It rose to creepiness due to animatronics mixed with wild animals on the safari.
I mean, I can't say I feel strongly about it, but I just find this odd. Culturally, animals are a big thing in the US. According to Google we do in fact have more zoos than any other country. When I was a kid, not long before the time AK opened (80s), when the
zoo circus came to town you could watch the elephants walk through town to the civic center. You could get your picture taken with lion cubs at the mall. Heck, years later in my 20s I went to a small rinky circus and you could
ride an elephant around the parking lot. We're a country where you have kids going to alligator swimming pool parties. Being weirded out by an animal near a couple of animatronics in an environment that's clearly meant for animals seems, again, unlikely to me in a culture where you can see animals all over the place. (I mean I get it if you were on Carousel of Progress and they, I dunno, replaced the dad with a lion who's just staring at you, lol. But on a safari? Whatever.)
Again, they're entitled to their feelings, just not really understanding that one.
But the tone of the park is strange for Disney World. By means of illustration of how the students thought, from
an early review in the
Orlando Weekly:
Yet it's still the broccoli on Disney's plate; you know it's supposed to be good for you, but it's nowhere near as fun as downing a whipped-cream cake. Kids -- and parents -- expecting to be plopped into the world of "The Jungle Book" will be let down; here there are real lions, not a meet-and-greet with Simba from "The Lion King."
Magic Kingdom is a playground, and Epcot an international bazaar, and Disney-MGM a peek behind movie and TV screens...
The audience [for Animal Kingdom] would seem to be the post-yuppie, post- hippie generation among whom the environment is a cause that reverberates. But the enlightened will see the corporate muscle behind the message and charge the other way. Grandparents will turn out -- it reflects their pace -- but kids can find more fun and stimulation in a science museum, and for a lot less than the $44.52 adult admission charged for anyone over age 9.
To bring this back on topic, an
AllEars poll:
So, if cute animals shouldn't fit, Animal Kingdom would have major thematic problems already: the theme you want isn't coming across.
If you want to say that they should
change the theme, that's a different topic than insisting that
cute cartoon animals were always the theme. The theme probably will shift at least somewhat to Disney IP because that's the way everything is going with the parks these days.
This. 
