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
Did you get them from private people?… Read More
So where were you getting animals?… 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
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
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 first I went to White Oak because I was good friends with John Lucas and we were gonna put ’em up there. They have a lot of room up there. But then the lawyers got involved, their lawyers and our lawyers and they wanted to control the animals when… Read More
So, so we had, we had some really good people from other zoos, but now where are we gonna put ’em?… Read More
So the imagineers are giving their baby, you know, over to somebody else that’s gonna do it. Totally different than them. So very different, very, very different schools of thought. And you know, they, they, they didn’t always appreciate each other very well. The imagineers didn’t care about budgets so… Read More
We, we knew we had to stage the animals offsite. First of all, you have to hire staff. So you hire staff. But right after you get staff in, at least the core staff and the core staff are really experienced people We could hire, inexperienced people get trained by. Read More
How do you start to bring animals into Orlando and where do you keep them?… Read More
Now how do you fit into this Disney culture?… Read More
Because the animals are obviously a brand new concept. It was a, it was an adjustment and I made a lot of mistakes. But they were very nice to me, Rick. We just, you know, don’t say that. We know that’s true, but, you know, don’t fall on your sword… Read More
And, and I think the imagineers wanted to have invisible barriers on everything. And it was just not possible to do everything like that. So we had to make some compromises with the storyline. And then, and they didn’t want the keepers out there during the day at all, you… Read More
They’d throw shit and, and you’re in and things would rust. So you couldn’t, you couldn’t use that kind of doors. But everybody, it, it was just a, and then, and then the horticulture guy, his budget was three times what my animal budget was and he’s just planting the… Read More
But they managed the budget. And we had, I think it was a $75 million contingency, $75 million contingency, you know, on this project. I didn’t know it at the time, but I also didn’t know that the construction Disney people, their bonuses depended on how if they use less… Read More
You know who to go to and what. And so that, so that helped a lot. And then, because it was just the two of us until we got the, the, the three topping sexes and three years later. So it was exciting. Now I, I mean that’s what I… Read More
So it, it was pretty interesting. You make the move from San Diego to Orlando in 1996, what’s going through your mind Relief that we’re now on a construction site and we’re gonna be building that. It took, it was a, the park took five years to plan and three… Read More