Disney's Animal Kingdom Will Be Down To Just 5 Rides After This Closure Next Week

Animal Kingdom, we love you with our whole heart, but we have to admit that we are VERY nervous about this upcoming closure.

Currently, the only ride left open in Dinoland U.S.A. is Dinosaur (which officially has February 2nd as its last day of operation), and since the soon-to-be Zootopia: Better Zoogether! is still under construction, that means there are only six rides available in the park currently (not including the train to Rafiki’s Planet Watch). However, thanks to this upcoming closure, that number will go down to five in just TWO days.

This is your reminder that on October 6th, Kali River Rapids will close for its yearly refurbishment, bringing down the number of rides in the park to just five right before one of the busiest seasons of the year.

We get it — it DOES get chilly in Disney World, and not many people want to get on a ride that will soak them with water during that season, even if they’ve got a poncho on. However, every time this ride goes under this refurbishment, we hope we’ll see some changes made to it, rather than just keeping it working well in its current state.

Why? Well, we’ll be honest — for a while we’ve felt that this ride is pretty severely lacking. There’s really only one big drop, and while the storyline of it is the dangers of deforestation, it’s honestly pretty hard to understand unless you’re REALLY paying attention. We’re not totally sure what we’d like to see this ride rethemed to if it were to done, but we’d just be happy seeing SOMETHING different than what’s there now.

Even during the summer season when you’d like to get soaking wet to cool off, this really isn’t the best ride — we’ve often gotten more soaked on Tiana’s Bayou Adventure in Magic Kingdom! Depending on the way the float turns (which can’t really be controlled in any way that we’ve found), it’s possible you may get no water on you at all, which defeats the purpose if you were hoping to cool down.

Right now, there’s no announcement from Disney that this ride will see any change or theming refurbishment, but we still hold out hope that someday we’ll see it happen.