New: Backstage Tales Tour

tsme

DIS Veteran
Joined
Aug 5, 2010
:banana: I'm so excited about this new tour. Is anyone else? Our next trip is in December 2015, which seems so far away. Our DD loves animals.
I believe the first tour is March 1.
For all those that are going on it and future tours, Please post reviews. Thanks!:goodvibes
 
Honestly, I hope the new tour is better than the old one. My DH and I did the Backstage Safari Tour this past October and we were so disappointed. We are both huge animal lovers, as we don't have children. The tour was, well it was just bad. We were piled into 15 passenger vans and driven around. I understand having to do it this way due to proximity and such, but I had to get a little closer to my fellow tour mates than I cared to. We did get to see a mom and 'baby' rhino up close and learned some interesting facts about them. Then we saw where the elephants are housed and spent way to much time watching CM's wash the stalls. Then we visited the nutrition center and were rushed through it. Next was the veterinarian center and we spent way to long there, basically talking about nothing.

Something that really bothered me was how Disney focuses on conservation and things like no smoking. However, when we were at the vet center, there was a very large CM smoking area that we had to walk right through. This really bothered me since we were staying at AKL and had to sign a form saying that we would not be smoking (we don't anyway) and would report other guest if we saw them smoking. But yet backstage they have a smoking area.

I do hope they have made some improvements, as this good be a great tour and could be a really great opportunity to teach young people to love and respect animals.
 
Oh, wow, I hope it's better than that too. Did you need a park ticket also? We did Wild Africa Trek a couple years and did need park ticket too. It'd be nice if you didn't though, considering the tour is 3hrs 45min.
 
I just compared Backstage Safari to Backstage Tales at www.disneyworld.com. The differences I see are that the former includes a ride on the safari, a snack/beverage break, had a minimum age requirement of 16, and was less expensive. Is the description for Backstage Tales missing information that can be found elsewhere? My brain tells me that if the new tour is $18 more then, at the very minimum, it should at least match the original tour.

I did the Backstage Safari tour several years ago and really enjoyed it. We didn't have a large group so our van was not completely filled.
 


I was wondering about a snack or drink break. You aren't allowed to bring anything and that's a long time without at least a bottle of water. Even the WAT gave us canteens. I guess we'll know more after Sunday.
 
Yes, you have to have a park ticket on top of the tour cost (we had hoppers so that wasn't a big deal to us). The drink and snack was a rice krispy treat shaped like an elephant and a cheap commemorative mug that you had to wash out and fill with water. Not much to it.
 
We loved Backstage Safari!!
We had water. I can't remember if they provided it or we could bring our bottles (I always have a Brita bottle with me).
 


I like commemorative mugs or glasses, so that's sounds good. I can't wait to hear reviews on the new one.
 
I was wondering about a snack or drink break. You aren't allowed to bring anything and that's a long time without at least a bottle of water. Even the WAT gave us canteens. I guess we'll know more after Sunday.

I had a water bottle with me the whole time as did others. Our snack was also a rice crispy treat but we got a green metal water bottle with the animal kingdom logo and one of the green wildlife pins you get when you make a donation.
 
I had a water bottle with me the whole time as did others. Our snack was also a rice crispy treat but we got a green metal water bottle with the animal kingdom logo and one of the green wildlife pins you get when you make a donation.

Cool. That was from the new tour? How'd you like it? Was it fun?
 
Ok. Thx. I'm sure soon someone will post a review on the new one.
 
I'm still looking for reviews of this too. I'd like to do this tour next month as I'm fascinated by and love animals.
 
I did it yesterday. We met outside the park. The guides talked about how AK came to be and pointed out some stuff about the entry way. We went in and they talked about the Tree of Life area. We may have lingered there longer than normal because someone in our group had a ticket issue. Then we walked to the Pangani trail and to the Aviary. We met a specialist there and she talked about how they care for the birds. She fed them worms so they were very active.
We went out a door near there and got in vans. We were supposed to be in one bus but it wouldn't start because of the "cold." We drove over to the Elephant house. They talked about the elephant enrichment activities and had displays about the food and poo. There were two elephants in the enclosure, but we only saw them from a distance.
From there we drove to another group of buildings. We saw a hay/feed storage barn and a kitchen where they were making food for animals. In the kitchen, we could ask the "chefs" questions. Then we went to a classroom where two people talked about the conservation and rehab for storks. It was neat and the main person clearly loved what she was talking about. This was also our bathroom and snack break. We got metal water bottles that say Backstage Tales and rice Krispy treats shaped like elephants.
We drove over to another enclosure and saw a hyena and some white rhinos. The keepers showed us some of the stuff they do with the rhinos to check their teeth. We were very close to both these animals.
I can't remember if we drove or walked over, but we then saw a Komodo dragon and the keeper again showed us how they get him to do stuff so they can check him out. We were really close to him too.
That was the end. We walked back into the park in Asia and were given conservation buttons.
Overall I liked it. Not quite as much as WAT, but it was still really interesting and informative. Our guides were great.
 
Thanks for the review! How long was the tour? How many people were in the group?

Still trying to decide between this and WAT.
 
We took the Backstage Tales Tour Tuesday 3/3/2015. Our experience was very similar to Jennab113. We met out front and were given our headsets and name tags. We had a bottle of water with us, I did put it in my bag so that my hands were free. Our guides Debbi and Tonya were very good.
We also went to the Aviary in Africa, we were able to feed the birds and the gentleman talked about how they count them twice a day. We watched the weaver birds weave some material into the nest they were building.
From there we went backstage and got in the new, new to them, van that was decorated like the safari trucks, but enclosed with air conditioning. Plenty of room and bucket seats. There were only 8 on our tour we had plenty of room to spread out.
We drove to the Elephant house where they talked about the elephant enrichment activities and had displays about the food and poo. There were two elephants in the enclosure one of which was the baby.
We then drove to the rhino enclosure and saw the white rhino male, the hyena's were being shy and didn't come out while we were there. They did let use know that they would be putting a baby and mom white rhino out in the play yard. We did catch a peek as we went by later on.
We also toured the kitchen and feed area. Our classroom time we learned about GRACE Center for Rescued Gorillas. It was fascinating and sounds like they offer different presentations to each group. Learning about the storks would have been interesting as well.
We toured the vet hospital and they were getting ready to remove the dewclaws of the older female lion. We didn't get to see the lioness, but they were prepping for the surgery.
Next stop was the Komodo Dragon and we watched as the keeper was training him to go up and get used to having his nails touched so the feeling would be normal when it came time to clip his nails.
Goodies were the Backstage Tales Water bottle, Rice Crispy Elephant and the Green Conservation pin.
I liked the tour and would like to do the WAT next time. Backstage tales tour was interesting and I felt we got our money's worth, but we were able to ask a ton of questions in our small group so the group dynamic might make a difference.
I would be interested in the comparison to the Backstage Safari as we were never able to take that tour. So if someone has done both, I would love to know the differences.
 

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