Disney's Animal Kingdom — Zoo in Bay Lake

Disney's Animal Kingdom and its collection

Disney's Animal Kingdom, opened in 1998, is a zoo in Bay Lake, Florida, United States.

The Experiences division of the Walt Disney Company owns and operates the park. Its 580 acres made it the largest such park anywhere at the time of opening. What sets it apart from the neighbouring Disney parks is the pairing of rides with hundreds of live animal exhibits.

Exhibits

Discovery Island sits at the centre of the park, ringed by the Discovery River. Pandora is built on the exomoon from James Cameron's Avatar and its invented wildlife, while the Africa area is a fictional port town called Harambe, modelled on villages in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and the Asia section is the invented kingdom of Anandapur, drawing on Cambodia, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Tibet. Conservation Station is the only area reached through Africa rather than from Discovery Island.

Conservation and approach

Seven elephant calves have been born since the park opened in 1998: one each in 2003, 2004 and 2005, followed by births in 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2016. Four giraffes bred during 2008 took the number born on site since opening to eleven.

What the venue says

• Pandora – The World of Avatar
• Avatar Flight of Passage
• Na'vi River Journey
• Expedition Everest
• DINOSAUR
• Festival of the Lion King
• **Table-Service:** _Tiffins Restaurant_ (fine dining celebrating global travel and conservation) and _Yak & Yeti Restaurant_ (Pan-Asian cuisine).
• **Standard Parking:** $35 per day for standard passenger vehicles or motorcycles.
• The park offers comprehensive services for guests with disabilities, including Disability Access Service (DAS) registration support, wheelchair and ECV rentals near the entrance, and assistive listening or audio description devices.
• Most queue lines are wheelchair accessible, though some rides require guests to transfer from their wheelchair or ECV to the ride vehicle.