Kilimanjaro Safaris to replace 'Little Red' scene with new savannah space

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googilycub

Active Member
ISTCNavigator57 said:
Sometimes the incessant whining about budget cuts gets to be tiresome. Not EVERY decision at WDW is meant to save money, and not everything at WDW is a mess.

My wife and I loved our vacation last month and it left us wanting to come back...
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I agree with this, and it is one of the reasons why I spend less and less time looking at this site.
 
Tip Top Club

Tip Top Club

Well-Known Member
Tip Top Club said:
First and foremost let us not make the mistake of confusing story with plot. They are not the same thing. The story has always been going out into the Harambe Wildlife reserve to see animals, the plot then comes from a completely separate action of there being poachers in the reserve. The plot here is presumably being eliminated. The story is not. While it may change, you are still going to an 800 square mile Animal reserve with multiple different ecosystems inside it. And story and to a certain extent, the plot will be shifting toward something more relateable (Which is apparently not a real word, but one that fits nonetheless) and that is wildlife conservation.

To be completely honest, I never rode the safari before the 2007 makeover, so I can't speak to how it used to be, but the current plot, is a little bit of a joke, Zebras are one of the most widely recognized African Mammals, and something that has been missing from the safari for quite some time. I'm told that they always made for a great show, they were almost always close to the vehicles, and that people loved them, so just to clarify, I am all for this change.

As for the specifics, the geysers will indeed be going away. The existing cattle guard just past the warthogs will remain, and it sounds like that downhill slope will remain as well, before the area opens up into a clearing, where quite a few zebras will graze (including, yes a new watering hole, although why the blog chose to highlight that I don't understand, there are already several on the ride, adding one more seems to be par for the course).
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Just to reiterate for those who have not read the full topic.
 
HMF

HMF

Well-Known Member
If anything we are not tough enough on TDO. There are still too many DOM postings to make any effect.
 
disney fan 13

disney fan 13

Well-Known Member
I also do not see this as a budget cut... I think as long as the little fast part is kept I believe I will like this change...

P.S come on fellow doom and gloomers, Complaining about everything sort of gives us lack of credibility...
 
The Duck

The Duck

Well-Known Member
disney fan 13 said:
I also do not see this as a budget cut... I think as long as the little fast part is kept I believe I will like this change...

P.S come on fellow doom and gloomers, Complaining about everything sort of gives us lack of credibility...
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Exactly! (except maybe the little fast part);) . We all know that WDW has it's problems and many of them are, indeed, budget related. But I can't see how this change could possibly be due to budget. So we lose the geysers and a barely visible AA baby elephant. Big deal. We're going to be gaining a much more immersive animal experience and a gradually weakening poacher plot is going away. As far as I'm concerned, this is nothing but positive. As far as the "little fast part", I also enjoyed the little thrill of speeding through the forest but with the poachers going away, I wouldn't want to speed past the zebras.
 
RSoxNo1

RSoxNo1

Well-Known Member
WDW1974 said:
Well, it doesn't really matter because until we discover something here in America, it does not exist!:drevil: ... Besides, I am so tired of hearing how you can never spot an Okapi when I have never taken a safari where I didn't spot an Okapi.
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Not that it makes a huge difference, but what I always hear is that the Bongos are the tough ones to spot, they're the "Ghosts of the Forest". Either way, I can't get good photos of either of them, but see both on a regular basis.
 
stitch2008

stitch2008

Member
ISTCNavigator57 said:
Sometimes the incessant whining about budget cuts gets to be tiresome. Not EVERY decision at WDW is meant to save money, and not everything at WDW is a mess.

My wife and I loved our vacation last month and it left us wanting to come back...
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This x 10,000

googilycub said:
I agree with this, and it is one of the reasons why I spend less and less time looking at this site.
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This as well. I feel the same way. I left here for a while cause I just couldnt really read the stuff I was reading. Then came back and try to contribute what I can. Just sometimes it seems like there's a hate train here. Not really criticism. I can read that. But somewhere it turns into something else sometimes.

HMF said:
Sigh!
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Sorry that bothers you.
 
Princess_Minnie

Princess_Minnie

Member
Well, I hope that they keep a storyline in some form. But I'm glad for a change; I would always hate it when I was enjoying the animals and that radio message would come on about the poachers, and you just knew "here we go...". Glad we may be getting more time with the animals. And it was always a let down to see the animatronic elephant after just seeing the real stuff. It was like the truck jumped a hill and crash landed in the Jungle Cruise.
 
ToTBellHop

ToTBellHop

Well-Known Member
Princess_Minnie said:
Well, I hope that they keep a storyline in some form. But I'm glad for a change; I would always hate it when I was enjoying the animals and that radio message would come on about the poachers, and you just knew "here we go...". Glad we may be getting more time with the animals. And it was always a let down to see the animatronic elephant after just seeing the real stuff. It was like the truck jumped a hill and crash landed in the Jungle Cruise.
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Agreed. It would have been a much more effective visual to have a real baby elephant in a cage.

I do miss the old jeep-on-a-track that used to shoot at us...
 
Princess_Minnie

Princess_Minnie

Member
ISTCNavigator57 said:
Agreed. It would have been a much more effective visual to have a real baby elephant in a cage.

I do miss the old jeep-on-a-track that used to shoot at us...
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Well of course I wouldn't want them too keep a really baby elephant cooped up all day! :p

Maybe just give the impression that Little Red had been found? With some noises coming from the back of the truck or something? I don't know.

But yeah, I kind of miss being shot at too! (and only on this forum would anyone understand...)
 
devoy1701

devoy1701

Well-Known Member
WDW1974 said:
I dunno ... I kind of like most animals I meet more than most folks. Let's put it this way, if there were two burning buildings and one was filled with cute 'wittle puppies (and maybe bunnies too, if no one had dined on them and made them into bunnyloaf:lookaroun) and the other was filled with say Disney lawyers ... well, you know which building this Spirit would be floating into!:D



The problem began before the park opened, though. It began when you were supposed to see a very dead Big Red to drive home the evils of poaching. But as soon as Michael Eisner saw it (even though he championed it originally with Joe Rohde), he said that it wasn't going to work in a Disney park. To be fair, while I never experienced that version in previews, I do know folks who did ... even Imagineers ... who felt it was too depressing and scary (for kids and the impressionable adults WDW seems to attract).

So, you wound up with the convoluted storyline where the poachers shoot Big Red, but only wound her. That (naturally) makes any sane Spirit wonder what the hell kind of poacher shoots an elephant and only grazes her (this isn't Andrea and Merle's little bro --points to anyone who knows where that is from!:animwink:) ... But so long as Mrs. Red (this is Disney, so one has to assume she didn't have the baby out of elephantlock) isn't dead and gets reunited in the end (a la Dumbo) with her little one, you sorta get the idea poaching is bad, but you don't traumatize little Timmy for life.

But it has gotten more laughable over the years as they added more capacity to KS on busy days and you quickly lost the 'alone on safari in Africa vibe from the early days' when sitting in a traffic jam near the hippos pools and changed the narration and some of the ending. It has basically made no sense since 2007 because you aren't following a linear storyline at all.

So, I'm all for dumping it. ... And I'm really tired of being asked to go chase poachers during my MAGICal WDW vacations anyway. For what they charge to get in, there shouldn't be any poachers in Harambe and, if there are, I'm sure some local Osceola Sheriff's deputies would love to moonlight for cash and take care of them (Florida: Only Thing We Do Better Than Screw Up Elections and Build Strip Malls is SELL GUNS!!!)





Well, it doesn't really matter because until we discover something here in America, it does not exist!:drevil: ... Besides, I am so tired of hearing how you can never spot an Okapi when I have never taken a safari where I didn't spot an Okapi.

~You Have NOT Lived Until You've Taken a Spirited Safari!~
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a little late...but nice Walking Dead reference. You have good taste in television.
 
U

uklad79

Member
Maybe the tide is turning on the Eisner mandate that everything must have an awful cheesy dumb story. Which stems from his time in a media company when everything was being dumbed down in the whole industry for a generation with the attention span of goldfish.

I have been on this once as the "story" was so painful I felt embarrassed for the poor CM having to go along with the whole thing.

Surely the story is the life of the animals going about life. Maybe that is too simplistic so they felt the need to create convoluted awkward stories with a environmental message.
 
jakeman

jakeman

Well-Known Member
Captain Hank said:
So...yeah...by the way, it was never, to my knowledge, *officially* a two-week safari. All of the posters in the village refer to "day trips." As far as I know, it's something that evolved among the drivers. It's certainly not in the current script or Operating Guide (though 99% of the drivers say it).

As for the radio music thing, if there's a backup at Tilting Bridge, the music can go on for a while. It does eventually fade out on its own after about 3 minutes or so.
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The two week thing was in the script in '99 as an alternate opening if there was a delay at the load dock.

How many trucks do they have now? How many are usually concurrently on the ride path during the busy times?
 

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