A Disney Imagineer is sharing behind-the-scenes secrets about Animal Kingdom on Instagram
- Joe Rohde is a Disney Imagineer and the creative force behind Disney World's Animal Kingdom.
- Rohde is using his Instagram account to share details throughout the park that most people would never notice, including murals and other paintings.
- Many of the park's thematic elements tell a story, from the 325 animal carvings embedded into the Tree of Life to the fossils at DinoLand U.S.A.
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This April marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and the 25th anniversary of the Disney Conservation Fund. Disney World was planning on celebrating in a mammoth way, by inviting Animal Kingdom fans to dine with and learn from Disney Imagineer, Joe Rohde.
Rohde was set to host the intimate event, called Tiffins Talks, but, with the parks currently closed, he has taken to Instagram to give a behind-the-scenes look at how he and the rest of the creative team brought Animal Kingdom to life.
"It doesn't look like we are meeting up at Disney's Animal Kingdom real soon, so how about a tour of my personal photos of the park," Rohde wrote in the caption of an Instagram post from March. "If you haven't been to the park, or ever heard of it [...] perhaps this will help people understand what it is. Maybe even convince some skeptics to try it out. If you have been there, it might just be more inside knowledge."
Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde has been sharing his photos of the park almost daily on his Instagram account, giving fans an inside look at how the park was designed and built
Many of the details Rohde features blend into the park's landscape so seamlessly that you might never have noticed them otherwise.
First, Rohde took readers straight to the heart of the park with these photos of the Tree of Life.
Standing 145 feet tall and with exactly 325 animal carvings covering its massive trunk and branches, the Tree of Life captures the nature of the park, which is, according to Rohde, "the themes of animals and their relationships to humans (good and bad)."
If you walk into Animal Kingdom and never look closely at the tree, you may never notice those meticulous carvings, which, according to a press release on Walt Disney World News, took 13 people and 18 months to create. But those who slow down and take in the natural wonders around them, receive the "rewards nature can provide the careful observer."
As you venture past the Tree of Life and further into the Africa section of Animal Kingdom, you'll encounter Harambe Village
There, you'll find the Kilimanjaro Safaris, Harambe Market, and the Harambe Theatre.
The Imagineering team behind the park traveled to various parts of Africa to gather research for the park's design.
Rohde reveals here that Harambe is a "smash-up" of Lamu, Kenya and Arusha, Tanzania, both of which are mercantile border towns, similar to the fictional Harambe. In fact, the word Harambe means "let's work together or pull together," according to Rohde.
As Rohde wrote in the caption, in Harambe Village you can read "multiple levels of history and conquest" into the environment. "There's a Portuguese fort, some remnants of Omani reign, a British Colonial era, and Independence in 1961," he wrote.
With more than 34 species living in 110 acres of natural habitat, Kilimanjaro Safaris is a must-do for animal lovers
You might not think of this rugged safari as a ride like the other coasters or dark rides at Disney, but Rohde acknowledges that it is "just like any theme park ride, just on a bigger scale. The ride path curves back and forth [...] and the land rises and falls gently but enough to block the view of how many vehicles are really out there."
Even the ride vehicles and the roads were designed with a purpose. As Rohde notes, the vehicles are reminiscent of the ones used on a real safari in Kruger National Park in northeastern South Africa. And, according to Walt Disney World News, the bumpy roads were intentionally made that way by having the design team roll tires through the concrete, while throwing stones and twigs into it.
If you travel to the Asia section of the park, you'll come across the wet and wild Kali River Rapids
A fast-paced ride set among a lush, green jungle, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement and miss the smaller details that went into creating this ride, but if you take a moment to look up next time you're inside the queue building, you may notice something new.
As Rohde notes on Instagram, the entire ceiling is covered in murals "depicting traditional Buddhist parables in which animals act our moral precepts," called Jataka Tales. These murals were actually painted by a Balinese master painter, Rohde notes, adding that he bought the painter watercolor brushes as a gift, but he chose to paint with his traditional tools, which were "split pieces of bamboo which he cut with a knife and smashed to create a brush."
Also in the Asia portion of the Animal Kingdom, you'll find the walkthrough attraction, Maharajah Jungle Trek
Here, you'll spy tigers, gibbons, komodo dragons, and more than 50 species of birds — plus, a set of three murals which tell an important story about the majestic tigers in the exhibit.
If you look closely at the first set of murals, Rohde writes, they "reveal antique scenes of tiger hunts, making it clear that they're used to be way more tigers." The second group, which Rohde points out are made from stone carved in Bali, represent a "moral tale in which man comes into the forest, cuts down the forest, and disaster follows." And the third set "depict the four great kings of Anandapur," the fourth of which is shown as "an aged ruler who has retired from political life to return to the forest to meditate among the animals," Rohde writes.
"As with many of these details you don't need to notice them," Rohde writes, adding that "they exist impart simply to make the place seem more real. But if you were to look, they're not just decoration. They are content."
Expedition Everest is the tallest coaster at Disney and, according to Rohde, the first coaster built to travel backwards onto a different set of tracks
It's also arguably one of the best storytelling coasters anywhere.
Rohde acknowledges that it can be "difficult to tell much of a story on a ride. It must be simple and nonverbal, completely comprehensible as a pure experience." Because most rides are over so quickly, "that puts a burden on the queue experience to set the scene," he writes.
If you've ridden Expedition Everest, you'll know that the story is that of a dangerous snow monster living inside the mountain, but if you pay close attention as you walk through the queue, you'll realize there were warnings about this mythical monster all along — and that he may not be as dangerous as he seems.
As Rohde points out in his Instagram caption, "the legend of the yeti effectively protects" the mountain, so the story can actually be seen as a lesson in conservation.
Many of the fossils you can find in DinoLand U.S.A. are from paleontological sites in North America
It's easy to assume that anything you find in a theme park is fake or manufactured, but Rohde says here that "if you see something that looks like a fossil of a prehistoric creature, it is either a real fossil of a prehistoric creature or a replica of a real fossil."
While Rohde notes that he and his team were instructed by paleontologists, he admits that "Dinoland has a lot of humor."
He adds that "because of that I think we can relax some of the seriousness of some of the other themes and get away with some hijinx. Including the recent population of famous ducks who inhabit the land. Because after all, birds are dinosaurs, ducks are birds, therefore ducks are dinosaurs."
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