Alas, after more than a decade of service Camp Minnie-Mickey is not long for this world, soon to be replaced by the recently announced Avatar Land. While it’s nice that this land is finally being used to fulfill its potential, I do have to question if it’s a better fit for Animal Kingdom than the Beastly Kingdom would have been. Yes, thematically Avatar and Animal Kingdom share many of the same messages and I suppose Avatar is better here than at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. But it doesn’t feel like an ideal subject for Animal Kingdom’s long-missing third act that explores the kingdom of fantasy creatures. The concept of Beastly Kingdom was much more democratic, rooted in popular mythologies that have been shared by many peoples across history. Avatar, on the other hand, is a story world created by one man with a rather didactic message intended specifically for modern western audiences. As I’m sure we’ll be reminded by the many © and ® symbols scattered throughout this new land, Avatar distinctly “belongs” to a corporation instead of the popular imagination, and I’m not sure if that’s a right fit to complete the story arc for a park that otherwise is about communally sharing of worlds both natural and cultural.