We first visited Disney's Animal Kingdom back in 2000. On this trip we mainly did the rides and took the experience of going on a safari, which was fantastic and we spent the rest of the day exploring the park, bumping into Characters, of course that’s what it’s all about.
When we went back in 2001 we took my parents. My Dad had recently had a stroke so we had hired a wheelchair for him. We all decided we would like to go and look at the Lion King Show. As we had the wheel chair for Dad on entering the show we had priority seating and were sitting right in the front row.
The show takes place in the centre so in theory there are four front rows.From each front row they ask one small member of the audience to participate in the beginning of the show. Hannah our middle daughter was chosen and at the time she was 8 years old, she had been chosen on other occasions at various parks but had always declined as she is very shy.
The shows started and right from the first note of the music you felt like you were involved and you could not take your eyes off the performance. At each corner of the rows appears a float with a gigantic animal it’s so colourful that it’s hard to describe.
They went around the four corners asking the chosen members to impersonate an animal they had a lion, a gorilla and then it came to Hannah;’ what noise does a giraffe make’ they said, she looked at them in wonder, then at me, I must admit I did not know either. She made some sound just like a bit of a roar,’ fantastic’ the girl said but not quite right, apparently they back a ba ba sound a bit like a sheep; she explained to our daughter. She was so embarrassed but what a sport Hannah was as she is a very shy person so to even get up she had done well.
Well we had all learnt something that day and if ever that question were to ever come up in a quiz show I will always remember the answer,
The rest of the show was brilliant, the costumes were bright and the animals on the floats looked real. There were dancer’s acrobatics; all of the cast were so professional and talented.
I have seen the west end version and I would say that the Lion King show at animal kingdom was just as brilliant, of course the show is much shorter then the musical but I enjoyed it just as much if not better. Disney always does it better then anyone else in my opinion
On your next visit to Florida if you are going to Animal Kingdom make this show a must.