April 22, 1998 was the opening day of Animal Kingdom, which makes it the newest park at Disney World. In fact, Animal Kingdom will be celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2023. Rumors are now swirling that Animal Kingdom may be closing permanently after its 25th anniversary.
We will break down these new Animal Kingdom closing rumors and leave you with our conclusion. To start, the rumors are allegedly based on the poor financial state of the park. After spending hours digging through Disney’s financial documents, it’s evident that Animal Kingdom is the most expensive Disney park and brings in the least revenue.
Animal Kingdom is the largest of all Disney Parks around the world at over 500 acres. The cost per acre is astonishing as well as the day to day costs. The Kilimanjaro Safaris is the main reason for the high costs. This attraction is 110 acres. That’s larger than the Magic Kingdom! It’s also home to 34 species of wildlife. Disney spends a ton of money feeding and taking care of these unique animals.
When Walt Disney built the Jungle Cruise, he wanted it built with animatronic animals. He did for two reasons. First off, it would guarantee guests always saw animals during the ride since real animals tend to wander around. It was also far less expensive. Walt Disney had no interest in using real animals because he knows the cost of upkeep is astronomical. He may have been on to something.
It’s not cheap to take care of Okapis, Wild African Dogs, and other animals you can see on the Safaris. They’re also struggling to add animals to the safari due to supply chain issues. Because of that, they started dressing cast members up as animals, which we reported on here. There are clearly many issues with Kilimanjaro Safaris.
We are seeing many other issues at Animal Kingdom as well. The Yeti still doesn’t work on Expedition Everest. That was an expensive mistake. Primeval Whirl has been demolished. The worst problem of all though, The Tree of Life is dying! We reported on that here. Animal Kingdom has nothing going for it right now.
Many guests also see Animal Kingdom as a half day park as well. Disney recognizes this, which is why most days it’s only open until 8:00 PM and sometimes only until 5:00 PM. It typically closes hours before the other Disney World parks. According to attendance stats from Disney, Animal Kingdom is the least attended park of all Disney Parks around the world!
This is the worst combination. Animal Kingdom is open the shortest and has the lowest attendance, thus bringing in the least amount of money. It’s also the biggest and most expensive park to operate. Those two issues combined are the reason there are so many rumors popping up about Animal Kingdom closing in 2024, after the 25th anniversary.
While we are not able to confirm any of these rumors with internal sources, this does seem to be a big problem and Disney is aware of it. We would not be surprised if Disney starts closing attractions and sections of the park due to the low attendance and demolishing it, like we are seeing with Dinoland USA. It’s likely Kilimanjaro Safaris would be the first area of the park to close.
At this point we can only speculate what will happen, but if we had to bet the house, we would bet it on Animal Kingdom closing in 2 years for good. We think Disney would level the park and build a brand new theme park. We don’t know the theme, but it could be the 5th theme park Disney has been teasing for years.
With Bob Iger back in charge of Disney, we may see an announcement about the future of Animal Kingdom at Destination D23 in Orlando in 2023, if not sooner. Usually when there is a Disney rumor going around as strong as this one, it’s likely true. Our suggestion is to enjoy Animal Kingdom while it is here. It will likely be closing in 2024.
What do you think of this Animal Kingdom closing rumor? Do you think Disney will close this park? Let us know in the comments below!
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No Is Not. Because Is Not Permanently Closed.
Disney Animal Kingdom Must Save & Stay In Florida. You The Stupid Reckless Bossy. Everything Is Ruin. You Never Permanently Closed.😠
I really do want Disney Animal Kingdom to stay because Disney has a long history with animals.
That’s not fair how y’all closing Disney animal Kingdom that’s the best part in Disney world and why are y’all closing it for I need to know that’s it
One of the reasons you say that it’s permanently closing is because of what’s going on in Dino Land. The crazy Mouse roller coaster in Dino Land was made by a company that went out of business. Parts for that roller coaster became impossible to find. Disney being safety oriented made the decision to close it instead of trying to maintain something that was obsolete.
My family lives in Midwest, like to visit Florida during winter. Have taken my children and now grandchildren to Disney. I have enjoyed this part of Disney, love the tree of life and the animals.
So to say it is the new generation that is changing our life’s and not always for the better.
You should be ashamed of yourself for calling this journalism.
This is so stupid – the reporting I mean, what an idiot article and author. Gross.
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Animal Kingdom need to stay. I go there every year. That is one park that my grand babies love. The park just to need to add more animals. As much money the park cost it should not be in a poor financial state.
Your logic is pretty flawed, and some of your assumptions are demonstrably false. For example, AK doesn’t close early because it’s a half-day park, or because of low attendance. It closes early because of the animals’ care schedules and health. The broken Yeti isn’t an “expensive mistake”. Because leaving it broken doesn’t cost the company anything. The ride works perfectly well without it. What would be expensive would be to do what is necessary to repair it (basically, rebuilding the entire mountain.) And IF it were to close, the first thing to close wouldn’t be the safari ride, because it’s the main attraction! Close that, and you might as well just close everything at the same time.
AK is a half-day park because there just isn’t as much to do. Period. They could add a new land to it to increase capacity and activities, but they’d still have to close it earlier than the other parks. Also, they have SO MUCH LAND that they don’t need to close and level a park to build a new on on it’s ashes. Disney has enough land to duplicate ALL of existing Walt Disney World and have some left over. If they are going to build a 5th gate, they’d just do it on other land.
You want to know prices keep going up, Animal Kingdom is one of the reasons. Living here, I can explain, maybe, it is last on most peoples list and the biggest reason, difficult to see the bigger animals. Lions sleep during the day, esp when it’s hot, so do tigers, cheetahs, All the big cats and the gorillas. WE have been there many times only to be disappointed.
The really poor pathways are difficult to walk, so many C/O on those, sore feet and legs, to hot, everything is miles apart, to maybe see an animal? The countries themes are beautiful, the food is perhaps the best in any of the parks, and the cast members the friendliest and the most fun, it’s a shame really. But we go on the safari once a year, when it’s colder, in hopes to see something and it has only happened once, on a cold rainy day years ago. The gorilla’s were playing, Lions roaring , tigers playing with each other, ( that was something). In over maybe 40 visits to that park, staying at Kidani, all of it, that’s not enough.
For us, it does have the avatar ride, best ride in the park for my money and apparently many others as unless it’s hot, that’s really the only super long line. However walking a mile to wait in line a hour is not my idea of fun, and for the price of a ticket now, a total waste of time and money.
Then their is the hotel issue. They are cities, not hotels and after walking in a park all day, who wants to come back and have to walk 6 city blocks back to your room, and then change only to have to walk all that way back to the pool? I’m not lazy, and even when I was in better shape( I’m 68 now and not great), that was awful. We are DVC members, had annual passes and lived in FL. over 25 yrs now. Animal Kingdom was a victim of really poor planning, and except for the first ten yrs or so, has always had problems. Avatar was the last attempt at a save is my guess. I don’t think it will go totally away, I think they will keep some of it open and move things around with more rides, incorporate some animals into it like the giraffes, birds, monkeys, elephants, and slowly change it over.
The Pandora section of Animal Kingdom, including the Banshee Flight, is arguably the coolest attraction at Walt Disney World!
Who ever wrote this article shouldn’t be allowed to be responsible for anyone else in life because their judgement and ability to assess reality is so dangerously off. Maybe sue your former teachers for failing you?
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Yep! Exactly. What a moron.
Haha, this article must have picked up steam, because my Aunt saw it during day time news in the Chicago area. You have my father-in-law who is DVC member ready to call Disney and demand to know why the park is closing.
Excellent journalism to quote a satire site for the “rumor” to get click bait.
Does no one read the article all the way through? You know, where it states “totally made up story”? They must think Saturday Night Live is a docudrama….
Obviously not. Ain’t nobody got time for that. But that’s okay because people not reading these fully are how we get featured on Jimmy Fallon.
Where in this and other similar reports is there any factual Disney statement? Said that you and others try to scam up a story like these. As others have reported in comments, shame on you.
What a flawed misleading article. Shame on you. No facts, just pure misinformation… last time for my attention to your site.
I think our About page will help provide some insight. We suggest asking The Onion for their sources too.
I WANT SAVE DISNEY ANIMAL KINGDOM STAY IN FLORIDA.
& WILD ANIMALS IS SAVED.
thanks for info
Y’all know the tree of life isn’t a real tree right? So I don’t think it’ll be dying anytime soon.
This is just straight up inaccurate in several ways. Walt DESPERATELY wanted real animals in Disneyland when Jungle Cruise was introduced. It was the evermore logical and financially conscious Roy Disney, his brother, who got him to see how that wasn’t sustainable. Hence the introduction of those animatronics. Kilimanjaro Safaris were introduced to honor the theming of AK and also Walt’s desire for live animals to be in a park.