This Post About Beastly Kingdom Gets The Novel Award

Or maybe I should title it:

Imagine Dragons! (not the band though)


There's a blog called Little Miss Disney and some pretty cool stuff is posted on it Like how there's a secret hotel room in Cinderella's Castle.

And I was asked to do some Disney art so I drew up a few things this morning:

Little Miss Disney, feel free to post any of these pictures on your blog.

And now I'm thinking about dunking a turkey leg in Dole Whip.

And have you ever wondered why there's a dragon on the Animal Kingdom logo but no dragons in the park?? Well I recently found out that there were different plans for where Camp Minnie-Mickey is.

Maybe Little Miss Disney will feature something and it'll be awesome and I'll add a link to this post but for right now I'm giving you my crappy cartoon version of the story.

After the jump.

So there was going to be another area of Animal Kingdom called "Beastly Kingdom" that featured mythical animals. Makes sense right? They would have the perfect trinity of animals: Real, Unreal, Extinct.

Well, it turns out when they were building Animal Kingdom, they used up a crap ton of the budget. With all the animals, I don't think they realized just how much food, habitat and medical costs would be.

Michael Eisner also took some of Animal Kingdom's money and put it towards other attractions. From what I've read, it sounds like a pretty big battle between business vs. imagination.

In the end they realized they only had enough money to either create Dinoland USA or Beastly Kingdom. Here's the interesting part: the whole reason for coming up with Animal Kingdom was based on suggestions from guests and a good majority said they wanted to see more with dragons!

But just as Animal Kingdom was due to open, that movie "Dinosaur" was coming out too. And... well... guess what Eisner told them to build?

PROFIT!

In my humble opinion:

With Dinoland USA up, the Imagineers told Eisner,

Thus Festival of the Lion King came to be in the last minute, thrown together area called Camp Minnie-Mickey.

Did you know the floats in Festival of the Lion King are actually from an old parade? Disney is the master of recycling.

And I don't think Camp Minnie-Mickey is going away anytime soon because Lion King is the most popular show in all of Disney World.

Want to know something else? The river surrounding Discovery Island. Yeah this river:

There used to be a boat ride in it and it was going to be like the Jungle Cruise only cooler and probably less cheesy jokes.

It was the last dingle berry from Beastly Kingdom. BUT! Due to a small budget, what could have been this:

Was actually just this:

Guests thought it was boring so they got rid of the boats entirely.

Beastly Kingdom was still on the back burners waiting to be served up but Eisner was curious to see what Universal was doing with their plans for Islands of Adventure (this was back in '99)

The plan was if Islands of Adventure is a hit and detracts visitors from Animal Kingdom, they'll go ahead and add Beastly Kingdom.

The Imagineers had their fingers, toes, and eyes crossed for Universal to be a big hit because they really really wanted to build their dragons. It was their baby, the reason all this started! What happens?

While Islands of Adventure was and is still popular, it wasn't as big as everyone thought it would be and didn't change Disney park attendance at all. Beastly Kingdom wasn't made. Instead we got Everest and cheapo Dino Fair games.

But a lot of elements that *were* going to be used in Beastly Kingdom can still be seen. Where? Islands of Adventure. Imagineers left Disney and went over to Universal and they built their damn dragon roller coaster! It's called Dueling Dragons. 

I'm kind of bummed though because Animal Kingdom's ride, Dinosaur (what was once known as Countdown To Extinction) is one of my favorite rides. I used to hate roller coasters as a kid but this ride got me hooked. I've been on it so many times, I pretty much know all the dialogue and the Time Rover track.

I ride that thing like it was a bucking bronco, man. I try to stand up in it. The ride operators must hate me.

But something so much more awesome could have been built. My favorite ride could have been a roller coaster through a decaying castle with a fire breathing dragon.

I don't know if Beastly Kingdom will ever become a reality, but I hope a version of it will emerge one day. Maybe they'll use some concepts for "Avatar Land" that's supposedly in the works. I think that's the reason they put the Rainforest Cafe in such an awkward place. It's to hide the bare field where an awesome park could have been and where construction for blue-alien-cat land is happening now. Maybe it'll be cool. Maybe it'll be crap. We'll find out eventually.

I'll end it with this drawing strongly expressing my disappointment.

Want more information on Beastly Kingdom? Here are some links:

http://www.theneverlandfiles.com/tnf/disneyworld/beastlykingdom.php

Really good article:

http://jimhillmedia.com/editor_in_chief1/b/jim_hill/archive/2001/01/01/309.aspx#.Ug0eBpLVCSo