Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Animal Kingdom hits 20, keeps it natural
Djuan Rivers, vice president for Disney’s Animal Kingdom, has been to Mount Everest — not to be confused with Expedition Everest, the theme park’s roller coaster. He also has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and taken an African safari, which also are recreated at the park.
“It was a great experience to be able to connect the places I’ve traveled to with the places here,” Rivers says. “The reality is that WDI [Walt Disney Imagineering] does such an amazing job that I could truly show you pictures of my trip and my time here and it would be very difficult” to distinguish between the two, he said.
A sense of place was among the first impressions Animal Kingdom made on Rivers when it opened 20 years ago, a debut Disney will mark today.
“When I first came over here, it was just beautiful the connection between the physical place and nature. … It was fantastic,” says Rivers, who at the time just been named Wilderness Lodge’s general manager.
He says the theme park was built upon three principles that Imagineering mastermind Joe Rohde devised: the intrinsic value of nature, transformation through experiences and personal call to action.
“As you continue to walk around and see the experiences that we’ve added, they still play up to that,” he says. “Even Pandora, which is our latest blockbuster addition to the park plays onto that.”
The park took an otherworldly turn when Pandora — the World of Avatar opened last May. Now visitors walk among bioluminescent plants and see tall blue-skinned beings on a far-off planet.
“The intrinsic value of nature — that is all about Pandora. You walk through there and nature is the predominant piece in that. Anyone who walks in there gets transformed,” Rivers says.
Pandora also helped make Animal Kingdom a nighttime stop.
“When the team got together and the long-term strategic plan was laid out, we knew for sure that we had to extend the park experience,” Rivers says. Other after-dark additions have been the “Rivers of Light” show on the park’s central lagoon and the projections upon the iconic Tree of Life.
“You can come here as a date night and have a great dinner and see projection on a tree and walk around and see the bioluminescence in Pandora, and it’s just phenomenal,” Rivers says.
In the aftermath of Pandora opening, public attention has turned to other Disney World projects such as Toy Story Land and Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios, and attractions coming to Magic Kingdom and Epcot. But there are plans for Animal Kingdom, too, Rivers says.
“We’re already thinking about what we’re going to do next and how we’re going to fit into the whole four-park portfolio. … This next decade for Disney is going to be amazing,” Rivers says. “We never sleep. We never rest.”