Dine with an Animal Specialist at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge

If you’re looking for a different dining experience while at Disney World, make sure to check out Dine with an Animal Specialist. This has been one of my favorite experiences.

The meal is held at Sanaa at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge. If you haven’t been to Sanaa, it’s located on the Kidani Village side of the resort and is famous for the bread service.

We checked in at the host stand and then were taken to a long table in it’s own little alcove of the restaurant. The experience is limited to 12 guests and the animal specialist. When we attended we had a full table and an extra animal specialist. Our 2 animal specials were Kate and Kim. One of them was transferring from Animal Kingdom park over to Animal Kingdom Lodge so she had been training for the transfer.

Our meal started off with the bread service followed by a watermelon and fennel salad and tomato soup with paneer cheese. The main course was butter chicken and a shrimp dish. Unfortunately, I don’t remember exactly what the shrimp dish was. Then for dessert we were given the Kheer.

Everything was delicious. I’m a big fan of the naan bread and while I loved all of it, my very favorite was the one with red chili flakes. The boys were given the choice to order from the kids menu but both of them just wanted to stick with the courses being served.

Throughout the meal the animal specialists talked with us about the animals and their jobs, and we were able to ask questions. One of my favorite stories they told was about the giraffes. The giraffes are fed alfalfa which is put up high so that the other animals don’t eat it but the giraffes have favorite animals and they will feed them the alfalfa.

We were also visited by the chef who told us all about the food we were eating and how it’s traditionally prepared. We were also visited by a cultural ambassador, Marvelous. Marvelous talked to us about his home, Zimbabwe.

Once everyone was done eating we followed Kate and Kim outside to interact with one of the tortoises. This was definitely a highlight of the meal. We took turns working on enrichment training with the tortoise. One person would hold out a stick with a red ball at the end and once he touched it the other person would feed him a piece of fruit. It was so much fun!

I think we would definitely book this experience again. I’m sure there is so much more we could learn from the animal specialists.

What would you like to learn from an animal specialist?