Following the extinction of Dinoland USA, Disney Legend(ary) Imagineer Joe Rohde has been paying tribute to the much-maligned dinosaur area of Animal Kingdom. He also shared that despite his fondness for Dino-Rama, he tried for 15 years to get Tropical Americas built at Walt Disney World, with many such pitches involving the “gutting” of Dinoland to do it.
Before we dig into Rohde’s praise for the Tropical Americas concept, it’s worth adding more context to his praise of Dinoland USA. On the day of that land’s closing, Rohde wrote that he’d “miss its sly and droll sense of humor, and the way in which it attempted to take a complicated subject like paleontology and turn it into a series of entertainment experiences.”
Like so many Walt Disney World fans, he pointed to Dinoland’s backstory, and “Venn diagram of ideas in play. The old school professors defending outmoded ideas. The young students with challenging new theories. The corporate financiers and their amoral profit motive. The roadside America entrepreneurs and their simple non-academic love of dinosaurs for pure fun.”
Since then, Rohde has shared nearly a dozen Dinoland tribute posts on Instagram. The salient points with all of these is that he still very clearly feels connected to Animal Kingdom, and that Dinoland was misunderstood or underappreciated. A lot of fans have reached this same conclusion over the years, many with an assist from Rohde’s past posts praising Dinoland USA.
As has been well-established over the years, we are not among these fans. I take Rohde’s points and can see how he and other fans would fall in love with Dinoland. The backstory is clever. There are a lot of interesting and thought-provoking ideas at play. The humor is sharp and witty.
To Rohde and his team’s immense credit, they tried to make lemonade out of lemons with the budget and constraints for the park’s dinosaur land. They tried to pull off a low-budget, high concept land.
The only problem? All of that falls apart when you step into the land itself. Theme parks exist as built environments, serving actual guests. The on paper explanation, great as it was, simply never lived up to the experience of visiting the land. My view has long been that “the thing speaks for itself,” and Dinoland always felt like the disjointed, weakest link at Animal Kingdom, which is otherwise an exemplar of themed design.
I believe Rohde loves Dinoland, just like a parent loves all of their children. But I do not believe that it was the dinosaur land he would’ve built at Animal Kingdom if given a bottomless budget, creative freedom, and time to do the concept justice.
I similarly do not believe Pandora is the mythical creatures land he would’ve built if given complete autonomy (we have concept art in coffee table books revealing what was actually intended for the original Animal Kingdom but cut for budget, in both cases). The difference is that Rohde got more of a blank check for Avatar and the impressive results speak for themselves.
Regardless, Rohde’s words carry a lot of weight. Much more than those of some random dude with a blog, so it’s very worthwhile to read and digest what he has to say about DAK. Aside from Walt and Disneyland, there’s probably no one person as closely connected with a park as Joe Rohde is with Animal Kingdom.
These parks are collaborative efforts and he had a huge team along with corporate mandates, but DAK is largely his baby. Joe Rohde is as close as possible to being the “auteur” of Animal Kingdom. His words on the park are rightfully viewed by many Walt Disney World fans as the gospel.
Accordingly, it’s also interesting to read his latest post on Tropical Americas:
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.
Joe Rohde has always spoken his mind, and his social media posts have become even more candid since departing Disney. So there’s no reason to believe this is revisionist history meant to toe the corporate line or whatever. That just isn’t Rohde. His praise for Dinoland is sincere and comes from the heart, and so too does this.
There’s also the reality that this is not the first time he’s shared that he tried to get Tropical Americas built at Animal Kingdom. I ran into him at the last D23 Expo in Summer 2024, and he shared much of the same sentiment. Here’s what I wrote at the time:
As far as Tropical Americas goes, Rohde was enthusiastic and optimistic. He indicated that this was a region of the world he’d wanted to see incorporated into the park, but could never get done. Rohde felt that it was time for the park to evolve in this way, saying it would be a good addition especially post-Pandora. He seemed most curious about the Encanto casita, and suggested one of the biggest challenges for Imagineering would be marrying the more whimsical style of that with the gritty look of the rest of the park.
Anyway, just wanted to share this as there’s been a lot of mourning Dinoland this week among Walt Disney World fans, and understandably so. It is fair to call DINOSAUR a cult classic, and Dinoland had redeeming qualities. Regardless of all that, fans form nostalgia for everything, as so much of what makes a theme park impactful is the memories we make along the way, which forms an emotional attachment to the spaces.
As a bit of an antidote to all of that, there’s good reason for optimism about Dinoland’s replacement! Everything we’ve heard about Tropical Americas since the project’s announcement has left me more reassured and excited about it. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s the Walt Disney World project for which I’m most excited, since Villains Land is hard to top, but Tropical Americas is up there for #2.
Joe Rohde’s post is the latest example, but it’s one of many. There was also last year’s Maya and the Mouse conference, which really underscored that the Tropical Americas project team “gets it.” Much of what has come out reinforces that Imagineering is still treating Animal Kingdom with reverence, attempting to thread the needle on cultural authenticity and thematic integrity at the last bastion of it at Walt Disney World. And although we’d prefer to see him fully return to Imagineering to helm projects, it’s nevertheless great to have Rohde back as a consultant, helping to shepherd the project in the right direction.
Someday, I hope Rohde or Disney reveal what was in previous pitches for Tropical Americas. Obviously, Encanto was not part of them from the beginning, since it did not exist over a decade ago. But my bet is that reimagining DINOSAUR into Indiana Jones Adventure was always part of the equation, as putting that ride system as originally intended is a slam dunk decision.
I’m also curious as to how Tropical Americas finally got greenlit 15 years later. It is quite the, ahem, coincidence that Bruce Vaughn returned to lead Imagineering, this expansion switched from Moana and Zootopia to revive the Tropical Americas concept, and Rohde was also brought back to mentor and consult Imagineers…all around the exact same time. It is similarly quite the coincidence that plans were dusted off for the 15-year old Monsters, Inc. Door Coaster plans for Disney’s Hollywood Studios around the same time. As the saying goes, great ideas never really die at Imagineering.
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Your Thoughts
What do you think of the Tropical Americas expansion at Animal Kingdom? What about the potential of Indiana Jones and Encanto in DAK? Excited or underwhelmed by the Walt Disney World expansion plans? Or, are you in wait and see mode with this? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback—even when you disagree with us—is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!