Starlight safari

We went during Marathon weekend this year. Lasted about 45 minutes or so leaving from Kidani Village front entrance. It was interesting…here’s my take

The good:
If you don’t have the chance to stay in Kidani Village with a Savannah view, you get a view of what is out there at night.

You learn some new things about the animals that are out there, the CM’s that work with them and how they care for the animals. They will answer questions you have about animals or anything that they are capable of answering.

Less than 10 on our tour so it wasn’t crowded or annoying with tons of questions or people in your viewing area.

Pin Collectors: You get a cool glow in the dark Starlight Safari pin. :wink:

It was 40 degrees – they provided blankets! (Otherwise we would have been miserable)

If you have a good camera with ability to take night time pictures WITHOUT a flash, and the animals are close enough, you can get one or two decent pictures that look like this… (eh, hem iPhone 7)

The bad:
The main disappointment for me was I thought this was a tour of the entire Savannah including the one KS runs on, or at least part of that. The tour is only of the Savannah areas by Kidani/Jambo House. Kilimanjaro is fenced off and you can’t see much past the fences.

The night vision is only one eye – not a full set of binoculars. For me, my eyes got irritated if I tried looking through the night vision for too long.

The animals are free roaming in this area so they may be very close to the vehicle, OR they may be so far away that you can’t figure out if the CM thinks they have pointed out an animal when all you can see are trees and shrubs!

You cannot use flash photography.

The night we went was the 2nd coldest night that weekend, so the giraffes were picked up because they can’t be exposed to the extreme cold which made for less animal sightings. (Not the fault of Disney so I understood)

I did get a survey for this after because we were one of the first booked after they announced it, and I answered honestly hoping that maybe they could make it more worth the amount charged for the tour. We did also tip at the end of the tour so that was in addition to the ticket price.

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