A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis: The Boneyard

By Dave Shute

Welcome back to Fridays with Jim Korkis! Jim, the dean of Disney historians and author of Jim’s Gems in The easy Guide, writes about Walt Disney World history every Friday on yourfirstvisit.net.

THE BONEYARD AT DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM

By Jim Korkis

The Boneyard is the interactive playground area in Disney’s Animal Kingdom at the entrance to Dinoland USA. It is meant to resemble a paleontological dig site, but is often just referred to as “the sandbox”. It is not real sand in the area, but a tiny gravel material called Texas grit. The flooring is a spongy mat-like material.

Although primarily meant for younger children, the location provides insights and delights for guests of all ages. It is littered with not just some fun objects for children to explore but clues as to how the dinosaurs lived and died, as well as additional information about the battles between parts of Dinoland USA’s back story, the irreverent intern students and their more stodgy professors–who in their own way are “dinosaurs” when it comes to new ideas.

For children, there are the bones of prehistoric creatures like a Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops skulls and a Columbian Wooly Mammoth waiting to be uncovered, a fossilized bone xylophone to play called the XyloBone, various debris spill chutes that can be used as slides, dinosaur footprints, that emit a roar when stepped on, scaffolding, rope ladders, netting, tunnels, a fossil-filled maze and much more. Opening doors and lids provide an unexpected surprise as well.

The two sides of the Boneyard are linked by the OldenGate Bridge (a pun on the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge), the gateway structure built out of the giant skeleton of a 50-foot-tall, 80-foot-long brachiosaurus at the entrance to this land. A nearby plaque states: “This replica fossil is cast from the bones discovered in Colorado in 1900. The original is now in the Field Museum in Chicago.”

Before Disney’s Animal Kingdom even opened, the Disney Company and McDonald’s, who was the original sponsor of the Dinoland area, partnered with the Field Museum to offer the winning bid on what was at the time the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton ever unearthed. The cleaned and restored skeleton, dubbed “Sue,” is now on display at the Museum. Two casts were also made from the original skeleton. One toured the world as part of a McDonald’s promotion and the other is in Dinoland U.S.A.

There is only one entrance/exit to the area, so parents can keep better control of where their children are in the multi-storied enclosed half acre. Even the walls display different layers, or “strata”, of earth that over the centuries buried the remains of these prehistoric creatures.

The generational conflict between the academic-minded professors Dr. Bernard Dunn, Dr. Shirley Woo, Dr. Eugene McGee and Dr. Tina Lee of the fictional Dino Institute with their traditional but often outdated information about dinosaurs and the youthful graduate students including the newest interns Mark Rios, Jenny Weinstein and Sam Gonzales with a sometimes more radical perspective based on recent research is in evidence all throughout the area.

Various handwritten corrections and responses are posted prominently on the various signage, bulletin boards and more offering alternate possibilities for the different findings. Clearly, the knowledge about dinosaurs has always been incomplete and even today is constantly evolving.

There are other more visible signs of student rebellion including a wall of excavation tools where a pick has been deliberately hung in the space clearly identified for small spades.

To add to the reality of the area, casts were taken from real dinosaur bones found in places like Utah’s Dinosaur National Park and then reproduced using a plastic-cement material that looks and feels real.

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Thanks, Jim! And come back next Friday for more from Jim Korkis!

In the meantime, check out his books, including his latest, Gremlin Trouble! The Cursed Roald Dahl Film Disney Never Made, Secret Stories of Walt Disney World: Things You Never You Never Knew, which reprints much material first written for this site, and his contributions to The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit, all published by Theme Park Press.

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