Documentary Review: Magic of Disney's Animal Kingdom

A few years ago, Animal Planet debuted its documentary series The Zoo, detailing life behind-the-scenes at the Bronx Zoo and its sister facilities in New York City.  The success of this show led to a spin-off series, based out of the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and another, The Aquarium, at the Georgia Aquarium.  It also inspired several other zoos to make their own versions.  Among these is Disney's Animal Kingdom.

Narrated by Josh Gad, The Magic of Disney's Animal Kingdom (available on Disney+)  is a peek into the world of the namesake park, as well as Disney's aquarium facility, The Seas with Nemo and Friends, located a few miles away at EPCOT, as well as the safari lodge, a resort nearby that features a sort of mini-safari.  Unlike many of the other zoos featured with their own series, I've never been to DAK, so I was especially interested to watch this series to see what it was like.  Overall, it reinforced my impressions that Disney, deciding to build a zoo, put down the money and did it right.  The facilities look spectacular - I've been on wildlife-watching trips in Africa that looked less like Africa than some of these scenes did.

Apart from the interest in seeing the facility, I didn't especially enjoy the show.  It was too... well, too Disney... everything was too syrupy-sweet.  When keepers were interviewed, I feel like all they did was gush about how cute their animals were and how much they loved to baby them.   There wasn't much said about conservation, or how the animals at Disney impact animals in the wild - which was frustrating, because Disney is a major contributor to conservation programs.  There wasn't really any discussion about how DAK fits into the broader world of zoos.  It was almost like a glorified pet show, with every keeper going on about how cute and smart and wonderful their animal was.

Also, everything just worked out too well.  Every medical issue was neatly resolved, and most episodes ended with a happy baby being born.  Those are all nice, feel good stories, but sometimes I think it helps to show that things don't always have a picture-perfect ending, and that no matter what we do, sometimes bad things happen.  If we paint everything in too pretty of a light, I feel like our audiences end up feeling betrayed, maybe even lied to when they realize that not very story does have a happy ending.

The Magic of Disney's Animal Kingdom would be a great show for small kids to introduce them to animals - if I had kids that I was taking on a trip there, I would show it to them before to get them excited about it.  Having finished Season 1, I think I'll switch back to The Zoo -it just feels a little more realistic (with the lows and defeats making it that much easier to get invested in the lives of the keepers and the animals), and a lot more meaningful.