Product Knowledge!

Animal Kingdom has some great tours available for guests to book. Recently I got to go on one of the best tours for FREE. The Wild Africa Trek. Guest Relations at Animal Kingdom were invited to take the tour in order to have a better understanding of the experience and communicate this when booking the tour for guests.

The tour is 3 hours, and offers a unique look at the Safari, includes a small meal and a private safari ride. The cost is $189 per person, but until October if you book a tour that starts after 11am you get $50 off per person. A cast discount is available as well. I know this seems like a lot of money but everyone should try it at least once.

The first step of the tour is signing a waiver, putting your personal belongings in a locker and getting your safety harness on. You are given a cool water bottle and a name tag as well. Once everyone is situated its time to begin.

The tour starts in the Pangani Forest trail. You don't spend much time there as this area can be viewed for free. You take a secret entrance near the hippo pool and the real fun begins. First there is an area where they will hook up your harness and you can walk right out the the edge of the embankment and view the hippos. Of course your tour guides are there to educate you about these animals and their habitat. Next you get to walk across the plank bridge above the Hippos and then above the Crocodiles!

Now what I found to be interesting is that all the crocodiles here are male, and all 27 of them came together from another zoo. Because they have been together for so long the guide explained that they would not add any additional crocs to the group, because it could interfere with their hierarchy. Again you get to walk right out to the ledge and get a closer look.

 After the crocodiles it was time to take off the harness. It didn't feel that heavy when I was wearing it but I could really tell the difference when I took it off! Next we boarded our private safari truck. As you can see from the picture this truck is not like the ones from the ride at all. The truck is smaller and because of this they are allowed to pull over and stop so we can take longer looks at the animals. After driving around for a while we were taken to a private platform in the savannah.

During the normal tour, this is when you would have your food. We didn't get to have the food but while were were there they did have a book with pictures of the offerings. They have breakfast items for the earlier tours and then lunch items for the later ones. The views from this platform were amazing! You could see out over the whole grassland area, the elephants and their was an area to view the lions!

So while the tour is expensive, it definitely is a cool experience if you have the time and money to do it!