Did you know that Animal Kingdom was originally going to feature a combination of mythical creatures, past and present animals. I learned this little fact, along with a few others during the Backstage Tales Tour at Animal Kingdom.
What is the Backstage Tales Tour?
The Backstage Tales Tour is a private tour that takes you behind the scenes of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. It’s really neat because you get to tour the facilities where Disney care’s for it’s animals. You will also get the chance to see some of these animals up close.
Disney’s Animal Kingdom park is home to more than 1,500 animals and out of that there is over 250 species represented. As you can imagine there is ALOT that goes into caring for that many animals and the Backstage Tales Tour walks you through some of those daily tasks. For instance during the tour you will visit the Animal Nutrition Center and see first hand how the Disney animal caretakers prepare and distribute over 4 tons of food each day. And Disney doesn’t just feed it’s animals scraps. They actually have a nutritionist who customizes meal plans for each of the animals. And the food they eat is just as good as food as us humans would eat.
We also got a chance to tour the state-of-the-art veterinary hospital at Animal Kingdom. They were actually doing a procedure on a bird so we got to get a sneak peek at what is involved with giving animals medical care. It’s really interesting. Here at the hospital they can do so much for the animals including surgery, if needed. If an animal requires more extensive care such as a Cat Scan, they can send them to another facility to get it done.
Disney is very involved in wildlife conservation. They not only care for the Animals at the parks but they also care very much for all animals. Towards the middle of the tour we took a quick snack break and learned about what Disney is doing to promote global wildlife conservation and how we can all help do our part.
The tour is about 3-4 hours long and costs $90 per person. This cost is in addition to your admission ticket to Animal Kingdom.
A portion of the tour proceeds is donated to the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund. So you can feel good knowing that your money is going to help these animals out. You can also help animals out by seeing Monkey Kingdom which is now in theaters.
Through April 23rd, Disney is also donating proceeds from ticket sales to the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund. If you are wondering what the movie is about, you can check out my film review of Monkey Kingdom.
