Joe Rohde Tried to Get Tropical Americas in Animal Kingdom for 15 Years, Including Gutting DinoLand USA

For all my posting about the late great DinoLand, I do want to make something clear.

Up until the day of my retirement, my team and I tried for fifteen years to get a Tropical America land into this park and many such design attempts involved gutting DinoLand to do it.

This particular version continues certain of those motivations, but post-dates my career, and I’ve only been able to see it as a consultant now and again, but I congratulate the team on finally being able to lock a deal, which I was not. The underlying business has changed in all those years so this version is a response to those new realities, just as the previous versions were responding to theirs.

It is not my place to steal the thunder from the team by leaking, hinting or otherwise giving away what that design is. It is theirs to reveal as they choose.

But I can vouch for the team itself, some of whom I have known for decades as veterans of Disney’s Animal Kingdom and others whom I’ve come to know more recently. They are excellent. The level of research involved is excellent. The sophistication of the detail is excellent. Their commitment to the vision of the park is unwavering. And just as it always is…the work is hard. The path to excellence is neither smooth nor straight nor level. But these Imagineers are devoted to the task.

Parks exist to create memories. Dinoland created memories. Those memories still exist and they are the true product, not the property itself. The new land will create more memories and they too will be treasured. It may have to find its own audience and that audience may be distinct from Dino-aficionados. But, as for depth and quality…it is there…for example, if you take one look at even the impressionistic early representation of the Maya pyramid on the D23 model or the marketing rendering, and you are a fan of precolumbian cultures…well…if ya know, ya know.