DAKlimation

Today was my DAKlimation... or the orientation to Disney's Animal Kingdom (DAK) as a whole. This was for all new interns who would be working at DAK. So the majority of the day was spent touring the park, both on stage and off... on stage refers to any areas where there could be guests. Off stage is any "back stage" areas where there are no guests present. I do not know if this is true for all of the parks, but there really was a lot of thought put into DAK... with every little detail. For instance, if you have been to Walt Disney World and have visited the four parks there is something associated with each park. For Magic Kingdom it is Cinderella's castle, EPCOT is Spaceship Earth (the ball), Hollywood Studios is "the hat," and Animal Kingdom is the tree of life. When you walk into Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and EPCOT those structures are the first things you see. If you notice, when one walks into Animal Kingdom the first thing he or she sees is "the oasis" which is more of a jungle looking thing, not the tree of life. This is because imagineers wanted people to take their own adventure while visiting Animal Kingdom, so the oasis represents wild places. Also, when DAK first opened there were no signs to point people in the right direction of where they may want to go... this was also because of the philosophy of people taking their own adventures. Well, this didn't work out, and imagineers had to develop signs to place throughout the park because people were just roving in circles.

DAK is also the largest park of the four, Magic Kingdom could actually fit inside the savanna area... which is pretty cool. We also got to take a somewhat backstage tour of the safari ride, and get the inside scoop of how the keep the animals in the guests views, and no it's not just feeding logs.... Also the Safari ride has the largest hidden Mickey found in any Disney park in the world (so look for it the next time you are there).

The backstage area for DAK is also pretty huge. They have to house all of the animal enclosures, and facilities back stage, but there is also a lot of open area. DAK does not have any tunnels, so cast members actually ride bikes from place to place to get around more quickly.

We concluded the day with Safety in Motion... which is a course on how to properly lift things, and to keep your arms in the "green zone." They conducted this study at Disney Land, and found that work related injuries were reduced by 70% after cast members went through the training, so it is no mandatory for all cast members to go through every year. We also learned about the Disney basics of customer service... which everyone at camp training will have the pleasure of learning about during my training session ;-)

Overall it was a productive day. I get the day off tomorrow because it is a holiday, and they do not want to pay us for the holiday to do training, so I get the day off. The following day will begin my Conservation Education Presenter training.