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Yeah, went up a couple percent when they opened Everest.

Len Testa: And they do have the Yakin Yeti sit-down, which as far as sit-downs go, generally speaking, not bad.

Jim Hill: But the hard reality is because it’s so deep into the park.

Jim Hill: They can’t keep it open until eight. This isn’t enough to keep, you know, to make this into a real full day or rather a day and night part. So today when we’re in here recording, this park closes hard at five o’clock. And you know, when you think about it Epcot, they’re just…

Len Testa: Five o’clock is the beginning of the second phase of Epcot.

Jim Hill: Exactly. Epcot actually has two days. mean, Epcot’s got its future World Day and then it’s got its World Circuit Day. So which we’ll touch on as we get to Avatar. That’s one of the reasons.

Len Testa: After what?

Jim Hill: You know, we get back to that side of the park. We’ll talk about that.

Len Testa: right. right. We’re walking past the drink carts. By the way, I love the decor of the drink carts. Really, really well decorated.

Jim Hill: know, Rody insisted. They came back with so much visual reference and it all paid off. In fact, I remember walking through here before Everest was even open and it was so beautifully detailed, so inhabited that world. It’s like, this is going to be great.

Len Testa: They’ve got the different lighting effects. The thing that they’ve done here is they’ve established a ceiling in Asia that you rarely see in other areas. like, when we talk about ceiling, there’s things above your head. that aren’t typically found in other lands in the park. So we start off with the prayer flags back when you cross the bridge coming from Dino Land and then you, in this part of the park, you’ve got small light bulbs, exposed light bulbs, and then farther on you’ve got more formal light bulbs and then you’ve got more different kinds of lighting. And then you’ve got even farther beyond we can see sort of the monkey cages.

Jim Hill: But at the same time, mean, see, they anticipated that they’d have a nighttime.

Len Testa: The fact that there are lights means that they anticipated that, yeah. Because it’s not dark at five o’clock in September in Florida.

Jim Hill: spent this on theming you can’t use. again…

Len Testa: The only times I’m really here at night is when during when it’s dark is during Christmas when it gets dark at five o’clock anyway and the park’s open for evening extra magic cars.

Len Testa: Not that it’s open for evening extra magic hours anymore, but you get the idea.

Jim Hill: But that is the hard reality of basing a theme park on animals. When they’re getting up at dawn and the sun’s going down and they go sleepy by, it’s just like, the entire back half of the park, you don’t see anything.

Len Testa: And apparently you can’t drug the animals to get them to perform on a regular 8 to 5 schedule.

Jim Hill: Come here Simba, have your expresso.

Len Testa: So we’re looking at the monkey cages now and there are actually monkeys out and active. Oh, he’s moving, one of those things moves pretty fast. That’s the first time I’ve actually seen a monkey do that. It’s swinging from bamboo pole to bamboo pole, almost like you see in the Tarzan movies. It’s amazing how realistic the monkey has learned Tarzan’s moves.

Jim Hill: It’s all those years that study at Juilliard. That’s where that tuition went.

Len Testa: It’s fascinating. The other thing I think that’s amazing here is that we’ve essentially walked from the exit to Everest all the way through to the path where we turn right to go to Collier River Rapids. And there’s a remarkable lack of merchandise. They could have merch-merched the heck out of this whole thing and they didn’t.

Jim Hill: Well, the problem is on the left hand side of the path you’ve got the river and on the right hand side you’ve got animal habitat so they were kind of constrained by that but I think that’s more of a good thing. Well the other thing, in fact, if you look down, which again makes it counterintuitive because there are flying monkeys through the air, but you’ve got all of these ground treatments where the idea is you’re supposed to get the sense of this is real. I mean you’ve got tracks of motorbikes, you’ve got animal tracks, that sort of thing.

Jim Hill: And one of the things that the retail people came through, when Joe was explaining this thing to us, look, you know, if people trip and fall on your wonderful themed pavement, you know, because they’ve turned their head and looked at a merchandise rack, you’re gonna sue our ass. You’re gonna have to pull back a little bit. So you’re not gonna put racks and racks of merch out.

Len Testa: Let’s walk down towards Colley River Rapids.

Len Testa: So again, it’s late September. It’s literally like September 30th we’re recording this. It’s about 92 or 93 degrees in Orlando. The merchandise that is out tend to be those spray bottle fans that are battery operated and flip-flops. So if you guys are listening to this, it’s November and it’s December. It’s cold and rainy where you’re at. Just keep in mind that it’s hot as hell here right now and Jim and I are walking around a theme park in shorts. So hopefully that’ll get you through the long winter.

Len Testa: We’re coming up on Collier River Rapids here, which I actually like this quite a bit, except for the gratuitous water treatment at the end. Let’s walk over towards the entrance. Okay. And again. And they’re not running FastPass today, which is odd because it’s 92 degrees. Well… They’re covering the FastPass now, so it must have just ended distribution.

Jim Hill: Well, why this is… What I love about this track, and again, this comes off of having seen the original presentation, is that…

Jim Hill: You were supposed to… the conservation message, obviously in this thing between the… you know, they’ve torn up the forest and we’re going through the rapids because, you know, bad man tearing up land and all that. But we missed the real payoff. The real payoff was you were supposed to be in your raft and actually float through the tiger enclosure.

Len Testa: Really? through the Maharaja jungle track?

Jim Hill: Yeah.

Jim Hill: But it was one of these things where the Imagineers presented it to the large cat people and it’s like, you understand the tigers like water?

Jim Hill: We hadn’t realized that too many years of watching cartoons had skewed our vision of what what tigers could do So it wasn’t one of these issues where it’s like well the water will prevent the tiger the water will be a fine barrier between the tigers and the guests so Sadly that story element had to go by the wayside

Len Testa: and so now they couldn’t find hydrophobic Tigers They don’t work for scale. That’s the problem. Nope then. see the one It’s kind funny that you mentioned that because we’re standing at the bridge which is to the

Len Testa: left of the entrance to Tocalli and by God it’s wide enough for raft. This is, it would have gone right past where we’re at. So if you guys are listening to this at home, to the left of the entrance to Tocalli River Rapids is a temple again with bamboo around it I guess for monkeys to swing but if you look at it there’s a sort of a horseshoe shaped water path around it and to Jim’s point it’s exactly wide enough to fit.

Len Testa: one of the Colley River Rapids rafts. would have really gone.

Len Testa: right through the Maharaja Jungle Track. This is amazing.

Jim Hill: And again, you know, the giveaway is if you look, this is redundant design from the other monkey. I mean, it’s literally it’s a placeholder that was dropped in because, geez, we can’t put the tiger out there. it’s kind of, know, but again, that’s anybody who works in theme park design will tell you that there are things you put on the table that you have to take off or it’s like, I don’t think people enjoy having steel spikes burrowed into their foreheads. But that was the climax of the ride.

Len Testa: What’s up with Collier River Rapids? mean it doesn’t do well in the winter, right? Any plans to change it?

Jim Hill: This attraction is wrapped in here. It’s the way it’s situated to the animal enclosure areas. They can’t shut it down. In fact, what’s going to be kind of interesting, and again we’ll get the vendor eventually, but…

Jim Hill: You know, this is a park that you can’t change easily. You can’t finesse. When you think of all of the back of the house issues, have animal barns and safe places for customers to move back and forth between the animal barns. The ride expansion areas are basically all to the front.

Jim Hill: And once you pour that much steel and concrete into making something like a raft ride.

Len Testa: You’re not going to move it 16 feet to the left.

Jim Hill: No. And that’s where we are now. If anything, right now, the future plans for Animal Kingdom are fixed in the front of the park mostly because, again, as all the animals in the back go sleepy by, you can keep the tourists in the front.

Len Testa: So stuff up towards the entrance.

Jim Hill: Yes.

Len Testa: Another thing I really like about the Inla Kingdom, they serve beer. Which, not that I drink the beer, but it’s just the idea that you can get a drink if you wanted to.

Jim Hill: Well, again, you gotta make this adult friendly if you can.

Len Testa: So we’re walking up on the Maha Raja Jungle Trek right now, which actually, I like both of the jungle treks and it’s one of those things that I’ll go on almost every time I’m in the park if I’ve got nothing to do because it’s not a ride, but… the environment that they’ve created there is so good that it’s entertaining to walk through just for the atmosphere itself.

Jim Hill: no no no, absolutely. And coupled with the fact that you are in fact looking at real animals doing as realistic behaviors as animals can do in a zoo. You know, mean, on that level…

Jim Hill: Disney’s Animal Kingdom works. If this or Pangani Falls, mean, you know, but at the same time, it’s just when you see that you have to create this space where thousands of people can move through this space successfully, and it has to be ADA accessible, and everybody has to have a viewpoint, and you also have to have visual language that compels you to move forward so you don’t spend all day with your face pressed against the tiger cage. You know, it’s…

Jim Hill: This park doesn’t really get the credit sometimes that it’s due because of the design and how successful it is. The Disney fan community tends to focus on, know, where’s the next ride?

Len Testa: For what it does, I think some of it, we’ll talk about when we get to the character trails too around Discovery Island, some of it’s absolutely fantastic.

Jim Hill: Absolutely. It’s things that you won’t find in any other theme park. By that I mean, even when the park is completely full, like we were here during New Year’s, there were times when

Jim Hill: there would be literally no other people on certain part of the animal tracks. But at the time, now look at the area we are now. up by the entrance of Baja Raja. People aren’t moving with the same speed and urgency that you’ll catch at any other theme

Len Testa: No, no, They’re not doing the main street march, right?

Jim Hill: Yeah. I mean, there’s almost a hesitancy because it’s like the visual language is kind of confusing. It’s like, where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do?

Len Testa: Well, it’s definitely slower too. mean, the fact that you’ve got trees, you’ve got so much nature, you’ve got water, you’ve got…

Len Testa: They’ve actually got a little bit more retail. You’ve got a couple of retail stands. You’ve got a couple of drink carts. You’ve got some beer. You’ve got a water fountain, play water fountain coming up. There are small things to look at.

Len Testa: as well as the visual design is different. The other thing too is you can’t actually see where you’re going. I you and I are standing essentially in the middle of the path. We can’t see the water from here. We’re so far back there.

Jim Hill: absolutely. But at the same time, again, not to dwell on the paving treatment, but it’s always this classic case of the imaginers build a park and then Ops has to figure out how has to run it, exactly. And Ops really doesn’t care for theme pavement because…

Len Testa: A. It’s hard to maintain. B. People in wheelchairs have tough times. can’t push carts on it. You can’t get merch around.

Jim Hill: That’s it exactly.

Len Testa: Have you ever tried running on this by the way?

Jim Hill: No.

Len Testa: So it’s actually pretty tricky to run on. But one of the interesting stories we have is… We can look. One of the interesting stories we have is when we were doing data collection for the animal kingdom, we had researchers who would do nothing but walk around the park all day.

Len Testa: And invariably, what we learned after time is invariably, the people who worked at the Animal Kingdom on a Monday had to have Tuesday off because the uneven pavement wreaked such havoc with your knees and ankles and feet over the period of 12 hours that you’re in the park that it was so much more painful than walking through Epcot with its flat pavement or the Magic Kingdom, even with its elevated curbs. It was so much more work.

Len Testa: to do this. mean, think about how you’re balancing yourself as you’re going through this and even pavement. Imagine doing that, you know, literally doing nothing but walking 20, 25 miles on this. It was so much more work for the the data collectors that we had to give them the next day off to recover.

Jim Hill: But again, you know, this is, you know, authenticity comes at a price, you know, and, you know, again, that’s one of the reasons why this part is so expensive to maintain and so expensive when you’re looking to put new things in because it’s just sort of like…

Len Testa: It’s like why distressed jeans cost so much money. like what? There we go. These are $40 jeans but when you distress them they’re $120 because that takes work.

Len Testa: We’re coming up, we’re bearing to the right here, we’re leaving… the Kali River Rapids area of Asia and we’re walking up towards the Yak and Yeti market, the quick service. Have you eaten at the quick service?

Jim Hill: we’ve done the restaurant but not the quick service.

Len Testa: the quick service. So the interesting thing about the quick service is really just okay. There’s, I think they’ve got what, like half a dozen different menu items on it. The one thing that we’ve learned from this is that the only thing that works really is the honey chicken because everything else, essentially sitting under heat lamps and Chinese food doesn’t.

Len Testa: sit well under heat lamps. The only thing that works really is the honey chicken because it’s crispy. It doesn’t quite get as crusty as this. And then we’re coming up on the…

Len Testa: the Yakin Yidi sit down which I really like actually. it’s a two story which is sort of rare for Disney restaurants there aren’t that many of them compared to the one stories. It’s got lovely theming, it’s got great visuals too actually from an entrance perspective. It’s very good. Now this is interesting though, this is the thing that you had mentioned this in Tomorrowland. If you’re walking from Discovery Island and you make a left onto, sorry you make a right onto Asia and you’re walking towards Everest.

Len Testa: The entrance to Yakin Yedi is almost at a 270 degree angle from your field of vision. If you’re walking straight ahead, like in the morning, you’re coming from the bridge, you’re walking towards Everest, unless you’re really looking for that Yakin Yedi sign, you’re not going to see it. It’s exactly the same problem that you mentioned in Monster’s Laugh Floor in Tomorrowland.

Jim Hill: as I understand it, the amount of, know, the grumbling from the people Yakin Yedi, they are paying for that. That, you know, they don’t get the sort of foot traffic. They don’t get the spontaneous diner experience. but the same time, are you going to tear out this wonderful, know, this pseudo-authentic heap of a statue and the tree with the prayer cloths? To put in a neon sign that says, here. I mean, this…

Jim Hill: This is an issue that continually bites his park in the hands.

Len Testa: they could have a little bit differently. I’m not saying that it’s an either or. There could have been a compromise in the middle.

Jim Hill: The weird thing is, and now that we live in this age of computer modeling and all that, that it’s to a lesser extent, they can actually visit the sites of things. Disney’s only been doing this since 1955. It’s only 50 years. At some point, they yeah, maybe we shouldn’t position it there.

Len Testa: You think they would have learned after Tomorrowland, but I kind of get how something like that could be missed. That’s something where you’re under a certain amount of time constraint, you’re under a certain amount of budget constraint, and then you need to get it in. I can kind of see that. It’s just to me, it’s like anybody who’s been to Tomorrowland could have seen that that might have been a problem, and it’s a wasted opportunity. By the way, we’re passing Flights of Wonder. It’s an entertaining show, and I’m surprised it’s actually lasted this long, given the…

Len Testa: Given that it’s a I’m surprised actually it’s lasted this long in its current form like they haven’t they haven’t changed it There was in fact it’s kind of interesting given that while we’re here. They’re actually doing play testing for the Wilderness Explorer

Jim Hill: That’s right the Kim possible at bullshit.

Len Testa: It’s adventure, but for animal kingdom

Jim Hill: Well, they had, you know, and of course that’s kicking off of the Russell character from up, but they had actually taken the giant bird, Kevin, from, and they were going to have Kevin and Doug actually heavily featured in a redo of the bird show here. And for some reason that’s off the table right now, which is kind of intriguing that here they are doing the Explorer Kevin stuff. But again, it’s Disney. They may circle around to this idea yet again.

Len Testa: Yeah. I mean, I just, good ideas never die right they just sit on a shelf until the next generation comes in and says this is brilliant and I’m putting my name on it and pretending I’m calling it mine so we’re walking let’s walk up to the the right here this is one of the things I like so we’re on the walkway between Asia and Africa and one of the great things about about the animal kingdom is the fact that you’ve got these alternate paths to go places in this instance there’s the main walkway

Len Testa: near the closer to the water, literally every single person we can see is on. Now it’s a Jim and I are literally walking by ourselves on this path. There’s a there used to be we’re coming up on the little gazebo area that used to be a smoking area. And the funny thing is, again, it’s probably 20, 30 thousand people in this 20,000 people in the park today. Fifteen thousand people. There’s literally not another person on the path that we’re on right now. It’s completely shaded. It’s a lot cooler than the main path.

Len Testa: We’ve got running water. It’s a beautiful scene and we’re the only ones on it. Jim, if this was nighttime, it’d be more romantic.

Jim Hill: Oh, man. I love the running water.

Len Testa: Oh, look at Duck. It looks so real. Oh, a family of them. And they were sleeping. So sorry about that. As you were. you were. The waterfall here is a great effect as well. It’s got audio. It’s got visual. And if you notice, you can smell sort of the oxidation of the water there, right?

Len Testa: That’s really good. And the lighting too fits in really well. I think they actually reused these lamps at the wilderness lodge. But it works. It works in the animal kingdom. Just like the adventure land the background music works in Dino Land. It’s so startling.

Jim Hill: Again, Rhody insisted on these sorts of things.

Len Testa: Of course, now we see why we’re the only ones in this path. Oh, there’s a small character greeting.

Jim Hill: Yeah, but again, people can get around it and they just don’t. This is character from…

Len Testa: It’s Turk.

Jim Hill: from Tarzan, also my prom date.

Len Testa: Nice.

Jim Hill: Nice to hear that she finally found some career that made use of her back here. Good for her. I always wondered what happened.

Len Testa: I thought that’s what Facebook was for, but okay. So we’re coming up on Africa now. We’re leaving the path. We’re coming into Africa. We’ve got the Musaki drums up on the left where you can channel your inner Tito Puente.

Jim Hill: That’s That’s the obligatory Tito Puente joke for the podcast right there.

Len Testa: And then we’ve got a small dining area in the back. I’ve actually never sat there.

Jim Hill: There are so many great nooks and crannies to Hamurabi Village, but again, the problem is that people who come into this have come out of Adventureland at the Magic Kingdom and initially are kind of thrown because it has the authentic chaos of an African village.

Jim Hill: You know, the weird little signs that you’re supposed to notice about, you know, internet service.

Len Testa: Right, right, right. And the Mombasa marketplace, the hotel signage, right?

Len Testa: So, let’s see… So, coming up on Tusker House, which is going to be a character meal again. So, it was and then it wasn’t. By the way, I think Tusker House is underrated. This is one of the areas where the unofficial guide dining reviewer and I continually disagree. used to be about La Salle, now it’s about Tusker House. I think this is… So, it gets one and a half stars in the unofficial guide. I think it’s a two, two and a half star establishment. Now, you do know about Joe signing this place, right?

Jim Hill: No, no. He signed it.

Jim Hill: so Joe Rode apparently put his signature somewhere on the…

Len Testa: Oh, Jorodi Masks and Beads, that’s funny. So it’s J-O-R-O-D-I Masks and Beads. That’s funny, Jorodi. Is that his real phone number?

Jim Hill: Probably not.

Len Testa: yeah, if only there’s a way we could call him while we’re in the park. Hey, what’s the deal with this advertising? So it’s funny when they do… Yeah. So it’s funny, he… I see him like once every two years, and they always open up with the same line, hi, I’m Len Testa from The Unofficial Guide. Eventually he’ll figure it out. But, you know, I only see him once every two years.

Jim Hill: Probably not. And you probably see so many people too.

Len Testa: Alright, so we’re coming up, we’re up on Africa right now. We’ve got to our left the Kilimanjaro Safari’s entrance. To our right is the Panjani Forest and the Wild Life Express train area. And in the middle, this is actually a fairly thriving marketplace. You’ve got face painting, you’ve got, it says film, but it’s really bracelets and jewelry and stuff. there’s film. And then you’ve got fresh fruits, water.

Len Testa: Another thing is that you’ve got to… looks like they’re doing some sort of filming today.

Jim Hill: Interesting.

Len Testa: What’s going on with Kilmond, Joseph Rice?

Jim Hill: Well, again, we’re in a weird space where we have spent… the Disney company has spent so much money on infrastructure, on ride vehicles, on animal enclosures. They are trying, you know, after…

Jim Hill: Everyone knows all of the stories associated with Kilimanjaro. You know, the big red, little red, how that got dropped, the Poacher angle. Now…

Len Testa: That was a little stride in depth, the 20th and 30th time you’ve heard it.

Jim Hill: Well, that is the other issue. That they have found that by shoehorning the story elements, or bookending the ride, if you will, it actually hurt re-writability. That people just wanted to go and see the animals. You don’t actually need a story. You just let the animals be. But they are trying now to get

Jim Hill: that they’re reworking the lax sequence of the ride. And in fact, you know, that’s the other thing about what do we do now? Because we created this artificial river that we run up, or we created this space where we have, you know, this is the climax of our ride, but we have poured so much concrete, so much steel in the ground. And again, we have animal enclosures on either side of us. How do we put a new climax in this attraction? And they are, they’re on their fifth iteration at this point. They’re trying to figure out,

Jim Hill: You know, they’ve got a Witch Doctor Shaman storyline.

Len Testa: that’s interesting.

Jim Hill: Well, you the whole notion of you’re going out to see the animals and you introduce this character at beginning and you introduce them at the end. And, you know, did you learn anything? They’re… It’ll be interesting to see if they can actually do it. Because again, it’s so often with this perk they are handcuffed because…

Jim Hill: gonna just you can’t just like Mr. Lion if you could just sit here for about three days while we tear down your building and and put in a new effect would you be okay with that and no stop biting my leg you know will you go move the line and keep him company for a week while we while we completely transform this experience it’s not gonna work so you know so so that’s why again they’re concentrating on well what can we do to the front of the park and once people are coming and staying down there you can do things like you know but

Jim Hill: But this is the other reality. If you take down Kilimanjaro for six months to a year to do work on it, to retool it, you still have hundreds of animals out there that have to be fed, that have to be cared for.

Len Testa: I was going say fed and clothed, I think your direct description is better.

Jim Hill: And more to the point that when you shut the attraction down, you literally, once you bring it back up, they have to spend like a week to 10 days just running empty vehicles through.

Len Testa: To get the animals used to it again.

Jim Hill: Yeah, because otherwise it’s, what the hell, a truck.

Jim Hill: You know, mean, it just, there are operational issues with this park that none of the other parks deal with.

Len Testa: It’s the live animals.

Jim Hill: Absolutely, absolutely. And it’s both the draw of this park and the, unfortunately, but the monkey on its back.

Len Testa: the monkey on its back. That’s clever. Clever. All right. What about the Panjani Forest Exploration Trail? Same thing?

Jim Hill: They are looking to create more of a, in fact, for a time they were looking to try to push the Wilderness Explorer experience down into that area. believe it’s both…

Len Testa: the whole experience into that one area?

Jim Hill: Well, the notion of… So many people walk by Pangani without actually going down into it. And that’s part of the frustration.

Jim Hill: with ops for the spark is that you can’t see what’s down there. And you can put up all sorts of signs, but people just got off of a vehicle. In fact, the way this was originally built, were supposed to Pangani forest, being able to walk the trail there. That was your, you know, your reward for having saved the baby elephant.

Len Testa: was to walk through the forest.

Jim Hill: That’s exactly it. It’s like, you have been so good. We are sending you down into the forest. Now, nobody gets to do this. And You know, so it was a perk, but what they found for a lot of people is like, thank you, I don’t want the perk.

Len Testa: So some spontaneous drumming is just broken out in Africa as it is wanted to do.

Jim Hill: Yeah, I know every time I’m on the car at the continent, I can’t walk two blocks without a band breaking out the song.

Len Testa: All right, so we’re walking back. By the way, we’re passing the Dalwa bar, which normally I would say let’s stop off at the Dalwa bar for a drink, but too noisy right now. So we’re walking back over the bridge to Discovery Island. To our left is the Silhouette of Everest.

Len Testa: To our right is a bend in the river. It still looks pretty nice.

Jim Hill: This was, again, Discovery River. For example, You can see the boat landing to the left. But this was the area you actually came through that had… volcanic steam coming up out of the ground and so you get a fountain effect.

Len Testa: Oh, neat.

Jim Hill: But again, once people were like, what am I looking at? And then there was nothing. was nothing to look at. Steam! Steam! And that was it. whoo! Tomorrow!

Len Testa: So we’re over, we just left Asia, sorry, we just left Africa. We’re gonna make a left. We’re walking along the character trails. Again, this is part of my favorite part of the park here because no one ever goes here except for this one kid who is apparently lost.

Jim Hill: Watch out for the crocodiles,

Len Testa: Oh, storks, crocodiles, whatever it’s all the same. But there’s nobody here. It’s beautiful. Again, this is another example where the park’s fairly crowded today. There are people in the main walkways, but we’re on a path and there’s two other people. And that’s it. And you get to see lots of animals. So we’ve got storks here. We’ve got, I think coming up we’ve got parrots, right?

Jim Hill: Yep.

Len Testa: But you’re right. I the background music. It’s quiet. we’ve got a African. The African crested porcupine is out.

Jim Hill: As I like to say, everyone in animal kingdom, them’s good eating.

Len Testa: It looks like he’s wearing a lampshade. But like, if Martha Stewart was angry and took her knitting needles and turned it into a lampshade, that’s what the porcupine is essentially wearing. And he goes back into his cave, much like Martha Stewart does.

Len Testa: was it slither the word i’m looking for the gym i’m not i’m not entirely certain behalf of by the stuart’s attorneys i think it for the business right so there’s no parents out today and that’s the parents out one working for the back of their is it wait where alias small parrot small parrot hiding apparently newer coming into multiple listed also so we are coming up on the display of the in any goose and that giant galapagos turtle as opposed to the minor galapagos turtle and all i really see

Len Testa: here is a duck.

Jim Hill: Apparently the tortoise is Union. They have a great attorney.

Len Testa: No, I… Look this. There’s no one here. We’re overlooked. The giant rock is actually… the giant rock is the tortoise. There we Again, I blame my ophthalmologist. So… that is a huge tortoise.

Jim Hill: You if all had gone according to plan…

Jim Hill: we would not only be able to enjoy the view down here, we’ve been able to enjoy the view up there.

Len Testa: Really? In the Tree of Life?

Jim Hill: The plan initially was that there were viewing platforms, I mean literally, you know, if you look at the structure, the whole oil rig thing that they built here, this could have easily supported sort of to the optimum photo spot for this park and the idea was that they’re going to have one iteration was a spectacular restaurant another one was just really in the tree of life yes and you know and the other iteration was just literally a viewing platform we could go up and take great photos and but again is it sort of the theme with this park as morgue gets met on back of the house there was less for you know front of the house

Len Testa: So again, there’s another walkway here, and this is actually one of my favorite parts of this little trail. There’s a small walkway, but you have to notice that it’s there. And if you’re walking towards the Tree of Life, it’s on your left. Again, everyone walks by it because it’s literally, the path can’t be five feet wide.

Len Testa: But it leads you to a small little bench area where you can look across, by the way the vultures are circling Jim, you can look across.

Jim Hill: I’m not dead yet!

Len Testa: You can look across to Asia over where the bathrooms are, sort of just to the left of Flights of Wonder. But you’ve got two waterfalls, one immediately to your left and one in front of you. You’ve got nothing but scenery. You’ve got the birds flying in the sky. It’s an amazing relaxing place. You’ve got a little bit of background music, but it’s not overwhelming.

Len Testa: It’s just very tranquil, very peaceful, and in the middle of a Disney theme park. just never get this. You could come here and nap.

Jim Hill: Absolutely. Absolutely. On the other hand, looking at the way the birds are circling.

Len Testa: Yeah, there’s got to be literally a hundred hawks or buzzards. I hope Big Red is OK.

Jim Hill: Big Red? What? You mean the poachers are back, Jim?

Len Testa: Actually, they’re over, it looks like they’re over Everest right now. dear. Or, yeah, was better than being over Dino land, I guess. Speaking of which, that’s actually one of my favorite phases of when they test attractions.

Jim Hill: Yep.

Len Testa: Before they actually hand them off to ops, what they’ll do is they’ll have the ride track in, what they’ll, they have what they refer to in the attraction as the envelope of protection, as in, If you’re reaching out of the car and you know the six-foot tall man with you know the length of his arm he shouldn’t be able to touch the wall. So what they do to test this theory is they jam a two by four in the front of the car.

Jim Hill: they really?

Len Testa: Seriously. And they then send it out and it’s at the angle as if they Six-foot tall man with an impressive reach. And then they stand in the station and wait. And they see if the entire 2×4 comes

Jim Hill: Yes, and often when it comes back with a shredded 2×4, it’s like, uh-oh.

Len Testa: huh. Missed that. And now you have to walk the ride track and look for the impact point.

Jim Hill: So I just remember being here forever, one day, and just literally sitting, watching a 2×4 take endless rides through these tracks.

Len Testa: Again, more, we’re walking, we just walked past the back of, the tree of life and again amazing and amazing amount of waterfall you also get to see this is probably the place where you get the the closest view of all of the details so in the back we see a a lion I see a crab seal Waldo snail mongoose it’s amazing

Jim Hill: It’s a lot of…

Len Testa: But again, unless you’re coming out of the exit of Tough to Be a Bug, you really don’t ever get to see this part. And generally, everybody when they exit Tough to Be a Bug, everyone goes right. No one goes left, which is why the first half of the trail that we were on is so uncrowded.

Jim Hill: But this this happens over and over again in this part because of you know again roadie deliberately had designed this environment That a lot ambiguous. That’s the thing. It’s an ambiguous environment that they could use the hell out of you and The other thing too by the way you notice it’s remarkably shaded back there.

Len Testa: Yep

Jim Hill: And more to the point it’s one of the genuinely cool parts of the park you know which yeah the water the water the misting of the waterfall

Len Testa: So we’re exiting tough to be a bug. We’re back on Discovery Island going past a beastly bazaar?

Jim Hill: Yeah, which kind of segues into talking about a part of this park that was announced. In fact, you walk in, you know, there on the ticket booth is your dragon. know, beastly kingdom that never got built here.

Len Testa: Beastly Kingdom, that’s right. So we’re walking up towards Camp Mini Mickey, the soon to be formerly Camp Mini Mickey. It’s gonna go the way of Mickey’s Toontown, I believe, but we’ll see. But we’re walking up towards that, so we’re back on Discovery Island, kind of walking back from the Asia Park now.

Jim Hill: But yeah, that was, I mean, again, budget-wise, that was gonna get pushed out. know, phase one of the park was open, that was gonna be phase two. Beastly Kingdom was gonna be festive.

Jim Hill: as a placeholder, in fact, to give you some idea of what a placeholder it was, that the Imaginers were so busy building the other parts of the park, they couldn’t do Camp Minimiki. They actually handed it off to entertainment.

Len Testa: Entertainment built Camp Minimiki and not the Imaginers?

Jim Hill: Yep. mean, and they forced, you know, they threw together the, you know, and again, it’s just, when you realize that, you know, for example, the Festival of the Lion King show, That’s built, know, 90 % of that is built out of old parade floats from Disneyland.

Len Testa: I thought it was Ellen John’s closet. Are you sure about your source on this one? Because I’m like 90 % confident here, Jim.

Jim Hill: That would be the song I just can’t wait to be queen.

Len Testa: You’ve been saving that one, that was good. Sorry, the was great.

Jim Hill: No, just, so they horseshoe this in. just, like, you know, last six or eight months they come up with, you know, these sort of Adirondack theme, you know, you can meet with the characters, you get the show back there. Nobody anticipated that when they opened…

Jim Hill: You know, it’s gonna be there more than a year, right? Two years, whatever. More to the point that it would get, you know, when they were surveying people, they’d say, what’s your favorite thing in the park? Top three. It made the top three.

Len Testa: Really?

Jim Hill: Yeah. And now it’s like, well, you can’t close it. You have a park that has too few attractions.

Len Testa: Yeah, really, there’s what? I mean, legitimately, there’s like a dozen things here.

Jim Hill: Yeah, there’s Magic Kingdom, you’re looking at, you know, 50, 60. And, know, when you talk with the Imagineers who worked on Beastly Kingdom, I had lunch once with Maggie Parr, who worked on the Quest for the unicorn attraction there.

Len Testa: Yep.

Jim Hill: And it’s a heartbreaker. mean, they were going to do things in there, literally, what was going to move you through the maze.

Jim Hill: was that they were going to do this great audio effect where would hear the Minotaur just behind you so if you…

Len Testa: If you dallyed.

Jim Hill: That’s right. Oh look at the time, I’m going to go. Let’s see what’s around this next bend. But they opened up, you know, eventually when you got to the center of the…

Jim Hill: You know, of the maze there was this beautiful grotto where, you know, sunlight streaming in among flowers there on this island in the middle of the grotto was the unicorn that would turn and acknowledge you. And, you know, it was this, you know, it’s amazing, beautiful moment. you know, conversely, it was going to have also this kick-ass inverted roller coaster, really, that, you know, the Dragon’s Tower where the gimmick of it is you’re in the queue and as you’re walking

Jim Hill: through there are these these bats that literally yeah how do you animatronic bats that perceive that you know there’s a great treasure hoard at the center of this thing and we would really appreciate your help in getting the treasure but again you know it’s so you’re going through you know you’re riding up to to you you sort of your launch hill and the bats I may not have mentioned the dragon and they had designed this amazing dragon that was at the center of the coast and you were constantly going to swoop by and

Jim Hill: this huge fire effect, because it was a dragon, it was gonna be different than any Disney dragon you’ve ever seen because he spent all of his 90 % of his time lying on top of this hoard of treasure. So when he stood up, coins and jewels are pressed into his body. But yeah, it was ready to go. It was all there. And in fact, if you remember doing the Discovery River Boat Cruise when this park opened, you literally, it was part of the spiel that coming here soon will be Beast of the Kingdom. And that was why they actually

Jim Hill: the dragon fire effect. fact, those people who went to the cast member previews, they actually took this prop out. was much like they took Big Red out. That when you went by the dragon’s cave, there were all of these lances with suits of armor that had been speared through them, draped over the dragon and melted pieces of, you know, like a helmet sitting on top of a melted pile of iron, know, to sense that there’s a drained dangerous creature in there that has killed people. And it’s like, and come

Jim Hill: back in a couple years and you can meet him.

Len Testa: It’s a great visual though, can totally see it.

Jim Hill: was, in fact, if you go out on the web, look around, there’s one or two shots from the cast preview before they pulled it down.

Len Testa: That’s funny. So we’re walking now, just entered Camp Minimiki here, or as we want to call it, Pandora soon, right? We’re passing Pizza Fari.

Len Testa: And pizza parr actually is not bad. It’s separated very well actually. There’s some great air conditioning back there too. it’s huge! It’s huge!

Len Testa: It is very colourful here. Now they’re gonna, so this is the area that we think is, gonna, will be Pandora?

Jim Hill: as we were talking earlier about this, they’re actually doing the sort of slippy, slidey thing with work. Could be here, could be there?

Len Testa: Well, it’s definitely here. It’s definitely at the front of the park in this portion, because again, the whole notion is to have an area that guests can go into and stay in as the animal parts of the park are such a close for the night. Right, so there actually aren’t any animals in Camp Mey-Maki?

Jim Hill: No.

Len Testa: Mini who are technically animals but if there any kids listening.

Jim Hill: Well 16, 17 year old technically are animals.

Len Testa: So we’re walking over the bridge now to get to Camp Mini Mickey and there’s the dragon fountain that you had mentioned Jim. But right up there you can actually see the rock work. Oh yeah so there’s a so in the middle of the river by the way with the river is essentially stagnant it’s covered in an entire it’s literally looks like a green carpet of moss you can’t see any water.

Len Testa: Because of this green moss that’s that’s over but yeah off in the distance sort of around the corner There’s a there are about half a dozen rock outcroppings where Jim was mentioning they would they would have put these suits of armor That would have melted see you know the sort of where the the lances were stuck in with the you know the holes where they’d be Lances were stuck the ammo armor was dragging off of them. It was oh, okay I thought it was just a detail in the rock yet. You can’t really see it from here, but there’s a cave or a little indentured yeah

Jim Hill: and your boat would come by and going up to this moment, a sensor would kick off as you move between these two points and you’d see the fire, give fire effect and then you’d pass the sensor for the run and it would, they’d do the fire effect afterwards. But yeah, was, this is where…

Jim Hill: just picture here, this would have actually been what we’re looking at here, would have been the nice side of the fairy tale world, which is the quest to the unicorn, and then again, your left and right choice, the theme that land’s been bringing up repeatedly, if you went to the left, that was where the dark side of the kingdom was, that’s where the quest for the dragon, the villains, and those such hung out.

Jim Hill: But yeah, it was ready to go. But again, once they opened this park and discovered, in fact, that’s where this gets kind of interesting, a piece of Disney history is when they opened Animal Kingdom, they thought for sure that people were going to add another day to their vacation because they’re going to stay for the fourth theme park. But what actually happened was that people, know, again, it wasn’t like Americans suddenly acquired yet another vacation day. They just decided, OK, I’m going to shave a half day off of

Len Testa: Or I’m not gonna go to the studios

Jim Hill: exactly, but it literally this park opened and it cannibalized the attendance there

Len Testa: I mean Kingdom is still even to this day. Yeah, 19 20 million Yeah, and this these parks the studios in the animal can were a little less than half, right?

Jim Hill: that’s exactly so you know didn’t wound them at all but here, know, suddenly became Wow, know and and they actually moved money that they were going to spend on expanding animal kingdom to dropping significant new attractions into Epcot

Len Testa: and it’s a coincidence that Rock and Roller Coasters suddenly, you know, it’s like, hey we need something, you know?

Len Testa: We’re walking by now there’s yet another waterfall. This is the one that’s to your right as you’re walking in Camp Minimiki. It’s the one where you see Huey, Louie, and Dewey in their camping outfits. It’s in the Boy Scout outfits to your right and Daisy.

Len Testa: is guiding them. So coming up we’ve got Festival of Lion King building, show building to our right. We’ve got some merchandise and some minor counter service food stands straight ahead of us. That’s really what it looks like. From the crowd it looks like a Festival of Lion King just let out.

Jim Hill: But again, so much of this was… what can we make work in this space? so, you know, the Pocahontas and her friends show, it’s like, okay, you know, how long would it take us to train a corn snake? You know, it’s like, okay, we’re in. And three months. This, you know, again, this flew in in the last six or eight months of the project. And the entertainment group did this one.

Len Testa: And the entertainment group did this.

Jim Hill: And it then became quite a bone of contention because of course, Imagineering having spent, you know, upwards of four million to make this theme park. And now the attraction.

Jim Hill: that was built for 15, you know, the whole area that was built for 15, is suddenly doing land office business.

Len Testa: In regard to this news, the week of this news, or the news of this week, the James Cameron, World of Avatar deal, What’s interesting is that again, they’re looking to put this really down to the front of the park to the point where there’s evidently already been conversations with the folks at Rainforest Cafe to the effect of look, this is James Cameron, we’re gonna give him whatever he wants and if that means we need to swallow your restaurant,

Jim Hill: Yeah, this has been great, it’s been fabulous for us but it’s time for you to go.

Len Testa: we were talking a little bit about this earlier this this this announcement came it surprised a lot of images

Jim Hill: i mean a lot of imaginers

Len Testa: as in coming on a random tuesday in september yeah i didn’t say the interesting thing you said is that you might get you deleted was that it didn’t come in t twenty three it didn’t come on the fortieth anniversary which is you coming up it came sort of on a random tuesday in september

Jim Hill: well that’s that’s another interesting part of the story that supposedly again this is not disney calling the shots on this because Disney wanted to it at D23, in fact, the original Parks and Resorts presentation was a half hour longer when suddenly, because there had been discussions about…

Jim Hill: you well we want to take this to Shanghai we don’t want to take this to Paris we want to take Tokyo it’s like now the lawyers had to go into extra innings so they couldn’t announce the D23. Oh because then it’s a forward-looking statement and there we look now though Disney’s like okay we’re gonna announce on October 1st we’re gonna have something special with Bertha and Fox is no. Fox filmed entertainment the studio that made you know work with James Cameron to make Avatar it’s like no you’re going to announce it on Tuesday it’s like why are you announcing it on Tuesday? Tuesday.

Jim Hill: Tuesday’s always a good news day. Tuesday, they’re announcing it on that day because James Murdoch, the head of Fox, the Fox publishing company, Fox Corp, is going to be back appearing in front of a committee at…

Len Testa: Parliament?

Jim Hill: Parliament, the executive, the concern about the phone hacking thing. And Fox was actually worried that their stock would take a hit that day. So they figured if the pink, know, the James Cameron announcement came out on the same day, it’s a wash.

Jim Hill: This is all hypothetically speaking, No one would ever actually think about this. This is locker room gossip. It’s almost entirely, certainly untrue. This could never happen in the United States. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Screw-less rumor.

Len Testa: Anyway, we’re walking towards Festival of the King now. And they’ve got the misters out, which tells you how warm it is.

Len Testa: Coming up on yet another bridge to Festival.

Jim Hill: But again, I guess the takeaway here, honestly the reason you’re probably going to see Festival stay is the amount of money they’ve spent in closing the building and putting in those big-ass air conditioners.

Len Testa: This is the only thing here right and there’s a the character trails are back there So there’s a ton of people actually coming from the character trails right now, but that’s but that’s about it And then you’ve they’re all they’re all heading towards a festival of like so where would so we’re back now sort of almost as far back as you could go in Campa mini Mickey where would they start putting the pin the Pandora stuff think Pocahontas

Jim Hill: toward the entrance, all right?

Len Testa: Okay, so we’re actually facing the entrance right now, so we’d be back towards the way we came. Oh, so we’d actually take up the Rainforest Cafe area.

Jim Hill: That’s it, exactly.

Len Testa: How big in terms of acreage are they looking at for this?

Jim Hill: We are talking cars land size expansion. I have heard estimates that start at 12 go out to 15.

Len Testa: Yeah, heard like 12 to 16, something like that, 16 and half.

Jim Hill: Now, mind you, because, you know, the… couple of things that we have been promised the second use or I promise suggested loudly the second use of soaring technology there will be a really

Len Testa: so in Matt Hushberg said that this is all this is gonna be soaring over Pandora he was he was on to something

Jim Hill: literally I’m forgetting the name of the Fox producer John Lando that is Cameron’s longtime producers like the flying right when you see the flying right so I mean they’re already where’s imaginary saying really in the conceptual stage

Jim Hill: now we haven’t really got anything. Linda’s like, it’ll be sorted, sorted. Yeah, the other thing is that they want to do…

Jim Hill: What they showed the film a lot to imagineers, they showed the film to…

Len Testa: Imagine what that was like, hey guess what you’re doing today, you 12 hours.

Jim Hill: And the takeaway was like people want to go to the forests of Pandora, but here’s the thing. People like the environment. Yes, but watch the movie again. Where are the sidewalks in Pandora? All right. Where’s the urban planning? I yes, they know about ecology. Yes, they know about conservation. what about urban planning really? Not a damn thing. When you have to move a couple of thousand people through an hour, an environment like this and face it when this opens this is gonna be hot.

Len Testa: Oh yeah.

Jim Hill: You know and everybody wants to touch a plant to make fiber optics move or everybody wants to touch the bug and make it fly.

Len Testa: Right, right, right. Or this is this is a lot of hands-on stuff. This is a lot of theoretical. It’s essentially what they did with Harry Potter right? Where it’s so immersive that you can strain a number of people. Because remember when Harry Potter opened there were nine hour lines.

Jim Hill: But here’s the problem that Harry Potter works daytime, nighttime, Pandora, you have to sell the luminescent idea, means enclosed.

Len Testa: Oh, enclosed, they’re going to enclose the whole thing?

Jim Hill: A giant dome over the animal kingdom. See, well that’s actually…

Len Testa: I think you put a commentary about global warming in there somewhere and that would be fine.

Jim Hill: Well, the interesting thing is that there’s at least one prototype of the building that literally is the

Jim Hill: I mean the idea of you they’re going to do a projection effect of the gas moving across the building that they you know so you’ll get that you know that sort of Jupiter cloud effect

Jim Hill: Because again, they want you to, when you arrive at the parking lot, you’re go, Pandora. And face it, it’s not like they can do another tree.

Len Testa: They can do another tree, no. That’s I thinking actually, how are they gonna fit two trees in here, but they’re not gonna do a tree.

Jim Hill: But it’s a bioluminescent forest that reacts to you that you can walk through, coupled with a couple of smaller attractions. They’re still trying to wrap their head around about…

Jim Hill: How do you do the nine foot tall naked blue characters? You know, that’s going to be a little problematic.

Len Testa: Yeah, so again, the casting for that is going to be incredible. I just want to watch the character procession that comes in for that. What were you saying? This is going to be the second home for what?

Jim Hill: Models from Costa Rica?

Len Testa: Yeah, so apparently you need nine foot tall skinny people, right? To fit in the costumes. So it’s going to be the old folks home for Brazilian models. Which is good though, because they’ve already got the connection to Brazil here. So that’s going to work out well.

Jim Hill: No, it’s definitely… You know, we are so far out from…

Jim Hill: them showing us any art or being, you know, all conceptual at this point. But that the idea is that this is going to be the drive. You’re going to come into the parking lot and much is, you know, much the way you can see ever so go, I want to go there. You’re going to see this door. And, but again, with the understanding it’s to the front of the park, it can stay open later than all of the other stuff. And it will then allow this park to creep its operating hours out from a five to six close to seven day.

Jim Hill: You know, it’s sort of the same thing when they were having the conversations about bringing World of Color here. The whole notion of dropping that in the lagoon in front of Asia, front of expatriate. Which, you know, it was a really great idea until they actually talked to people at Disneyland and talked about, no, no, no, we use purified water, clean and…

Len Testa: Yeah, you’re not going to hear it if it’s green water.

Jim Hill: So, you know, now that show system is in play between Disney Hollywood Studios and Epcot. It’ll be interesting to see where it lands.

Len Testa: I don’t see it in Epcot, I see it in the studios, but we’ll see.

Jim Hill: Yeah, actually you can go to the studios on the run to Echo Lake. Well, actually, they’re looking at it, this is kind of a sad comment on the way Disney thinks now. It’s like, how we could redo Vantasmac and get rid of the cast members. You know, I mean, it’s…

Len Testa: Wait, I thought giant corporations were job creators, Jim. I don’t understand.

Jim Hill: Well, they’ll need people to point sit down there.

Len Testa: Oh, okay, nevermind. We’re back to even then. There we go.

Len Testa: It’s been fantastic. Well, why we walk out to the park? do any sort of a last wrap up. do you think we’ll start to see? concept art and ideas from, from, from, from, the interesting thing is this, right, so you and I both worked in large corporations before. Anybody that’s ever done a multi-year budget for a large corporation will tell you. Generally speaking, everyone knows what’s gonna happen in six months with like 90 % probability. You start talking about a year out, things get to be more, I wouldn’t say hypothetical, I would say more aspirational, right? And by the time you look at two years out, much less certainly, the stuff that’s three, four, and five years out,

Len Testa: are essentially goals that we’d like to achieve but we have neither the time nor the money to commit to them right now. So the thing that I’m interested in, you know, from Pandora is, construction’s not gonna start for another year and a half. We’re not gonna see anything.

Jim Hill: until 2015. Pretty much everything, every single thing other than maybe James Cameron’s name and the color of the people I think are in play at this point.

Len Testa: Very much so. And in fact, what’s kind of interesting is given again that it’s not like they have to go out and do the survey work. They’ve done the survey work. That’s true. Yeah, they kind of know where everything is in the park,

Jim Hill: You mean, all they need to do is go back to the beastly kingdom schematics and go, OK, sewer lines here, electrical there. You know, there’s an infrastructure.

Jim Hill: or places where they can begin to tie into existing infrastructure. That’s because they kind of stubbed everything out of what you’re saying. Yeah, but at the same time it’s just sort of like, okay, what’s feasible? Given the amount of money that we have, what can we do? In fact, let me make a suggestion to West Coast listeners of this. Pay very close attention to Craigslist. Disney has been doing, in fact they’ve actually just

Jim Hill: created a website called disney play test whether you actually recruit people to come in

Jim Hill: and test early concepts for attractions. And I guarantee you, given how blue sky… this is… they’re gonna be running that just through there.

Len Testa: So they typically do that in Glendale?

Jim Hill: Yeah. They’ll bring you in. In fact, I can’t tell you the number of times I heard from disappointed mothers about… took their daughter to the Cinderella play test for the meet and greet thing for here. They took their daughter to do the Sleeping Beauty version. It’s like, what do mean they’re not building it? It was wonderful. Wonderful.

Len Testa: It’s too expensive. I mean that that’s life at a giant corporation though. I can’t see how that happens. So, so Craigslist in Glendale and Burbank. Yep. All right, look out for that plate. If anybody gets anything on that, please contact the gym or I would love to know what what sort of ideas we’ve we’ve they’ve run through you run past you guys on that. All right, so this is a great walk through the animal kingdom. We’re gonna have to this again in six months or so when when we actually know a little bit more about about Pandora and we’ll see what’s what’s changed and we’ll do an update but

Len Testa: but thanks very much for coming out. Thanks very much everybody for listening. I hope this was fun. Jim, I think what’s next?

Jim Hill: We’re gonna do Epcot.

Len Testa: It’ll be fun. We’ll have a lovely weekend. And then fall down.

Jim Hill: And then fall down, Disney tells us, by the way, again, this is the end of September, it’s like 92 degrees here. Disney tells us the temperature’s supposed to drop 25 degrees over the next 24 hours. We’ll see what happens there.

Len Testa: Anyway, guys, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you on the next show.

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