Animal Kingdom's 5th Birthday
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The Ties That Bind - Celebrating Five Years of Disney's Animal Kingdom

The five a.m. start seemed very odd, this was vacation time after all, but we rose from our All-Star room and found our way to the edge of a new chapter of Disney experience. The road leading to the car park was curved and alien, it was still dark. April 22, five years ago and with the playing of The Circle of Life, Roy Disney declared Disney's Animal Kingdom officially open.

A park opening, the first of four and the most modest of them all. Surprising really, considering this park is the real gem of the Disney Theme Park empire.

It was six a.m. and the first creature I saw, held in a small box by a castmember, was something akin to a tarantula.

It was a completley unknown venture. We like to play it: experience first, knowledge later. We got continually lost in a beauty I didn't think could be manufactured. We wore self-made opening day t-shirts, simply fronted with AK and the date. I hadn't yet learned the etiquette of putting a D first.We were interviewed for a Miami based radio station: "You've come a long way, how do you like the park?"

This was my first photograph, a genuine souvenir of the opening day, and every other subsequent visit. It's a jungle in here too.

When the light rose on the Tree of Life and the animal forms took shape, you could wonder if you would simply spend all day standing still, but there were bugs to see and dinosaurs to chase and elephants and lions and otters and hippos and maybe even the cheetahs. This is what struck me as the true adventure of Animal Kingdom, unpredictability; a somewhat uncommon Disney ideal.

We did breakfast at the Rainforest Cafe, sent ourselves opening day postcards and marveled at a restaurant having two entrances.