Reviews

Tour Review: Caring for Giants

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Elephant Tour at Disney’s Animal Kingdom 

Location: Disney’s Animal Kingdom 

Rating:

Details:

  • 60 minute tour
  • Offer several time slots throughout the day 
  • $30 per person, regardless of age
  • Must be 4+ years old (kids under 18 need an accompanying adult)
  • Experience “backstage” of Disney’s Animal Kingdom
  • Get up close with the animals in a private viewing area – 80 to 100 feet away!

Overview:

On this one hour tour, you get to meet with animal specialists from Disney’s Animal Kingdom. These are the cast members who care for these massive elephants, so you’ll get to hear all about what it’s like every single day with the African herd. You also get to hear from an African cultural representative who will share about Disney’s conservation efforts in their homeland. 

As you listen to these experts, you’re in a special viewing area about 80-100 feet away from the elephants! It’s a unique angle and closer than you get to see them on Kilimanjaro Safari –  so worth it just for that. 

Our Experience:

We got tickets for this tour to celebrate my sister’s birthday! She is an Environmental Science major and loves animals, so we thought this would be a special way to celebrate her golden birthday (she turned 19 on the 19th!).

Despite the torrential rain all day at Animal Kingdom, we still had a great time on this tour. The rain miraculously held off during our viewing portion – for which you’re outside with no coverage – so we lucked out! 

Our tour guide was coincidentally from a town close to where we’re from, so we hit it off right away. He took us backstage in Animal Kingdom to our bus, which he drove and took us a few minutes away to the viewing area to observe the elephants. He was incredibly knowledgeable about the African herd and how they were cared for by the Disney specialists. 

When our guide was done, he turned it over to the cultural representative, who was from Tanzania. He shared stories of his homeland and about how Disney was working to conserve the wild populations. 

Overall, we thought this tour was worth the money spent. For $30, and one hour of our day, it was great! I love seeing the backstage of Disney (as un-glamorous as it is). If you’re looking for something unique and reasonably priced at Disney, then this is it!  

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Reviews

Review: World Showcase: DestiNations Discovered Tour

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Park: Epcot

Rating:

Experience the history and culture of 11 countries as you travel the world on the World Showcase: DestiNations Discovered Tour. Explore some of the backstage magic and learn the secrets of World Showcase!

Event Details:

  • 4.5 hour walking tour through the 11 countries of World Showcase
  • $79/person (APs, DVCs & Disney Chase Visa Cardmembers get 15% off)
  • Park admission required for tour
  • Tour available on select dates
  • Snack provided, no meal
  • For adults and teens (I wouldn’t recommend this for kids!)

Our Experience:

We arrived to Epcot a little before 8am through the main entrance. For the tour, check in is near the Spaceship Earth pin trader shop, so we headed straight there and were greeted by our two tour guides. One of the guides was newer, so she was paired with a more experienced guide. We met the rest of our group (there were 10 of us total) and then we were off to World Showcase! We started in Mexico and then made our way around the lagoon.

#DiscoverEpcot

The guides tag-teamed the tour by alternating countries, which was great to mix it up. The newer guide was really nervous during the tour, so a lot of it felt like she was reading a script. I felt badly because she was great! The experienced guide was very comfortable talking through everything (it’s a ton of information, so very impressive!) but the two of them were a little awkward…and we had an awkward group.

Despite this, we really enjoyed learning about each country! We heard about everything from the design of the pavilion to the operations behind it to trivia about the culture. One of the coolest parts was going “backstage” in several of the countries (no pictures allowed!). I was worried that this might take away from the magic of World Showcase, but this was not the case. It actually made me appreciate it even more – the attention to detail and amount of effort put into creating the magical illusions is UNREAL. Disney never ceases to amaze me.

My favorite part of the tour was going backstage and hearing about Illuminations, while my husband’s favorite was going backstage to the Festival kitchens. Chef Mike, the head chef of Epcot, spent a half hour telling us about the backstage operations for all of the huge festivals Epcot offers (Food & Wine and the Flower and Garden, to name a few). He was awesome – such a nice, down to earth guy, and full of great stories!

Since the tour starts at 8:15am and World Showcase doesn’t open until 11am, we had the park to ourselves for over half the tour. It was so magical walking through World Showcase while it was empty – I just LOVE taking in all the details of the countries. It was extremely hot on our tour and you’re outside for most of the tour, but it was still the best day!!

What We Liked:

If you love World Showcase, this tour is definitely for you! World Showcase is one of our all-time favorite places at Disney, so being able to experience it in an entirely new way was magical. This was the first tour we did at Disney World, and we would love to try some of the others that are offered!

Things to Note:

While we were on the tour, the guides let us know that we had access to a private viewing of Illuminations for that night. We did the tour on Monday morning and were flying home that afternoon, so we were pretty disappointed that we couldn’t take advantage of that perk. Even if we were staying, we likely would have had plans made for the night already (I am a planner, after all!). So keep this in mind if you’re doing the tour!