This is the way to visit a Disney park. There's hardly anyone about. There are no queues for anything, the rides and attractions are half empty and you can stroll around in a totally relaxing manner. If you fancy going on a ride again, all you do is walk out of the exit, walk back round to the entrance and get on it again. The reason for giving people this sneak preview of the park is obviously so that the park can go through a few weeks of rehearsal with real visitors before the world descends on it. There were so few of us in the park that the Disney employees were looking quite bored and had difficulty in keeping themselves occupied.
The Animal Kingdom consists of various different areas of parkland designed to look and feel like Disney's idea of the animal's natural habitat. Consequently there is an area called Africa, one called Asia (not open yet), one called Safari Village and one called The Oasis. In addition to this and I'm sure it's to keep the Americans interested, is Dinoland USA and Camp Minnie Mickey (no comment).
We headed straight for Africa to ride the African Safari. The publicity suggested that the visitor would be taken on safari in a land rover to observe the African wildlife at close quarters in it's natural surroundings. This was true up to a point but the Yanks are obviously incapable of just looking at animals.
They need something more.
They need some form of entertainment.
They need drama.
They need excitement.
On arriving at the safari entrance we were greeted by the sight of a continuous shuttle of custom built vehicles made to look like enormous land rovers each one capable of holding about forty people. The vehicle would stop, allow people to board and drive on while immediately behind another vehicle drove up and would do the same thing. It was a conveyor belt of vehicles and if there were no people to get on any particular vehicle then that vehicle drove off around the safari circuit completely empty.
Now, as I've said, because the Americans seem incapable of just appreciating the beauty of wildlife, the whole safari journey takes the form of a sort of drama acted out by the driver. So in addition to keeping up a running commentary on what we were seeing we had to believe that there were poachers in the vicinity and that they were armed and dangerous so, "Keep a look out guys!".
Pathetic really.
As well as acting out his script, "We're about to enter bandit country guys!", and trying to whip the passengers into some form of excitement at the prospect of helping to capture the poachers, the driver makes sure he stops the vehicle on a rickety bridge which on cue starts to shake and wobble about a bit.
Eventually we are driven past evidence of camp fires and animal bones (the poachers can't be far away, see?) when all of a sudden the driver starts to act out a scenario on his walkie talkie which tells us the bandits have killed Big Red the elephant and have captured Little Red the baby elephant.
Oh no! What's going to happen?
After a lot of shouting and gunfire on the radio we drive past two land rovers. One has Little Red in the back and the other has a couple of tailor's dummies sitting in the front pretending to look like bandits. Standing by the side of the vehicle and training a rifle on the two pretend bandits is a Disney employee dressed in a police uniform.
"Hey, did they get Little Red?", shouts our driver.
"Little Red's OK", shouts back the policeman.
Can you believe this?
Remember, this Disney employee, dressed as a policeman has to stand there gun in hand and shout, "Little Red's OK" to every land rover that passes by but what an actor that boy was.
Brilliant I thought.
There was another thing about this safari experience which was even more mind boggling than Little Red's rescue and that was something that happened on our second safari ride. Because we did the ride early in the morning we thought we'd do it again later in the afternoon in the hope of seeing some different animals so off we went. This time though, we were the only ones in the land rover and although we told the driver that we had been on the safari earlier, we still got the whole dramatic play acting bit all over again. It was somewhat surreal because the driver would be having a normal conversation with us, discussing this and that, when all of a sudden he would go into the rehearsed script and start shouting things like, "We're entering bandit
country guys!" and "Hold on this might be dangerous!", generally over acting like mad and then resuming our conversation afterwards as if nothing had happened.
We even got the policeman again saying, "Little Red's OK".
Blimey, what a job eh?
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