I almost forgot to write about this... it was more than a week ago! The Disney Parks blog has been doing one-day sweepstakes for various tours and things about once a week for several months now. They're kind of weird in that they notify winners the same day, they schedule it for the next week, and you can't bring a guest. Regardless, they had one for a backstage tour at Animal Kingdom, and I was picked.
The tour was in two parts. The first part was a walk around the animal hospital with one of the vets. As you can imagine, this isn't the most glamorous thing ever, but you do get to see the scope of what they do to care for their animals. The same department has duties with the marine life at The Seas over at Epcot. Basically they can treat any animal there under 500 pounds, which is most of them outside of the elephants, and one of the lions who needs to lose a little weight. The facility is pretty nice, though not nearly as extensive as the vet hospital at Ohio State (where former girlfriend Dr. Cath was going when we dated). One of the treatment rooms is "on stage" where you can watch, back at the Conservation Station area. The vet described giving one of the gorillas a colonoscopy there, which apparently was riveting for guests. Gross.
The biggest take away from the vet is that zoo medicine is hard, because there are so many different species to look after, and they're all a little different. And of course, animals are already more difficult than humans in many respects, because few can tell you where it hurts. One advantage that Animal Kingdom has over many zoos, however, is that because they're a for-profit entity, there's little issue over giving the care and meds that an animal needs.
The second part of the zoo was in the area behind the lion exhibit in Kilimanjaro Safari. As it turns out, they have five lions all together, but they exhibit in two groups, three days on, three days off. The two groups never see each other, though they can obviously smell each other. One pair is a bit older, while the other three are younger. There is one male in each pack, and the younger group may at some point mate. If you wondered why the lions were willing to hang out in certain spots, it's because they have a water-cooled metal plate out there that you can't see.
The two older lions were back in the enclosures that day. I was perhaps ten feet from them, heavy steel fencing in between us, as they slept. It's so strange that they have all of the features of a house cat, but they're just flipping enormous. The male was around 450 pounds, and his mane was just ridiculous. The keeper said all of them have very distinct personalities, and they like to play like house cats, but by the way, they could certainly kill you if given the chance. They're really beautiful and wonderful animals.
Naturally they don't want you taking photos backstage, which is a bummer, but there really isn't much to see anyway. The size of that park is actually the largest, even if it's the smallest for guest foot traffic, in part because of the safari area and the remoteness of the Planet Watch area. It seemed to take forever to drive back there. They also have loaner bikes all around, so employees can get to various areas faster.
I could see the new Festival of The Lion King theater, which is, not surprisingly, exactly like the old one. The area where the old one is will allegedly be the Avatar land they insist on building, despite the nearly universal consensus that it's a dumb idea.
I'm no stranger to backstage tours at theme parks, but I have to admit that this one was pretty cool. You don't get to see lions that close under normal circumstances.
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