How the Other Half Lives ~ Updated 10/22: I Forgot Something!

[TheThomsLuvDisney]

Looking forward to the update!

I can't remember, did you say this tour was an added bonus/complimentary to staying concierge level?

 

[jc040404]

Love the tree pics! I can't wait to hear about this safari, too!

 

[407-W-DISNEY]

Yeah! for the upcoming trip!!

 

[Dugette]

I'm excited to hear about the safari! I've been thinking about doing it myself.

Which safari are you thinking of doing? This was a special one for Club Level guests, so different than the sunrise safari and the one for AKL guests.

Looking forward to the update!

I can't remember, did you say this tour was an added bonus/complimentary to staying concierge level?

Yes, it's only available to Club Level guests at the resorts. It was $50/person. And it was a very cool experience. Some of the other guests on our safari had done the sunrise safari and said that they saw a lot more of the animals on this safari.

Love the tree pics! I can't wait to hear about this safari, too!

Thanks. I'll be getting started on the update soon. I think it will be A LOT of posts!

Yeah! for the upcoming trip!!

I agree! Can't wait!

 

[Dugette]

We were very lucky to get this opportunity to go on safari (Club Level guests only). It was definitely worth the $50/each we had paid for it. I thought our guide, Chaz, was just full of great tidbits of information. I videotaped most of the experience, so I will try to watch/listen to it and share some of the fun stuff he told us.

I also made a video summary of the experience to share. Hope you enjoy! This is about 8 minutes long—click to watch:



Now, onto an even more detailed recounting of the safari! We left off last time just as we passed backstage. From our meeting point in the park, we were led through a gate in back and met our safari vehicle. It was not the type from the ride. It had cushioned seats and windows (open at top). It was also wheelchair accessible, so the boy from the one family had a nice spot in back. We had a driver and Chaz stood with us to narrate. And we were allowed to get up and move around to get better pictures. Not to mention that we stopped for a long time to look at and learn about the animals.

A couple shots inside the vehicle:

Not the best picture, but this is Chaz:

He has been at AK for about 10 years. His first five were working with the giraffes, wildebeests, and zebras. The last five he’s worked with the elephants. He said that he is one of about 220 keepers at Animal Kingdom. Together, they cover all 24 hours each day, working 1st, 2nd and 3rd shifts. Chaz was very knowledgeable and provided a wealth of intriguing information (which I will try to share!)

We were given little boards where we could mark down the animals we see:

I don’t know that any of us actually used them, though. There were also binoculars available, hanging over the backs of the seats. I don’t recall using those, either, but they were there.

As we started driving, we enjoyed seeing the little backstage things that you don’t normally see at Disney:

We all thought this was fun:

See the Santa hat? We passed a hippo barn after that. This next thing (that you see me videotaping) is the hippo river water filtration system:

He said it pumps a million gallons of water every 2-3 hours. Animal Kingdom has the largest hippo herd in North America, consisting of 18 or 19 hippos.

Then, we pulled into the safari ride path:

I found it so strange that all the people in the safari ride vehicles were fascinated by us! It didn’t matter what kind of awesome baby animal they might be missing on the other side, all the heads would swivel to check out our truck. We were celebrities!

But, back to the hippos! In order to keep the herd from becoming even larger, the hippos are separated. Boys are on the right side of the ride path and girls are on the left. He said that they had tried many options, but separation was the only thing that worked to keep them from breeding.

As we drove along the ride path, checking out the female hippos to our left, Chaz told us that the hippos don’t actually swim in the water. Because they are so heavy, they just walk along the bottom. Here’s a couple shots of the hippo area:

Right after that, we saw the rope bridge for the Wild Africa Trek. This was just about a month before it opened, I believe:

Someone commented, “So, you’re on a catwalk over crocodiles?!” Chaz said, “Believe me, Disney will harness you in like you’ve never been harnessed before!” We started joking that this would provide new entertainment for the crocs…which one will fall? Chaz said, “That’s what we call in the zoo field ‘enrichment’”.

After that, we entered the west savanna, still travelling along the ride path. As we crossed the chains and heard the rumble, Chaz explained that those keep the animals in their respective areas. The ride path is made up of four areas, so that keeps the animals in their correct savanna. There’s the savanna:

First, we saw a sable antelope:

The interesting fact here is that, the more dominant the animal, the darker their coloration. Here’s the rest of the herd and you can see the different colors:

There are some calves in the back of that last picture. Chaz said the males are generally nearly black and the females are usually more of a reddish-brown color. However, when they took their male out of the group, one of the females became more dominant and actually changed colors to be nearly black!

The sable antelope are herd creatures and stick together. Because some of the herd was still back in the pens, just around the corner, the antelope that we saw were sticking close and would stay around there all day. When the antelope come in for the day, they do so in order of dominance. The most dominant first and the least dominant last. A nice display of color variation, he said. Even if the least dominant antelope is there first, she would stand aside and wait for the others to go ahead.

While he was telling us about the antelope, we had backed into a spot off of the ride path to watch them. We watched safari ride vehicles go by also. Some empty, some loaded with people gawking at us.

Someone on our safari asked about what the animals eat. For the most part, they eat the exhibit. The animals maintain the savanna. However, they do supplement the giraffes with browse in feeders, to keep them from eating the trees. That’s also why you may notice mesh around the trees—the giraffes were de-barking and killing too many trees. He explained that AK has a horticulture staff, but the animals do a lot of the horticulture for them. The grazers keep the grass nice and short and the browsers keep the trees all nice and pruned (sometimes too well).

Next, we saw the ankole cattle:

Chaz explained that the girls have the horns that are smaller in diameter.

Right after that, we saw “Bruce”, the water buck, strolling alongside our vehicle:

Up next: Giraffes!

 

[eecteacher82]

Awesome update! I can't wait for the next one!!!!! I think we might have to stay CL just for a night to do the safari! I love the backstage/behind the scenes info and you are doing an awesome job and giving it!

 

[jc040404]

I think we might have to stay CL just for a night to do the safari!

A part of me started thinking that while I was reading, too!


This sounds awesome. I know the boys would absolutely love it! You're definitely getting some interesting animal & AK info out of it. How wild that the antelope changed color like that! I'll be back to check out your video later tonight and can't wait to hear about the rest of this!

The backstage signs are pretty cool, too!

 

[407-W-DISNEY]

We took that tour in 2008...we had 2 girls...they were either new or there as students...I can't quite remember, but Chaz seems SOOOO much better!
Lucky you!!
It really is a cool tour.

 

[Dugette]

Awesome update! I can't wait for the next one!!!!! I think we might have to stay CL just for a night to do the safari! I love the backstage/behind the scenes info and you are doing an awesome job and giving it!

I'm glad you are enjoying it! I'm pretty much typing out a lot of things he said word for word. That's a great idea to stay CL for a night to do this. But make sure to find out when they're doing the excursions, as you HAVE to be staying CL the same day you go.

A part of me started thinking that while I was reading, too!

This sounds awesome. I know the boys would absolutely love it! You're definitely getting some interesting animal & AK info out of it. How wild that the antelope changed color like that! I'll be back to check out your video later tonight and can't wait to hear about the rest of this!

The backstage signs are pretty cool, too!

Too bad that (I think) you need park admission to do the tour. Otherwise, it would be a great idea for you to get a non-AP Disney fix! And, yes, I thought the antelope color-changing thing was awesome!

We took that tour in 2008...we had 2 girls...they were either new or there as students...I can't quite remember, but Chaz seems SOOOO much better!
Lucky you!!
It really is a cool tour.

Wow, I'm glad we got a good guide! We really didn't know what to expect, but were quite impressed!

 

[Dugette]

Next on the safari, we approached the giraffes. We pulled off to the side so that we could spend a little time watching them. One person in our group mentioned that he had seen a giraffe lying down the day before. Chaz explained that a giraffe has to feel very comfortable in its environment to lay down, as it takes some effort to get back up.

There were three adults and one baby giraffe. Chaz said that they were all reticulated giraffes, which is the sub-species of giraffe they have there. Depending on which researcher you ask, there are 7-9 different sub-species of giraffes in Africa. However, they were in the process of introducing a new type at AK, the maasai giraffe. The reticulated giraffes would move to the Animal Kingdom Lodge and the maasai would be on the Safari savanna. The patterns are very different on these two types of giraffes. The reticulated have big, brown squares versus the maasai look like they’ve been covered in dark brown/black maple leaves.

The giraffes were all eating while we were there. Chaz explained that they have four stomachs and chew a cud. (If you are astute, you may have heard me on the video saying, “Four stomachs? That would have been handy for Food & Wine!”) He also explained that this makes it difficult to train giraffes. Many animals respond well to a food “time out” when they are misbehaving. If you take away a giraffe’s food, though, it just starts chewing on its cud. Therefore, they have to find what motivates each giraffe. He explained that Asante, one of the previous male members of their herd that had been shipped off, was very tactile and loved to be brushed, which they used to their advantage to get him to move close to give shots and such. He said the females they have there now are much more into treats, though. He said that the giraffes’ day would consist of eating and eating, then laying down for a rest in the afternoon.

Here are some pictures of the giraffes eating (there’s one baby out):

Next, Chaz whipped out his container full of giraffe droppings! No kidding! He said that, when they chew their food, they really break down their food. They eat around 70-100 pounds of food per day, but only produce little pellets. They produce a lot of pellets, but the food is really broken down. If you broke one open, you’d just see little fibers, not leaves. Versus rhinos and elephants, who only digest about half of what they eat (he said if he gave an elephant an apple or a sweet potato and they didn’t chew it up, it would come out looking like an apple or a sweet potato).

He also explained that one of their female reticulated giraffes would stay on the savanna in order to teach the messai the way around (like how to get back to the barn). Since giraffes are herd animals, they will hopefully follow and learn from her. He also told us that their animals all are trained on cues. They sound a cue to get them to go out on the savanna, they sound a cue to tell them its time to eat, etc.

He also pointed out the wildebeests, lying down:

As we were moving away from the giraffes, someone asked how many they had at AK. At the park, it was just those four (plus the maasai that were in quarantine). At one point, they had 10 out and the horticulture staff asked them to not have so many, as they were killing everything! So, they put them on a rotating schedule, leaving some back at the barn and just putting some out each day.

It looks like we came across another safari ride vehicle:

Then, we came across our first elephant, “Willy”:

Someone must have asked something about elephants' emotions/attachments. Chaz said that some of his managers who have been in the elephant field for a long time have told him stories about when a member of the herd dies or needs to be put down, they let the herd gather around and say their goodbyes and you really see the reactions of the elephants. They had to send one of their bulls to Birmingham recently and he said all of the other elephants were going crazy when that happened.

He was also asked about elephants' memories. He said that he could take any one of us, dress us up in the same keeper-attire that he’s wearing, and send us in and all of the elephants would be giving us the evil eye. They would not know who we are and would be suspicious. The keepers have to spend a lot of time building on their relationships with the elephants. They have great memories. Another example he gave is that the acorns had been dropping out of the trees recently. The elephants go straight for the trees that they know are dropping acorns. He said that they are incredibly intelligent.

We arrived in another elephant area just as they were letting them out for the day.

We pulled off to the side of the road and another safari ride vehicle passed us by:

Chaz said that they have to release the elephants in a certain order, as the elephants are very particular about who they are next to. We pulled off to the side to watch them run out. So cool to see mama and baby (Luna) run out together. The baby elephant was so cute and playful! I can’t hear very much about the elephants on my video, since too many noisy safari vehicles were going by, but we do have pictures:

One thing I can hear was that someone asked Chaz how he could tell the different elephants apart. He said that with both the elephants and the giraffes, when you’re working with them every day, you start seeing their differences pretty easily. Some animals, though, like the tommies, are much more difficult to distinguish. On these, they use a notching system, where they put a certain number of notches in their ears to number them.

He also told us that one of the females was pregnant and that they are pregnant for 23 months. Coincidentally, we just saw the news that the new elephant he was referring to was born a few days ago! That was the 6th elephant calf born at AK.

As we moved on from the elephants, we passed an eland (largest of the antelopes), looking at us:

Up next: Disney “secrets”!

 

[jc040404]

Loved that two of my favorites made the same update. The giraffe pics are great. They're such beautiful animals. I didn't know they had four stomachs though. The elephant stuff was super interesting, too. It must be fun to work with them, minus the droppings stuff anyway. Very educational TR!

 

[AprilRenee]

This is all SO interesting!! Thanks for sharing!! :-D

 

[TheThomsLuvDisney]

Great Update! Loved all the extra fun facts!

 

[Dugette]

Loved that two of my favorites made the same update. The giraffe pics are great. They're such beautiful animals. I didn't know they had four stomachs though. The elephant stuff was super interesting, too. It must be fun to work with them, minus the droppings stuff anyway. Very educational TR!

I'm glad you enjoyed! I really enjoyed those two also! And the babies!

This is all SO interesting!! Thanks for sharing!! :-D

You're welcome!

Great Update! Loved all the extra fun facts!

Thanks! More coming up!

 

[Dugette]

As we drove on to our next destination, we saw the gazebo for the Wild Africa Trek:

Next, Dug spotted a door on a Baobab tree:

Chaz joked, “That’s the secret doorway and stairwell to all the riches of Disney! Nothing but gold doubloons. Scrooge McDuck goes down there and swims in all his gold.”

He then explained that, at one point, it was actually an enrichment item for the giraffe. It was one of those great ideas that didn’t work out so well. What had been in there was similar to a big, metal octopus. The keepers would attach food items to it and it would rotate throughout the day. However, the giraffe didn’t use it. So, they ended up taking the contraption out and it’s now just a storage shed in that tree.

After backing into some shrubbery as we turned around, we made our way over to the savanna and got back on the ride path:

As we passed these, our group was asking about future expansion on Animal Kingdom. Chaz didn’t have any really specific answers. They usually alternate between adding/changing rides and adding things to the animal program. Things move slow at AK, so no quick changes. Nothing definite in the works right now.

Next, we crossed into the east savanna, where the rhinos would usually be. Since it was a chilly morning, they weren’t out.

After that, we had a treat, though. We actually saw cheetahs! We don’t have any good still pictures of them, but they were in the video I posted. They were laying around, but playing and alert. Definitely the most I’ve ever gotten to see them.

Someone commented that you never see the cheetahs running, just laying there. Chaz said it’s because the ones in Africa that you see on the videos are starving, but these ones are like, “Oh, it’s time to eat already?” He said that they installed a rabbit run for them (like at dog tracks) and the cheetahs were like, “Oh, that’s nice. I’m going to go back to sleep now.” He also explained that cheetahs don’t have retractable claws. They are always out for traction. Their bodies are more dog-like than cat-like, very long and lean, and their tails are about as long as their bodies, to provide counter-balance.

We pulled off the path near the lions. Chaz said that the best time to see them is first thing in the morning when they go out (usually before the park is open) or right before they go in for the night. When the male first comes out in the morning, he roars. This is to mark his territory, basically saying, “If you can hear my roar, you’re in my space.” As usual, we couldn’t see too much of the sleepy lions:

We saw some Oryx (straight horned) and Addax (corkscrew horned) antelope:

Looks like another kind of antelope here too:

Next up was two ostriches. We stopped and spent awhile looking at them. Chaz said that they don’t have any males there. The females are generally gray. However, the black one in the picture below is also a female. For some reason, a couple of years ago, her plumage just changed color. So, she is an example of what a male looks like:

They don’t know why she changed color, but she’s healthy. Although she’s the tallest of the ostriches, she’s not the most dominant (the shortest one is—she chases more keepers).

Chaz then passed around a real (hollowed-out) ostrich egg for us to hold:

He said the eggs take 40-42 days to hatch. The egg is very hard, which makes it easier for the chick to get out than for an intruder to get in.

Ostriches have the largest eyes of any land animal. And their eyes are bigger than their brains. This is when our driver chimed in, “There are two different settings to an ostrich—“I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you” and “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” Chaz said that ostriches tend to find people they like and people they dislike, but don’t take it personally. For awhile, one of the ostriches would chase all keepers with blond hair.

Ostriches have great big toes that they use as weapons:

When they kick out, they aim towards the mid-section to disembowel the threat. One more shot of an ostrich, cleaning herself:

My video cuts out for a bit here, but when it comes back, Chaz is mentioning that they have had coyotes outside of the perimeter fence before. We were moving on again. Here’s a pretty shot of a tree:

We jumped back on the ride path and saw the lions a bit better:

Looks like we saw some more antelope after that:

My video cuts out again (probably was running low on battery), but the next part is us returning to civilization. The older couple was comparing this to the Sunrise Safari that they had done. They had really liked that too, but said they saw a lot more animals on this one. Chaz was happy that we’d seen as many as we did, due to the cold. The keepers prefer to have the animals out of the barn as soon as possible, because it delays their day of cleaning the barn and preparing for when the animals come back in.

One more tidbit that I didn’t get on video, but see on a tweet of Dug’s: the reason that there are not zebras on the safari ride is because they misbehaved. The zebras would chase baby animals and did not respond well to time-outs. So, they had to move them all to the Lodge, where there were no babies to chase. Crazy!

All in all, this safari was a great and very memorable experience. We learned a lot and had a lot more time to observe the animals. So glad we had the opportunity to do this!

They dropped us off at the Rafiki’s Planet Watch train station. They gave us some conservation pins to wear and we thanked our guides. Back into the park:

Up next: the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail and a baby gorilla!

 

[MeMom]

Being such Animal Kingdom fans, we would love to go on that tour!

We had wondered why the zebras were moved. I will have to tell Jill when I talk to her this morning.

I am hoping we can see the newest baby elephant when we go back in October. Fingers crossed. We've had a lot of luck seeing Lilly, the baby gorilla many times. Maybe we'll get as lucky seeing Jabali.

Thanks for all the great pictures and the behind the scenes information. I plan to watch the video when I get a chance to really focus on it. Right now, I'm getting ready to get back to school after the nice Labor Day long weekend.

 

[jc040404]

Loved all of this! Blake and I finally watched the video yesterday and he is already begging to go to AK. We loved the cheetahs! Too funny that they installed a rabbit run that didn't work. It's been interesting to learn some of the ideas that didn't exactly work out for the animals. The door on the tree is great!

 

[Dugette]

Being such Animal Kingdom fans, we would love to go on that tour!

We had wondered why the zebras were moved. I will have to tell Jill when I talk to her this morning.

I am hoping we can see the newest baby elephant when we go back in October. Fingers crossed. We've had a lot of luck seeing Lilly, the baby gorilla many times. Maybe we'll get as lucky seeing Jabali.

Thanks for all the great pictures and the behind the scenes information. I plan to watch the video when I get a chance to really focus on it. Right now, I'm getting ready to get back to school after the nice Labor Day long weekend.

I hope you guys get to go on the tour someday! I still think it's pretty interesting that the zebras were misbehaving and had to be moved! I hope you see the new baby elephant. We're debating as to whether or not we go to AK on our upcoming trip, but if we do, we definitely hope to see him. I'm glad you enjoyed the pictures and info. I hope you enjoy the video too!

Loved all of this! Blake and I finally watched the video yesterday and he is already begging to go to AK. We loved the cheetahs! Too funny that they installed a rabbit run that didn't work. It's been interesting to learn some of the ideas that didn't exactly work out for the animals. The door on the tree is great!

Yeah, the cheetahs were fun. I loved actually stopping to watch them (and being able to zoom in with the video camera to catch their little moments). I loved the stories about those ideas that didn't work out at Disney. Chaz did say something like, "There's a lot of great ideas here at Disney, but not all of them work out." As the door in the tree proves, I guess.

 

[Dugette]

The safari had dropped us off at the Rafiki’s Planet Watch train station, so we headed back into the park (back on stage!) from there. Decided to walk the Pangani trail:

We saw this giant froggy:

And these naked molerats:

And this ducky:

And some fishies:

And the meerkats:

The highlight was probably the gorillas, especially seeing the little baby one. Here are some pictures:

I also took some video and you can see the baby a lot better. This video is 1.25 minutes long:



Next, we headed over to the Finding Nemo musical. Enjoyed the show, once again.

We checked out the monkeys afterwards:

Since it was so cold out, there was no way we were doing Kali River Rapids. But some brave people were! So, we went to go observe. First, the empty one:

Then, a poncho-clad group:

Next, we did the Maharaja Jungle Trek. Saw the tigers:

And some pics of the theming:

We also saw some sleepy animals:

We had a lunch ADR coming up, so we needed to head out of the park. We decided to take an alternate route and go through the Rainforest Café on our way out. It was neat to see. We have one here at the Mall of America (haven’t been there for ages, though), so it’s not all that exciting. But it was neat to see, nonetheless.

Up next: Lunch at Sanaa! Yummy food and great views of the animals!

 

[IheartDDuck]

Great pictures. Although I have to say that during this entire update, I couldn't help but think that you saw the biggest frog ever! Seriously huge.