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Goofy and his guests in Disney's Animal Kingdom

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Disney’s Animal Kingdom®

Here on the southwestern edge of the Walt Disney World Resort, Disney Imagineers have created a nature-rich and protective environment for exotic animals.

Architectural scale is suppressed to allow trees to “overshadow” buildings. Overall building height is limited to 30 feet. Many trees transplanted to the site are over 40 feet tall. Some are man-made. Others are carefully arranged dead trees or reshaped growing trees found on the site. In Africa, for instance, they have been pruned to resemble such African signature trees as the flat-topped acacia or maringa trees with their sausage-like seed pods added.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom “skyscraper” and principal icon is also a “tree” rising 145 feet over the center of the park. The Tree of Life is not only a spectacular re-creation of nature with flexing branches waving over little meadows and pools populated with animals, but a masterpiece of sculpture. A remarkable 325 animal images large and small are carved into its wide trunk, roots and main branches.
Surrounding The Tree of Life is the unique Discovery Island, a colorful melange of art and architecture casually arranged as a celebration of the animal world. As Joe Rohde, executive designer of the park, describes it, “Discovery Island is like nothing on Earth -- a place where the love of animals bursts out in vivid colors across the walls and on rooftops where folk-art carvings and paintings portray every creature in the animal world -- real and imagined.” Entry Garden is The Oasis This gateway to the adventures of Disney's Animal Kingdom is a cool, natural place of flowering glades and tumbling waterfalls. Guests explore several lush paths that lead to natural animal habitats of miniature deer, brilliant m
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