Real, Ancient, and Imagined: An Armchair Imagineered Blue-Sky Build-Out of Disney’s Animal Kingdom

TROPICAL AMERICA

Background

Okay, so let’s dig in. Pun intended.

As you know, when Animal Kingdom opened in 1998, the land located at the 4 o’clock position off of its “hub” was Dinoland, U.S.A. There’s no question that Dinoland was just as “realistic” and “textured” as the park’s Africa or Asia. But the world it brought to life was a whole lot closer to home by nature of recreating Florida.

Joe Rohde noted that at Animal Kingdom, “when you come up on animals, it is usually in the context of some story. In Africa that story ultimately reflects upon the question of resources, like ivory and rhino horn. Asia is chiefly concerned with habitat loss and habitat use and how animals and humans can live side-by-side; in Pandora, with pollution.” Dinoland had a context, too – the role of imagination, speculation, and pop culture in our relationship with animals. Fossils are just rocks, but Rohde notes, “We turn them back into dinosaurs by thinking about them.”

There’s a sort of good natured absurdity to the idea that gigantic reptiles once walked the Earth, and today, they’re the stuff of pajama sets, plush dolls, and animated films, right? Dinoland was meant to play with that humor. It was flush with narrative – about the interactions between fraternal and nerdy paleontology grad students drawn to the podunk town, the esteemed and academic Dino Institute that employed them, and the actual residents of “Diggs County” who bet on their town’s newfound fame and turned it into the dinosaur-stylized roadside wonder and tourist trap.

But even in its early days, Dinoland clearly made some fumbles. The land’s only ride (and indeed, the only dark ride in the entire park) was the Lost Legend: Countdown to Extinction – a ride that was, in a word, absolutely traumatizing for even the most dino-loving youngster. What’s worse, the ride famously copied-and-pasted the layout of Disneyland’s world-class Modern Marvel: Indiana Jones Adventure – a ride regularly understood as one of the best on Earth. Even two decades ago, Disney World fans were known to take to message boards and wish aloud that they’d gotten a copy of Indy, instead.

Then, things arguably got worse. Clearly necessitated by evaluation suggesting that Animal Kingdom both lacked rides and desperately needed more for families, Dinoland received the park’s first serious expansion: 2001’s “Chester & Hester’s Dino-Rama.” Complete with a cartoon Dumbo-style spinner, an off-the-shelf wild mouse roller coaster, and a number of flashing midway games, the mini-land looked like a “cheap and cheerful” carnival built on the remains of an old gas station blacktop parking lot.

Of course, that was the point, and those in-the-know could doubtlessly preach about how the county fair was an on-the-nose pastiche of the same Americana and pop culture dino-dominance that underscored the rest of the land. But is any of that worth anything if 95% of guests haven’t bought into the backstory, instead perceiving the expansion as an actual cheap-out demonstrating the Walt Disney Company’s diminishing standards for its theme parks (which, by the way, was also happening at that time)? Even those who did “get the joke” tend to admit that the space felt out-of-place in an otherwise earnest, reverent park.

Long story short, despite the omnipresent popularity of dinosaurs (and indeed, the continued appeal and expansion of Jurassic Park at Universal Orlando down the street), Disney’s Dinoland never really hit the way the company hoped. For decades, fans basically armchair Imagineered transforming Dinoland into South America (which, obviously, would be a more obvious fit alongside the park’s Asia and Africa, anyway), making an even swap from Dinosaur to Indiana Jones Adventure and replacing the Dino-Rama carnival with anything else. It was a silly pipe dream… Until it… wasn’t?

At the 2022 D23 Expo, Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro was short on actual announcements, but came with lots of Blue Sky ideas. In a cooly-received and incredibly awkward session of real time feedback, he displayed art that would’ve transformed Dinoland into a space celebrating Moana, while apparently transforming the Dinosaur ride into an attraction themed to Zootopia. A clear product of the thoughtless, IP-obsessed “Disney+ Parks” era, it… didn’t make sense.

Luckily, a change in leadership at Imagineering saw the plan interrupted. It’s official: Dinoland will transform into a land called “Tropical Americas” – basically lumping together southern Central America and northern South America. Get it? Okay, okay, the incentive here is clear: to be able to swap Dinosaur for Indiana Jones Adventure (set in a Mayan temple), but to also be able to incorporate Disney’s sleeper hit of 2021, Encanto (culturally tied to Colombia), necessitating a sort of cross-continental, culturally-connected matchup.

Say what you will, but the “Tropical Americas” will be the first non-IP-based land built at a Disney Park in more than a decade, which is also something to embrace. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a land that is broad in its approach, allowing multiple IPs (and dare we say, IP-free attractions) to live within it.

So hold your tomatoes, but I do think that a “Tropical Americas” land will be a more natural fit for Animal Kingdom than Dinoland was – even if I recognize the importance of featuring dinosaurs in the park, and even if I know many Disney Parks fans disagree. I might disagree on the specifics (and I can absolutely acknowledge that this park needs to add capacity instead of just replacing it), but for the sake of this build-out and its reasonableness, I’m willing to go along with the official plans for the most part and just “build-out” from there.

While Disney has released plenty of concept art around the new land, they haven’t gotten around to specific ride names or details yet. But taking what we’ve seen, we can make a few guesses as part of our dreamy Build-Out, layering additional experiences for the sake of Blue-Sky-ness…

Build-Out

Just as the park’s Africa is incarnate as the village of Harambe, Asia as the kingdom of Anandapur, and Pandora as the Valley of Mo’ara, the Tropical Americas will come to life as the “in-universe” town of Pueblo Esperanza – “Village of Hope.”

The changeover from Dinoland to Tropical Americas is interesting because it’s a real life example of what armchair Imagineers like me try very hard to do – to make our designs reasonable by acknowledging that it’s the rare effort that’s a true “green field” project. In the real world reimagining now underway, Imagineers must preserve the three Rs: restaurants, restrooms, and retail; they have to preserve backstage access; avoid interrupting power or water infrastructure; to re-use all the ride hardware they can.

So I don’t have to start from scratch; real Imagineers have already done some heavy lifting here. For example, just as we discussed Animal Kingdom’s propensity for letting you actually get lost, Dinoland sort of dropped you down in an odd little pocket of space without any clue how to get to the land’s E-Ticket ride. You can already see via concept art how Imagineers are trying to retroactively turn the land’s entry into a “Main Street” of sorts, with a new entry arch, clocktower, and accessory structures lining the path to direct you into the land. From there, what once was a plot of trees adding further discombobulation is becoming a central fountain, establishing a navigational “town square.”

The land’s Restaurantosaurus will also be easy enough to reclad as a Central American restaurant on the plaza. I took a swing and called it CAFÉ ESPERANZA. (For better or worse, the Dinoland version fulfilled the park’s inevitable cheeseburgers-and-chicken-strips requirement. Here’s hoping the Tropical Americas version can be a little more creative, vibrant, and cultural.)

From there, the enchanted “Casita” from Encanto will be found up on a hillside to the left. It’s a beautiful structure. And from the moment this magical, “living” home made its debut on posters for the film, it’s felt pretty inevitable that this is how the IP-mandated American parks would finally receive their version of Hong Kong Disneyland’s Modern Marvel: Mystic Manor.

That said, as of this feature’s publication, Disney hasn’t released many details about the Encanto attraction, including its name or ride system. I called it LA CASITA ENCANTADA. Despite rumors that it’ll be a boat ride, it seems highly likely it’ll end up being a trackless dark ride. (The model Disney displayed at D23 includes a showbuilding much larger than Mystic Manor’s, though, suggesting that even if it is trackless, it probably won’t just copy the Hong Kong ride’s layout.)

To make Encanto at least kinda-sorta fit the brief of Animal Kingdom, we know that this ride will invite us into the Madrigal’s magical home on the day that young Antonio received his generationally-prophesied “gift” of speaking to animals. One can imagine that the hoard of South American animals will likely escape from Antonio’s room, requiring that guests be dispatched through the house’s many magically-expanding, musically-inclined chambers to find and return them all, giving each family member a chance to display their speciality gift.

In any case, there’s no question that Animal Kingdom needs more dark rides, more for families, and yes (gulp) more “Disney”, so this attraction (in both the real world and in my build-out) fulfills a necessary part of the park’s punch list… and considering that all it “cost” was the Dino-Rama carnival (which lost its coaster years ago and was limping along with just a spinner and midway games), can’t be anything but a win.

Also located right in town is a new flat ride. Disney has already laid the groundwork of “storytelling” behind the new carousel that’ll serve Animal Kingdom, here wrapped in the story of Pueblo Esperanza by introducing an unseen woodcarver who created each of the ride’s ridable figures. Never mind that (in true Disney-of-the-2020s style) this artisan woodcarver in a remote village somewhere in the Southern hemisphere has painstakingly, exclusively carved on-model Disney and Pixar characters for the town’s carousel… an act that would trigger a cease-and-desist from the Walt Disney Company with such speed that Disney would personally charter a private plane for the postal carrier delivering it…

I’m sure that the results will be both adorable and adored, but for the sake of my Build-Out, let’s leave the carousel while pretending that we could get away with the carved creatures being Central- and South American animals, not animated ones. (Indeed, if that happened, it would make this carousel the first IP-free major attraction at a U.S. Disney Park since 2006!) Since Disney hasn’t named this ride, we’ll call it GRAN CARRUSEL.

For those of us who lurked around Disney message boards in the 2000s, it’s sort of like having fan-fiction brought to life to see the Dino Institute’s domed rotunda structure become a Mayan temple. (It also at least somewhat resolves the issue caused by Dinosaur being “hidden” in a tucked away corner of the land, because now, narratively, these are the “ruins” outside of town, so it makes sense that they’re a bit off-the-beaten-path. It’s a slightly clumsy way of doing what Tokyo DisneySea’s Lost River Delta does beautifully, separating the “modern” from the “ancient.” Speaking of which, Indiana Jones‘ presence indicates that the Tropical Americas will be set in or about the 1930s, whereas Africa and Asia are set in the present.)

Despite the fact that Dinosaur and Indiana Jones Adventure do share nearly-identical layouts, no one would seriously expect Animal Kingdom’s ride to transform into Disneyland’s. Structurally, retroactively recreating California’s physical show scenes – including the legendary “Big Room” or the suspension bridge across it – would take such substantial infrastructure work, it probably wouldn’t be worth preserving the existing (25 year old) ride system at all.

Instead, it’s likely that the transformation will salvage and redress Dinosaur’s existing show spaces, meaning you should expect more claustrophobic corridors and dark caverns rather than the sweeping vistas and gigantic spaces in Disneyland. And that’s okay! Disney is proudly declaring that Animal Kingdom’s Adventure will be distinct from Disneyland’s or Tokyo DisneySea’s – even though the latter is also set in South America. Instead, they promise that this version of the ride – like Encanto – will adapt to Animal Kingdom’s themes by becoming a quest for a mythical Mayan creature said to be sleeping deep in the ancient, undisturbed temple.

Side note: it’ll be interesting to see how Disney adapts Indiana Jones to its current corporate push for inclusivity. Given Disney’s earnest, justified, but occasionally overwrought efforts to avoid cultural appropriation or simplified stereotypes, we’ll wait to see how a pulpy 1930s adventure ride ostensibly borrowing from a real culture’s myths can still be big, loud, and fun. Indiana Jones ain’t National Geographic. (Almost certainly, the Disneyland ride is on Imagineering’s shortlist to “fix” in that regard, so it’s surprising that they’d potentially double down on Indy’s inherent… Indy-ness.)

For my part, I called the ride INDIANA JONES ADVENTURE: TEMPLE OF THE FEATHERED SERPENT. It seems exceedingly unlikely that Disney would draw upon the real mythical Quetzalcoatl that serves as a major deity in Mesoamerican religions… but surely, the creature stands to be an “imagined animal” icon of the park if it’s done right, standing alongside the Yeti.

Speaking of unlikely, I have added a second thrill ride to this “ancient” sector of the land. Given that I’ve never stopped mourning the ultra-mysterious Lost Legend – TOMB RAIDER: The Ride, it’ll be no surprise that I’ve daydreamed of incorporating a smaller suspended Top Spin model into the land. Even though these nauseating carnival rides are flickering out of existence around the globe, I can’t get over the way these rides can be beautifully synched to water fountains, fire effects, and music, making them as fun to watch as they are to ride.

Top Spins feels like a real challenge or trial in a way that I think is compelling for a park like Animal Kingdom – a real “man versus nature” experience, strapping into an ancient device and facing the elements head-on. I called this version FIREFALL, and positioned it in front of a larger companion to the new Dino Institute-turned-temple creating a clear “weenie” for the land from its entry and a compelling backdrop for the flipping flat ride and the multi-tiered viewing area embedded in the rainforest in front of it.

If there’s one thing we haven’t heard much about for the Tropical Americas land, it’s animals. Dinoland itself housed just one (an American crocodile – which is fairly funny given that, evolutionarily, a chicken is more closely related to a T. rex than a crocodile is). Indeed, some are becoming worried that the Tropical Americas won’t bother to have animals at all. (It wouldn’t be much of a surprise. Surely modern Disney has at least considered that it could do away with all the animals except those on Kilimanjaro Safaris and most guests would be none the wiser.)

But I’ve tried my best to include a few: toucans in the town square, alpaca in a pen adjacent to the restaurant, nocturnal bats in the new, faux temple behind the Top Spin, and capybara in a habitat accessed from the Encanto plaza. I’m no zoologist, but I hoped that these animals would need relatively small support facilities – enough to wedge into the existing land’s footprint – versus something like jaguars or pumas.

Lastly, I have expanded this land’s reach to include the oddly standalone Theater in the Wild (currently home to “Finding Nemo: The Big Blue… and Beyond!”), which I’ve renamed the Teatro del Pueblo. Despite technically being within the purview of Tropical America, I don’t think it should limit or restrict what can happen there. Rather, I think that the productions the theater hosts can now just be stylized and contextualized as the craftsmanship of local storytellers and puppeteers, beginning with “Up: A Musical Adventure”!

When it’s all said and done, this “reimagined” land would end up with two substantial new attractions. And though it offers far more in the way of IP than Africa or Asia, I think it fits alongside them nonetheless.