ORLANDO — I had never
ridden the Kilimanjaro Safaris attraction at Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom
before last Tuesday night. But Mary Condes, a Disney structural engineer, sure
had. So she was surprised to see two male lions roaming around as our vehicle
motored slowly through the attraction’s savannah.
“Usually the lions are
hiding,” she told me.
Our experience came during
an invitation-only preview of Animal Kingdom Park at Night, which is what
Disney is calling its move, beginning Memorial Day weekend, to extend the
park’s hours into the evening for the first time.
And getting an opportunity
to see lions, which are mostly nocturnal, on the move is exactly the type of
experience Disney is promising its patrons after dark.
The Tree of Life will have a light show when Animal Kingdom extends its hours. Photo Credit: Robert Silk
In promotional literature,
and during the Animal Kingdom Park at Night preview, Disney executives have
talked about how animal behavior, and the natural world in general, changes as
daylight gives way to darkness.
So while there might have
been a bit of serendipity in seeing the lions on our Kilimanjaro safari ride,
it also appeared to make Disney’s point: Animal Kingdom at Night will offer a
new experience for guests.
Of course, this still
being a theme park, those guests will only experience some darkness.
Floodlights lit the way during our trip through the safari attraction,
providing just enough illumination to make the rhinos, wild dogs, Nile
crocodiles, antelope and other animals visible in the way things are visible
during the tail end of twilight. At one point along the way, an artificial
sunset could be viewed on the horizon.
By extending Animal
Kingdom’s hours into the night, Disney is offering far more than evening safari
rides. During my visit there, I was among the first to ride Expedition Everest
at night. The roller coaster takes riders through tunnels, but the darkness of
a tunnel during the day can’t compare to the pitch-black that one experiences
there at night.
Unable to make out my
surroundings even a little for significant portions of the ride, I found that
Expedition Everest’s twist and turns, as well as its alternating between moving
forward and backward, made for quite a thrill.
Disney will also offer a
roster of nighttime-only entertainment at Animal Kingdom. I especially enjoyed
the dance routines set to African rhythms as I ate dinner along the streets of
the park’s Harambe Village. Later, we saw a light show play out within the
park’s signature Tree of Life. Disney characters, such as Bambi, Pocahontas and
Simba, emerged and disappeared from the tree, accompanied by music.
We also got a short
preview of Rivers of Light, the main nighttime Animal Kingdom show that is
slated to debut sometime this summer. The show is backed by an original
orchestral score and makes use of artificial lotus flowers, set in the middle
of the park’s Discovery River, that shoot fountains of water, over which appear
birds, tigers and other nature-related scenes.