Disney World - The Online Guide - Animal Kingdom Landscaping

The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2003
(UK customers)

Themed Landscape Design Helps Tell Story In Disney's Animal Kingdom

Like a snapshot from an African safari, towering acacia trees and tall grasses paint a familiar picture of the Serengeti on a vast stretch of rolling landscape. But this is Central Florida, not East Africa, and the acacia is really a 30-foot-tall Southern live oak with a close-cropped crew cut.

"Disney is the first to 'build' a realistic African savannah," says Paul Comstock, lead creative designer and one of nine Walt Disney Imagineering landscape architects for Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park. "Its 4 million plants represent 3,000 species -- a huge, open-air experiment."

This corner of Africa is just one part of the enormous undertaking to landscape the fourth Walt Disney World theme park, Disney's Animal Kingdom. Unlike the traditional Disney parks where the landscaping complements themed buildings, at Disney's Animal Kingdom the landscaping, in many areas, is the stage and set.

"We cast trees as characters into the landscape, taking into consideration size, shade and accent," explains WDI landscape architect Bill Evans. "Then, if you can't use your ideal tree, you look around for somebody who can play that part. It's sort of like an 'understudy' -- you keep a large cast of characters at hand."

Thus the live oaks as "stand-ins" for acacias. However, many of the trees and shrubs and grasses have been gathered from around the globe, as Comstock can attest. He's been to 37 states and 28 countries, and has coordinated the collection of seeds and plants from places like Madagascar, Botswana, South Africa, Bali, Thailand, Tasmania, Nepal and the People's Republic of China.

Disney's Animal Kingdom has plants from every continent on Earth except Antarctica.

The first tree planted at the site in December 1995 was an authentic Acacia xanthophloa, a tree native to Africa. And now, the overall plant numbers are astounding: 40,000 mature trees, 16,000 of them grown right at the Walt Disney World Tree Farm, including 850 species of trees (40 species of palm trees alone). There are 2,000 species of shrubs -- 2.5 million in all -- and 260 different types of grasses. And there are enormous collections, like the third largest cycad collection in all of North America -- more than 3,000 of the ancient, fern-like plants.

The Disney landscaping team has tapped nurseries in California, Maryland, Oregon, Texas, Arizona and Florida; they've searched as far as South America for the millions of plants needed to create the show. And though the park has about 100 species of trees and shrubs foreign to North American soil, the landscaping team also was able to conserve hundreds of native oak trees and much of the natural native planting, according to Comstock.

Three Distinct Environments

Landscaping highlights in the 500-acre park, according to Comstock, are the tropical Oasis at the entry; the Cretaceous Forest and magnolia grove in DinoLand U.S.A.; and the riverine environments, grasslands and Pangani Forest Exploration Trail in Africa.

The park's entrance, including The Oasis and the adjacent Discovery Island, "is the place to decompress," says Comstock. Lush tropicals and subtropicals from all around the world -- flowering trees, vines and shrubs, like jacarandas, tabebuias and orchids, and broad-canopied evergreens -- create a sense of escape.

DinoLand U.S.A. is dramatically different, with ancient trees and plants, like ferns, monkey puzzles and cycads. There are 20 species of magnolia, says Comstock, an angiosperm that dates back to the Cretaceous period.

Africa, the third area, was the greatest challenge with its ride-through attraction and live animals roaming about, Comstock says. So planting patterns are based on what designers think the animals will do, and what the guests will experience.

For the safari, Comstock laid out the plant bed lines on a motorcycle (using spray paint) riding at the same speed as the ride vehicle, "because guests will experience the landscape at that speed," he says. And the rutted safari road also is part of the landscape design, says Comstock. His team matched concrete with the surrounding soil, then rolled tires through it, and tossed stones, dirt and twigs into it to create an appropriately bumpy experience duplicating an African game trail.

Disney's Animal Kingdom is the first theme park "where the show eats the landscape," says Comstock. Gorillas play with plants, elephants trample tender grasses, giraffes tend to strip leaves from trees. Designers have planned an 8-acre "browse farm" that will help feed the animals, with a crop of acacia, hibiscus, mulberries and shrubs to replace natural forage for giraffes, gorillas, baboons, elephants and antelope.

The rare freeze in Florida is another challenge, but lessons have been learned in the other Walt Disney World theme parks.

"We still gamble," says Evans. "We may mix a less hardy plant in a protected area. Irrigation can help fight frost. And we'll even use heaters in areas like The Oasis where the plants are lush and tropical."

As Disney's Animal Kingdom matures, the savannah will become a naturalized forest as the trees grow up and the young plants underneath thin out. "This is a park that will continue to grow and evolve," says Comstock. "We have this living laboratory to work with."

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