The HIDDEN SECRETS of Disney World's Animal Kingdom

let's hang out in disney's animal kingdom where i'll share 10 secrets you've probably never noticed before it's gonna be wild [Music] before we get to the secrets we need fuel which means coffee but don't worry we're going to take it to my first very favorite secret spot in this whole park and maybe in all of disney world lol remember when people were literally in fist fights over these 50th cuffs anyway coffee has been acquired um hello thank you starbucks cast member for this adorable little crown on my name i love it let's bring it to my secret spot so if you head directly across from creature comforts there's this little trail right here you'll pass the cotton top tamarins which are little cute marsupial guys come on coffee show them the way welcome to one of my favorite places in literally all of disney world it's the back side of the tree of life i love having my coffee here in the mornings or anytime it's on the water so the character flotillas will come by like literally rafiki and timon are coming by as we speak and there's usually like no one here look at this look at this not only can you get amazing pictures of the tree of life you can enjoy your coffee or your breakfast look at these birds a nightmare um oh my gosh am i gonna get pooped on uh you can enjoy your beverage with a character friend oh rafiki is crushing hi rafiki hi is this the best mickey and minnie and pluto and they're so cute i love them tell me this isn't the best and my secret coffee spot by the tree of life even isn't the main secret i'm trying to show you even though this is truly one of my favorite places in all of walt disney world um you can get truly fabulous amazing pictures of the tree of life if you're like me and you're by yourself self-timer is your best friend but oh okay let's go find the actual secret thing i want to show you as you may know the tree of life has over 300 different animals that were hand carved into it by different artisans and they only had a few hours to carve each one which is absolutely incredible when you factor in how big some of these are they only had about eight hours before the um plaster would dry and when you think about some of these that's amazing but one of my favorite things to do is look at the tree of life and see what different animals i can see obviously the shark is my fave but a very cool thing about the tree of life is that when you get down into the depths of it like we're doing right now this is all the dead rotted root and so they only put extinct characters not characters extinct animals down at the bottom to symbolize that they're dead so let's go find the dinosaurs dinosaur where are you oh there you are hey little guy see he's extinct i'm literally in it's tough to be a bug cue now which is why you can see here's another dinosaur i forget his name he's the one with like the spiny on his back i'm sure someone will let me know but there's another dinosaur see what else we can see all the way down here oh here's this sea dinosaur i call him dinosaur dolphin but i'm sure he has a technical name pterodactyl isn't this cool squid i forget his science name too i wish there was a megalodon but isn't this cool did you know there's dinosaurs down here this one's hard to like make out but i believe it to be a triceratops it looks like a rhino but i know it's dinosaur we we're just in the it's tough to be a bug queue so now we're gonna do one more little cute buggy nod before we leave this area and we're headed into the tree of life gardens which is another one of the walking trails that gets you by the tree and this one is also great for pictures because you get right up in there you get great views of the tree and you can actually see some animals on this trail that you might not see if you don't come down here i'm telling you this park is the best for just like walking and exploring and enjoying yourself so let's look for this particular log i'm looking for as you enter you'll see this giant root of the tree and this actually used to be the cue for its stuff to be bug and if you follow these little buggy tracks right here you'll notice some of them make perfect circles and if you look through them you actually can see they've highlighted a certain bug what's funny is that actually it's hard to get my camera to focus on it but all of these actually lead you to the end um it's just hard for my camera to show you but clearly the ants made this and they want you to look at the ant on the tree i'm headed to flame tree barbecue for my next secret but i've been distracted by viva gaia the bands [Music] sorry for the dance break i just get really excited with live entertainment it's back in the parks i love seeing these artists come back this is some of the fun of this park to me it just survives or immaculate but we are headed into flamestreet barbecue to check out my next secret if you've never been here this is a really good quick service barbecue spot where you can get ribs and chicken and all kinds of tasty treats but there's a really cool motif throughout the feeding area let's look at it flame tree barbecue not only has delicious eats definitely a great quick service of course my favorite quick service in this park is the chili canteen but if you're looking for some delicious bbq um come to come over to flametree but one very cool detail that you'll see around animal kingdom in general are these neat animal carvings um they have them a lot on discovery island they'll have them in pizzafari as well the style but because flametree is a barbecue spot all of the different pagodas out here have different prey and predator story lines so here you can see the gator eating the fish here you'll see ant eater and ants also note the spectacular view you get from these water ones of everest and if you time it right the character flotillas will come by so i've had a lot of lovely meals out here just enjoying the avions but look even the lampshades if you look closely it's a little anteater sticking his long long tongue into the little ant house this one my friend mr eel would be thrilled to see because it's eels eating little crabbies my slytherin soul doesn't love this one but it's eagles eating snakes look how scared my little snake friends look oh they're so sad not to worry though the snakes get their justice and their time in the end because this one is a snake eating a mouse here you have an owl and a bunny if you look over the ceiling you can see all the intricacies too and last but not least this one might be the prettiest it's uh spiders and butterflies and they even have the spider webs in the woodwork there try not to fall down the stairs and that makes perfect sense to be the detail work here at flame tree barbecue because in that instance when you're eating your ribs you're the predator and your food is the prey so a great detail not a lot of people notice which one's your favorite let us know we are headed into pandora now for our next little secret now it's no secret that this was going to be beastly kingdom which is why you can actually see a little bit of a dragon's mouth down there um when the park first opened it was going to be a land all about mythical creatures but they actually didn't have enough money to do both this and dinoland so they went with dinoland um partly because of the ride dinosaur had a lot of technology that they already had invented for indiana jones out in disneyland so dinoland won over beastly kingdom then eventually this became camp many mickey which a lot of you might remember which was like a last minute thrown together land where they had special the lion king which was also literally thrown together at the last minute which is appalling that that's their last minute projects it's like the greatest thing in disney world uh and then as you know a few years ago this became pandora the world of avatar and there's tons of cool details in this land i showed a lot of them in my trapped video here which we can link for you but did you know you can find joe roadie in this land and maybe not where you expect me to say if you thought i was gonna bring you to the flight of passage exit where you can see the handprints from joe rhodey the imagineer who made this land happen james cameron the director of titanic i mean avatar you probably knew that uh and john landau the producer of the film you'd be right there are handprints for the three of them at the exit of flight of passage but that's not what we're talking about today we're talking about another spot inside satuli canteen the quick service restaurant in this location that serves one of my favorite foods in all of walt disney world and to get in you need to have a moe order so i just had to order some cheeseburger pods for no other reason than then to show you this one fact definitely no other reason to order cheeseburger pods so to show you this detail i'll need to do a little back story on this land in general so basically we are on the planet of pandora after the first movie took place um so the bad guys the rda they're gone they're the bad guys in the movie and ace those are now the good guys from earth are here and we have formed an alliance with the navi with the locals um and we are bringing tourists here to help both of us somehow i'm not really sure how it helps the na'vi but it helps us and you are the tourists so if you look around this restaurant you'll actually see photos of the navi enjoying their time on pandora just like you know they would and then some of the photos you can see the collaboration between the navi and the humans that's right outside pangu congo and if you look at enough of these photos you'll find familiar faces there you go this is the groundbreaking and there's joe roadie right there here it is my favorite meal in animal kingdom cheeseburger pods it's basically a big mac shoved into a bowel bun it comes with your choice when you get the kids no this is the kids meal you get chips or cuties i got two cuties today because i'm gonna throw them in my bag always ask for a side of the creamy herb dressing because it's like their version of ranch and then the kids meal comes with a drink so i always get a little water bottle but you can get the adult version too which is two cheeseburger pies but this is like one of my favorite foods ever [Music] bonus fun fact these were made based on a joe roadie family recipe and i know that because the last time we tweeted about these when i was showing my obsession with them he retweeted us and told us about that so that's pretty cool also they're amazing while i was in cetuli canteen one of the cast members was like oh welcome back and i was like thank you i know i eat here a lot um but she told me about another really cool easter egg here at pongu pongu this is the snack stand in this land that sells the giant pretzel and the green beer and the night blossom and it's supposed to be the section where the humans have come so you'll see some human things and you will notice that they have dog tags down here for of the imagineers and i pointed that out before but she told me a really cool easter egg that we're gonna go look at okay if you look in the back on the right hand side of the ordering window if you look towards the back you can see some of the human items that they brought from earth when they came here to pandora and one of them's a death star i didn't know that was there shout out to casper favi who told me that thank you that was cool all right on to the next land we have made it into africa which is one of my favorite lands in all of disney because of how much detail there is and if you pay attention to the signage you'll notice a lot of things for example here's the fishing tours mr mutombo's fishing tours um and if you look around other parts of the land there are signs advertising this and i love those kind of details if you see signs for a hotel or a restaurant it probably exists in the land whether it be an actual place you can visit or not but they also gave some nods to some of the people that made this land happen like for example captain bob does he resemble anyone well he should he resembles joe roadie lots of disney fans know who joe rhode is he's the imagineer with the uh signature earring and he was heavily in charge of this park as a whole he was the creative designer behind it he is one of my personal heroes so there's nods to him around the park as we just saw in pandora but there are also nods in this land to some of the other folks that brought it to life so first of all let's find the joe roadie nod you will notice here on the back of the tusk house that there are these gorgeous masks and they are brought to you by joe roadie masks and beads and even though that's not spelled like his name it's pronounced that way as a nod to joe roadie but there are a few other nods to other people that made this possible if you look around at the signs here's another imagineer they are nodding to it is for architect ahmad jafari so you'll see m jafari here his structure is being restored by him at his architectural restoration company which makes sense if he was one of the architects working on this land and the imagineers have even thrown a little shade with this one because mr m keato is a nod to an imagineer who left the project uh left the company during the middle of building animal kingdom so it says mr chiato has moved shots fired and here's an interesting one when i was doing some research for this video i found in an imagineering book written by the imagineers that this hot air balloon sign when it originally debuted it said shields hot air balloon trips on it um as a nod to john shields who is the head landscaped artist for the project and now as you can see whenever you see the the hot air balloon sign that you see a lot of places it says kinga hot air balloon so i wondered what kingdom meant and i looked it up and in swahili kinga means immunity or fender so i'm wondering if that is shields i don't know something to think over let's talk about the dedication to the craft of animal kingdom this is part of the reason it's one of my favorite parks is the authenticity and the dedication to detail here is unmatched so the imagineers of course went over to the real africa and they were trying to figure out what style to build um and they used a lot of influences from real places they saw real towns and villages which is why the architecture is the way it is it's why the color palette is the way it is and one thing that they wanted to make sure they got absolutely right was the thatching of the roofs because that is very common practice over in africa so they brought over african craftsmen to actually make the roofs in a lot of the uh park but one thing that the african craftsman do is they are barefoot when they go up on the roofs um because feeling the bottom uh feeling the thatching with the bottom of their feet is part of how they do their craft and it's part of how they figure out if it's the right thickness um for the authentic thatching uh osha threw a little bit of ac fit that there were thatchers up on roofs uh just walking around barefoot so disney had to get special permission for them to be able to do it the correct way now some of these statutes are made out of metal they're made out of metal over at magic kingdom if you go to the teeth room it's actually metal but some of them are still the authentic thatching which is really cool let's talk about plants one of everyone's favorite things actually something that most people don't even notice when they're in disney parks but the plants tell a huge part of the story and there are plants from every single continent except for antarctica here in animal kingdom alone but one thing you may not know about the plants is that they were actually the first residents of kilimanjaro safaris before they had any of the animals acclimate they wanted to make sure the plants acclimated and could grow to their fullest potential to make the safari look as wild and exotic as it does some of the plants were brought here a year to 18 months in advance so that it could grow into the lush safari that you see today and that was prior to any of the animals coming and that was prior to any of the people coming at the theme park so this park was in the works for years in advance but isn't it kind of cool to just think about the plants vibing out on the safari and then the giraffes came and ate them and they were probably like what the heck man we're here first welcome to the village of ananda por this is the town in asia and we are headed to find our next detail but what i love about asia is the same thing i love about africa and it's all of the details and the signs and everything points you to something else like look at this roof right here it's made out of different pieces of metal tacked together to make it look like people were being resourceful with whatever they had because we all know disney had enough metal but they patchworked it to make it look authentic and they had to go in and manually weather and rust and make everything look old and it's just fabulous also spoiler alert for our next fun fact headed to the maharaja jungle track which is the main trek here in asia there's a large walking trail in africa too and people often overlook these they're one of my favorite underrated things in this park because you just stroll along and you see cool animals and in this case the headliner animal is a tiger and what's interesting about it being a tiger is it ties into one of the stories of creating this park um that i read about so one of the biggest kind of fights i don't call it a fight one of the biggest kind of back and forths between the creative team and the business team when developing this park is that the business team assumed people would find animals boring they didn't think doing walking trails would be enough for guests they would want more you know like in jurassic world where they're like we want more teeth that's literally what michael eisner who a ceo was saying but joe rhodey the imagineer head of this project thought otherwise and he thought no people will absolutely be interested in just watching animals so to prove his point unannounced during a presentation for michael eisner and other executives somebody brought in a live tiger as joe wrote he was speaking one of the animal handlers just simply walked in walked the tiger around the room no one paid attention to joe roadie anymore everybody was enthralled by the tiger and then the tiger left and everybody remained enthralled by the tiger even though it wasn't there to see if he was going to come back or not and after that nobody said anything about animals alone being too boring because if it could capture everyone in this meeting when joe roadie was speaking it surely would capture the attention of the guests which is why when you go through maharaja jungle trek there's actually three different lookout points for the tiger because you pique your excitement once you catch a glimpse of it or maybe you don't but you know it's supposed to be there so you keep going around every crest and turn and then as a surprise you may see him again or not but you see signs of him being there and it's because obviously a tiger is enough to keep guests attention and throw levels pete continuing along into asia we have made it to expedition everest legend of the forbidden mountain tm now this is closed right now for a lengthy refurbishment no they're not fixing the yeti so i can't go into the queue to show you some of the cool details in there like the fact that in the shop of supplies they sell yeah tea get it it's like a t brand called yeti you get it it's hilarious and i've talked in other videos about how the color red is used as a warning sign from the yeti which is why some of these buildings have red painted on them but since we can't actually ride the ride let's talk about one of the coolest details of disney's animal kingdom that you actually would need a plane to really see did you know expedition everest is actually a giant hidden mickey if you look at it from an aerial view the mountain itself forms the head and then the track forms the ears you can only see this from an aerial view which is why we're showing you a photo right now definitely a cool fact definitely hit it mickey not even duckfish could argue with ah dinoland usa my former home when i was a cast member many many moons ago i did a cp here at primeval world triceratops then made prime evil world rests in pieces and i think this land is incredibly underrated and incredibly detailed people tend to hate on it but they probably don't know the full backstory i went into the full backstory in my trapped and dinoland video moving our way towards dinosaur this is the headliner attraction in this land the og thrill ride in this park um i love it it's so fun so it's fast it's blasted in the past but if you look at the dinosaur building there's something disney doesn't want you to notice and that you've maybe never noticed and it's the fact that over here on the right hand side there are actually trees parked on top parked planted on top and they're hiding a big green building that you may not even notice now this is a very fun little detail for a few reasons number one the color of that building is a disney custom color called go away green and it's a color that they paint a lot of things that they don't want you to look at it's very neutral it's very bland it blends in with the background a lot so your eyes naturally divert and go away from it you don't look at that big building back there you're looking at the dinosaur you're looking at the dino institute but yes the trees are planted on top of there and that actually came from walt disney himself no i'm not saying walt disney was here i know he was long gone before disney's animal kingdom but the idea to put the trees on the roofs came from walt disney himself so back in the 60s they were trying to figure out how to move it's a small world from the 6465 new york world's fair into disneyland and some of the imagineers had their models out and they had some little trees that they were going to put on their model around the base of it for landscaping but they had put the trees just like setting them places you know you set things places they put them on the roof of the building and walt disney was coming to do a tour of wed and he showed up 30 minutes early so it would be scrambling to like get their projects ready to present to walt and as they he walked up they were trying to grab the trees off the roof of the small world building and he was like what are you doing and they're like oh we just put the trees there they're actually going to go down here for some landscaping but that gave them an idea they gave walt and the team an idea that if you put trees on top of a building it could hide another building so the imagineers don't want you to realize how big the building is for this attraction the show building for this and most attractions is way bigger than you would ever imagine but it's all backstage they want you to believe that this entire attraction takes place in the teeny tiny dino institute when in fact most of it takes place in that giant green building back there so to hide that building from your eyes they plant greens on top of the roof of the dino institute and they paint it go away green so most people never even notice it i bet you thought my dinosaur fun fact was gonna be the ketchup mustard mayonnaise thing in the queue but i had to give you a new one but if you don't know the red yellow and white pipes in the uh cube have the chemical formulas for ketchup mustard and mayonnaise because that attraction used to get sponsored by mcdonald's double facts well that's a wrap let us know your favorite of these secrets down in the comments look forward to videos like this in the other parks and in the meantime go watch perfect day at disney's animal kingdom bye thanks for watching

Channel: AllEars.net

Views: 76,369

Keywords: Disney World, Disney Parks, Disney Travel, Disney Trip, Disney planning, disney vacation, disney vlog, disney vlogger, disney video, Disney tips, orlando vacation, universal orlando, universal studios, islands of adventure

Id: RI9--VJ7aXo

Length: 24min 13sec (1453 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 26 2022