Photo TR: Jungala Media Day at Busch Gardens Africa

[live2tell75Bonafide Donkey Expert]

Hello everyone! I had the great honor of representing TPR at today's Jungala Media Day at Busch Gardens Africa. It was an amazing time! The new addition to Busch Gardens Africa is awesome! I started out my adventure arriving a the park at 6:45 in the morning. I checked in at the media tent and got my bag of goodies: A Jungala press kit including a folder with everything you need to know about Jungala, a back pack, stationary and pen, t-shirt, DVD and photo CD. This was pretty cool since this was my first time ever being part of the "media". I met with my media ambassador host, Laura. Laura was a fantastic guide and a major help throughout the day. Onto the photos!

[live2tell75Bonafide Donkey Expert]

Bengal Tiger Habitat

First up Laura and I checked out one of the main elements of Jungala, The Bengal Tiger Exhibit. Growing up, when visiting Busch Gardens Africa I always enjoyed Claw Island, home to four Bengal Tigers. For those that never got to see Claw Island, it was a good size tiger habitat with a few bridge-viewing areas set in the heart of the Congo section of the park. When Disney’s Animal Kingdom debuted their The Maharajah Jungle Trek attraction in the Asian section of the park in late 1999, I fell in love with their Tiger exhibit. Disney’s tiger exhibit brought guests close to the tigers through viewing windows that were surrounded by highly elaborate Asian themed architecture. It was one of my favorite animal exhibits in any park, until now.

At Jungala, the new Bengal Tiger habitat in my opinion blows any other tiger exhibit away. You begin entering The Tiger Lodge, an enclosed air-condioned large viewing area of the one of the 2 tiger habitats. The Tiger Lodge has plenty of views of the 12 Bengal Tigers. Yep, they now have 12 tigers total, which is a pretty large collection for a zoo. Lots of positives about The Tiger Lodge: There are many different angles of the glass windows to see the animals. It’s air-condioned so it’s a great place to escape form the brutal Florida heat or crazy thunderstorms. The lodge will also be used for Busch Garden’s family sleepovers and adventure camps. I don’t know about you, but being able to sleep next to the tigers would be pretty awesome! The lodge also features the Jungala “giving Wall mural. By purchasing a bead from the adjacent gift shop in the lodge, you help donate towards the Busch Gardens/Sea World Conservation Fund. Once you have your bead, you place it on the rainforest mural. The idea is that once the rainforest mural is complete, all the beads represent a small part in helping with conservation.

After The Tiger Lodge you take a trek on The Tiger Trials. The trails include many different elements. The first part of the trail winds through a cave with large viewing windows on either side overlooking the 2 tiger habitats. The best part of the cave is that there is a glass bridge that connects between the 2 exhibits that travels directly above the trail. The zoo exhibit educators can open both sides of the bridge to let the tigers travel between, or just open one side of the bridge. It was awesome to view one, two or three tigers walking or just sitting above the park guests walking on the trail.

The next part of the trail features the “tiger tug-of-war”. During the media day, the “tiger tug-of-war” was not being demonstrated. From talking to one of the exhibit educators, he explained that the tug-of-war would be a demonstration conducted with zoo educators and park volunteers. The park guests will be specifically picked based on which tiger wants to participate. 2 large guests might be picked to participate when a more aggressive tiger is on the other end. A smaller park guest may be picked when a playful tiger is on the other end. Don’t expect to always be able to experience this. The main factor will be if the tiger wants to participate. It should be interesting to see/experience when it happens.

A unique part of The Tiger Trails is an underwater cave tunnel that guests can stoop down and travel through. This gives park guests perfect views of when the tigers decide to take swim in their large plunge pool. This was very cool! Once you get through the underwater tunnel, you come up to a cave with a ladder. One or two park guests can climb to the top and experience what it is like to be in the middle of the habitat. Basically the park calls it the Tiger Pop-U p. It’s a bubble that sticks out of the ground and guest’s heads are in the middle of everything! It was pretty cool. The only thing that I noticed that there wasn’t very much air and it was pretty hot. But then again you’re probably not going to be in there for a long period of time anyways.

The rest of The Tiger Trails give fantastic views of the multi-level habitats. The tigers were very active through the exhibit. They were coming up to the glass windows and seemed very curious of all the new visitors. It is a really surreal experience to be that close. They are such beautiful creatures and so big! I could spend hours just hanging out in this exhibit! I cannot wait to go back to this area.

More reviews, captions and my thoughts of the rest of Jungala coming soon! Stay tuned!

[live2tell75Bonafide Donkey Expert]

Cont.

[live2tell75Bonafide Donkey Expert]

After a bite to eat from a yummy breakfast buffet provided, Laura and I checked out the main village area of Jungala. This area features upbeat tribal music, colorful costumed stilt wakers and zoo educators giving park guests the opportunity to touch and learn about rare exotic animals.

[live2tell75Bonafide Donkey Expert]

The Media Presentaion

After exploring the village, it was time for the media program to begin. The event started with a parade of the colorful stilt walkers followed by the day's speakers: Donnie Mills: Executive VP & GM of Busch Gardens Africa, Mark Rose: VP of Design & Engineering, Glenn Young: VP of Zoological Operations and Virginia M. Busch, President of the Sea World & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund and Conservation Ambassador for the Anheuser-Busch Adventure Parks. The speakers elaborated on the meaning of Jungala, basically it is a celebration of all the creatures that make up the wild. To view a video of the complete media event click on this link: http://www.videonewswire.com/event.asp?id=46873 and it will take you to The Worlds of Discovery website. After the speakers were finished, everyone counted down, and a burst of confetti and high energy music filled the air. And about 100 school kids attacked and experienced the next stop on our tour, The Treetop Trails.

[live2tell75Bonafide Donkey Expert]

The Tree Top Trails

After the media event we explored the large play area geared for tweens, The Tree Top Trails. This is a wonderful play area for kids of all ages. Tree Top Trails features climbing nets, rope bridges, caves, cargo mazes, water elements, and a toddler area. The play area is mult-layered, so guests can explore the many different levels of jungle life. For the media event, workers were busy putting the final touches to a few of the smaller animal habitats in this area. Set within The Tree Top Trails is the Kulu Canopy. This animal exhibit features northern white-checked crested gibbons, flying foxes and gharials (crocodilians with long narrow snouts). Many areas on the different levels of The Tree Top Trails give guests unique and excellent viewing opportunities to see the animals. An example: on the third level, there is a cave that ends with a glass viewing bubble that rests on a tree branch in the middle of the gibbon's habitat.

Located within The Tree Top Trails are 2 rides: The Wild Surge and The Jungle Flyers. Wild Surge is a frog hopper set in a very cool theme. It bursts out of a rock cave and peaks over a waterfall. The second ride, The Jungle Flyers is a series of 3 zip lines that take young guests high over Jungala and then back. This should be popular with the kids. Just a warning: The Jungle Flyers is intended for kids. In order to ride, guests have to be under the age of 13 and weigh less than 220lbs. During the media day, the zip line was used during the media presentation, but did not open to the other guests. If it hasn’t opened yet, it should open any day now.

I feel that The Tree Top Trails is a great addition for the family. Busch Gardens has the large play area for children in Land of the Dragons. Now there is a play area for that in- between-age. The too young for Sheikra, but too old for the Land of the Dragoons. I think this area will be a big hit. The area really makes you feel like you are one with nature.

[live2tell75Bonafide Donkey Expert]

Orangutan Outpost:

Along with the Tiger Trails habitat, The Orangutan Outpost is the other main large animal exhibit in Jungala. If you had visited Busch Gardens Africa in the past, you might remember they had a small orangutan exhibit located where Sheikra is now. Their new home is gorgeous! They so much room to roam around. From swinging from the trees, testing on top of the large outpost towers, or getting up close to the viewing areas, I think the orangutans are enjoying their new home. You can view these animals in a few different areas. Outside you can have a great view of the large outpost towers that the orangutans like to sit on top of. Or you visit inside the air-conditioned viewing area. Like the tiger exhibit, this has large viewing windows that overlook the habitat. But the best part of this area, there is a glass window in the floor. A rope hammock is attached to the underside of the floor. This allows guests to get very close to the orangutans. As you can see in the following photos, I was lucky enough to see one of the animals hanging out in the rope hammock and interacting with park guests. The orangutans were so cute! This will be another area of the Jungala I could spend a long time in.

[live2tell75Bonafide Donkey Expert]

Random final photos.

[RCFreakTPR's Favorite Beaner]

dude that looks awesome! I'm sad I missed it by about a month, but that's just another thing for me to go back for!

[arrowfanmanFire Alarm Boy!]

Wow, that looks great! I don't forgive them for obliterating Python, but I cant deny that it looks nice. Thanks for posting Eric!



Looks like just the kind of internal improvement that more parks should be focusing on. I think everything looks beautiful except for the rather unflattering Jungla Flyers loading platform.



-Jahan