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Credit: DisneyAnother day and another day away from Disney. As we continue to search for ways to keep the magic alive, one thing we can never get enough of is ride recreations at home! Inside the Magic has covered a few ride creations already, but they were put together by the fans. Now, a Cast Member at Disney’s Animal Kingdom has decided to recreate the ride she operates, Kilimanjaro Safaris.
Disney shared Safari driver Katelyn’s video saying,
Jambo, friends! Every day, we see more and more great stories of cast members and Disney fans creating magical moments at home, and we can’t help but be delighted and inspired by the true creativity in action!
One such example is Katelyn, a cast member at Kilimanjaro Safaris in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Inspired to recreate the attraction at home, she led a one-of-a-kind video safari through the Harambe Wildlife Reserve, complete with some of her favorite “animals” and her very own safari vehicle. She even shared some great facts about wildlife along the way.
You can watch the video below:
Using her collection of stuffed animals and a remote-controlled Safari vehicle, Katelyn takes us through her at-home version of the Harambe Wildlife Reserve. Both the order in which we see the animals and her script is official to what guests would receive if on the actual safari. As soon as she sees one of the reserves magnificent animals she stops the truck–ensures that her passengers have a good vantage point of course–and shares some facts about them.
But the animals are free to roam in the actual safari and can have a habit of not showing up on cue. That is not the case for this special safari. Katelyn is able to set the scene so that everybody tuning in can see and learn a thing or two about her favorite animals specifically without worrying if they’re going to show up.
Kilimanjaro Safaris, Disney’s Animal Kingdom
The Safari is one of–if not the–iconic attractions at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Park. As part of his Instagram tour of the park, Imagineer Joe Rohde stopped to talk about this very special ride, explaining both the vast size and the visual illusions at work to make it appear even bigger.
He wrote:
The Safari alone is bigger than the guest circulation area of the park. This may be obvious, but Kilimanjaro Safaris is laid out just like any theme park ride, just on a bigger scale. The ride path curves back and forth not unlike the ride path of Pirates of the Caribbean, and the land rises and falls gently but enough to block the view of how many vehicles are really out there. So there are scenes, just like in a ride. There are real Safaris you can take where it’s just you and your private driver. But the middle class version of Safari in Africa can involve pretty big crowds…and unlike a theme park…nobody manages throughput. There could be upwards of fifty cars surrounding a cheetah and her cubs. So, after our first trip we knew we could beat that kind of crowding just by having a dispatch interval. The vehicles we use are reminiscent of South African vehicles serving the lodges at Krueger National Park. A real Safari is so much more than we can offer, in time and scale. This, like the rest, is a fictional representation. But it’s a pretty good visual approximation.