A visual telling of the events that occurred in the afternoon on New Year's Day 2009 at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge.

No animals were harmed in the incident or the making of this trip report.

All of the pictures below open to a 1600x1200 resolution.

Today, January 1st, 2009, was a seemingly normal and peaceful day at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge.  We had spent the hectic New Year's Eve celebrations the night before at Epcot, and New Year's Day itself involved visiting Disney's Hollywood Studios in the morning, lunch at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, followed by an evening and night visit to the Animal Kingdom park followed by the rest of the night over at the Magic Kingdom.  It was busy, but that was one of the park hopping strategies that we were using during that busiest time of the year.

The coolest part was actually spending the evening and first part of the night in Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park.  That park always has the earliest closing times and it's rare for it to even be open at dusk.  Being inside the park at night was definitely something to take advantage of at the time.  The park looks great at night though it's a shame that we can rarely see it that way.  I'll be posting a few dusk and night photos here at Florida Project in the near future.

But this trip report isn't about the awesomeness of being in the Animal Kingdom park at night, but rather an interesting event that occurred at its hotel neighbor, the Animal Kingdom Lodge.

It was mid-afternoon and the feeders had just finished putting feed (or "browse" as they like to call it) out in different areas for the African Savannah animals.  Everything was peaceful as the animals went out to their preferred areas to get some food.

Grant's Zebra and Greater Kudu

Reticulated Giraffe

Grant's Zebra

Ostrich

As we can see, all of the animals in this part of the Savannah area around the hotel appeared to be behaving normally.  It was feeding time, and needless to say, they all seemed to be happy.