Because they could use the room too. But they, they didn’t need to do it. So then we just developed a conservation fund. And so we put this amount of money into a conservation fund, a significant amount of money. And, and in return, we got Gino and two females,… Read More
Right. And, and then I think you, you know, you had to, you had to recommend it. And then we had to go, then we said, well, we can’t buy ’em. And, but we gotta do something here. Read More
He said yes. You know, if you, if if, because because they weren’t designated to go any place else at that point, because you hadn’t told, you hadn’t let the SSP know, I think that you had available. ’cause you, you could have kept, you know, you know, both, both… Read More
There’s Gorilla capital. And if I can make, if they, if they think it’s the best place to go, would you be okay with that?… Read More
I have to tell that story. So you, you remember it, I think better than I do. But I remember we came to visit and, well, first of all, I thought to myself the, the, the, the gorilla coordinator was a guy named Dan Wharton who worked at the Central… Read More
So, so then I, then I went to you guys in Lincoln Park, and I don’t know if you wanna, if, if you, you wanna tell that story?… Read More
We were gonna get them, we’re gonna rescue ’em outta Kruger. ’cause they were due to be cold. But then that year they put a moratorium on culling. So, okay, we’re not gonna do that. We’re getting lu anyway, protesting that were getting animals from Africa and that, that, that… Read More
Some of the hippos came from overseas. I remember that. You know, we, we got young hippos. ’cause young hippos got along. If you put an older cranky female that, that didn’t work. So, so, so, but all but they’re social animals and they wanna be together. And then, and… Read More
I don’t mean to be arrogant, but it’s not the Disney way. And we’ll, you know, you know, it’s a, it’s a, it’s the best exhibit. It’s, it’s better than a lot of the zoos that are waiting in line. But you can’t, you know, you can’t tell a zoo,… Read More
He says, I said, we both said, we get all males and I’ll put ’em in a small area because they, they don’t fight when they’re all together. When you give ’em too much room, they get territorial. He says, I’ll put ’em all together, only males. And we, and,… Read More
I said, Andrew, how do we do this?… Read More
You can’t say, well come back in five years and it’ll look really impressive. That’s not Disney. Opening day looks like, you know, it’s a finished product. So the crocodiles couldn’t be, oh, well they’re, they’re gonna get bigger. No, we had to have, you know, three meter, nine foot,… Read More
Mostly we did a ZA accredited zoos. We made a few exceptions, but there were, there, it wasn’t, there was really no problem. Getting in. The challenge was gorillas, and we’ll get into that, you know, the, the, but most of these animals, zoos were, you know, had extra hippos. Read More
Did you get them from all zoos?… Read More
So where were you getting animals?… Read More
Did you get them from private people?… Read More
Did you get them internationally?… Read More
And she was, and then we got the male from St. Louis Miles and Kiva, I think her name was. And so we have this, we, we gave everybody a picture of the, of the two, the two giraffes in the barn. And we set the first ambassadors. E everybody… Read More
And they had a lot of land and, but we had to build the facilities there ’cause they had bats. They didn’t have, they Bacardi ran that back then. And so we approached them and they were fine with it. And they were very reasonable. So we built all the… Read More
So it was, our first animals arrived probably a year and a half before we, before we opened Animal Kingdom. Once we staged the animals at Luby, then we’d move them over the first barn I wanted to get done with the giraffes. ’cause we really didn’t house the giraffe… Read More