Caring for Giants is a 1-hour elephant education experience at Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom park. It’s a paid experience, and one you will probably want to book in advance if you’re interested. In this post, we’ll review the tour and give you information on booking it, including deciding whether it’s worth it for your family!
Caring for Giants Basics
Caring for Giants is a 1-hour elephant education experience at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. It is offered multiple times most days, but you should always confirm the latest schedule at the website. The official tour website is here, which has current pricing, dates, and times.
The price is $39 per person. When we first took the tour in 2020 (before the closure), we got a 15% annual passholder discount, but that wasn’t available at our most recent post-closure visit. Your mileage may vary. You might also be able to get a discount if you have the Chase Disney Visa Credit Card.
Guests for the tour must be at least 4 years old (under 18 must be accompanied by adult). If you have younger kids, read about visiting Animal Kingdom with toddlers.
Tours are a fun addition to any Disney vacation, and Animal Kingdom has this one and a few others, including Up Close With Rhinos and Wild Africa Trek.
Booking Caring for Giants
You can book Caring for Giants online about 9 weeks (63 days) in advance, but it’s common that availability doesn’t actually open until closer to 30-45 days. We of course recommend checking as soon as your date opens and then continually thereafter.
You can also call (407) 939-7529 to book, and you can book at several spots around Walt Disney World Resort, including the Animal Kingdom’s Curiosity Animal Tours Kiosk near Kilimanjaro Safaris.
Before booking, you’ll want to have a few times in mind in case your date or time isn’t available. I’m not sure how often they actually fill up, but I imagine things like the birth of Baby Stella probably cause spikes in bookings. Check the Disney Website for the current schedule. Separate admission to Animal Kingdom is required.
After booking, I got a confirmation number via email, and the experience showed up on my My Disney Experience account and in the My Disney Experience app.
The Disney tour page states: “No cameras, video equipment or cell phones may be used while backstage. However, photography is allowed and encouraged in non-backstage areas.”
Some parts of the tour are backstage, and photos are not allowed there. The bulk of the experience is on a platform at the back of Kilimanjaro Safaris, but this is considered on-stage, so photos are allowed. The Cast Member guides will tell you when pictures are allowed.
Caring for Giants Check-In
Check In for the tour is at the Curiosity Animal Tours Kiosk just in front of Kilimanjaro Safaris, to the left if you’re looking at the entrance to that attraction.
Between check in and the start of the tour you just stand around, but once the tour departs you cannot join. So don’t be late.
Fitting the tours into your day can be a little complicated. You absolutely have to arrive on time—and should arrive 15 minutes early—so you probably won’t be getting in lines for rides or watching shows that come anywhere near a conflict with your tour time.
We recommend doing things like the zoological trails (Gorilla Falls, Maharajah) or watching streetmosphere in Africa just before your tour. These are things you can leave whenever you’d like, so there won’t be any conflict with your tour time.
Keep in mind you don’t want your Animal Kingdom Lightning Lane reservations to conflict with the tour. Flight of Passage and Kilimanjaro Safaris can both easily take 30 minutes even with a Lightning Lane, so don’t get on those too close to your tour.
Festival of the Lion King
There is plenty of entertainment in Harambe (near check-in) that we think is worth watching, so you might see if there’s anything going on before your check-in.
Festival of the Lion King is also nearby, and a 30-minute top-of-the-hour show would allow you to catch check in 15 minutes before a top-of-the-hour tour (in the unlikely event you were short on time, you can leave the show a little early).
Caring for Giants Tour Experience
We were given name tags (made out of 85% elephant poop!) in lanyards, and right about 3:00 PM, the scheduled start time, our group assembled near the kiosk.
Our guide for the hour introduced herself to us and told us a little about the tour, including which parts were backstage (no photos) and which parts were on-stage (photos okay). Along with our guide, we were accompanied by a Cast Member who was an elephant expert.
Before we go on, it’s good to note that unlike Up Close With Rhinos, this is not a close encounter experience. There is definitely no petting, though you may have a good view of the elephants you’d usually see on Kilimanjaro Safaris. (Again, we reviewed Up Close With Rhinos here.)
Elephant seen from Kilimanjaro Safaris
For the most part, you won’t be seeing much that can’t be see from the safari. As we’ll see, you’ll be opposite the safari path, with some bunches of trees between you and the path.
This means if the elephants are huddled near the path, you might not see them. If they’re huddled near you, the safari probably doesn’t have a good view. It’s up to the elephants where they want to be.
After the few minutes introduction, we went through a backstage area and took a mini bus to the backside of Kilimanjaro Safaris. The drive was 5-10 minutes long, and along the way the guide explained what we were driving past.
If you’ve never been backstage at a Disney park, this is neat, but the tour isn’t really even partially about backstage. You pass through it, get some commentary, get to see Cast Members backstage, and that’s really it for that part.
Because it’s up to the elephants where they want to be, you might get good views, you might not. We’ve done the tour twice and had both experiences. We’ll start with our first experience—basically no elephants—before talking about our second—lots of elephant activity.
Visit 1 — Caring for Giants but Without the Giants
At the end of the drive, we arrived at the elephant viewing area. This area is technically on-stage, so pictures are allowed. The platform is across the way from the Kilimanjaro Safaris track—you can even see the safari vehicles:
As with Up Close With Rhinos, the Cast Members spend the bulk of the tour talking to you about the animals, in this case African elephants. The animal specialist talks about conservation efforts and projects the Disney Conservation fund is working on.
This part is very educational, and again similar to Up Close With Rhinos, it’s great to hear from the Cast Members about the elephants and their personalities. Only thing…on our tour we couldn’t actually see the elephants.
We could see one far off in a separately fenced area:
But for the area near the main platform, we couldn’t see any. As we drove back at the end of the tour, we found out they were right around the bend, just out of view of us.
If you had asked me beforehand whether I’d think simply having the elephants in view would matter, I would have said no. But I was wrong.
The Cast Members did an awesome job. They had great information, were enthusiastic, and taught us a bunch.
But at the same time…there was an awkward tension in the air as everyone looked for the elephants. Kids got restless and complained (which is definitely understandable). Adults tried to make the best of it but still kept peeking looking for the elephants.
The time was still well filled with information, and I maybe wouldn’t have had much to say about missing the elephants, until we saw them on the way out.
When we were driving back we found them around the corner and could see them from the bus. That’s when our Cast Member guide really lit up.
For those few minutes, she was so excited to tell us about them, what they were doing, why they were doing it, and so on. It was so nice to see how she connected with them in that instance.
In reviewing Up Close With Rhinos, I said the best part was how passionate the Cast Members were about the rhinos. That’s so true of this tour, too, but it was hard in our case because the Cast Member didn’t have any elephants to point to until the very end.
Visit 2 — Caring for Giants, NOW WITH GIANTS!
The second time we did the tour, we were more fortunate and had three elephants hanging around in the area the entire time. Here’s a collection of three pictures that give a rough idea of the views:
Besides that, the tour was very similar to our first experience—a passionate guide who presented lots of interesting tidbits about the elephants and had plenty of answers to our group’s questions.
As I’ll mention just below, having the elephants around relieved a lot of the awkwardness from the first tour. Anyone who wanted to just sit and look at elephants could do that, anyone who wanted to ask questions could do that, and the guide didn’t have to keep looking and explaining that everything is up to how the elephants feel today.
Is Caring for Giants Worth It?
Now having done the tour twice—once with good views and once without—we have as good an idea as anyone as to how this tour can go.
First, at $39 per person, this tour is less expensive than Up Close With Rhinos ($49). This is no doubt in part because it never has a petting element, which is definitely worth $10.
You still get to go backstage, get a cool new view of the savanna, and get to hear from experts. And they do have the passion, but that passion resonates a lot more when there are actual elephants to talk about.
One thing I think Disney should do when elephants are on the tour is give guests a Lightning Lane for Kilimanjaro Safaris. Everyone had been on it previously, but after missing the elephants because they were right off the Kilimanjaro Safaris track, it would have been good to hop right on that ride and see them.
While the experience is more complete with elephants, I have to say there just isn’t as much of a “wow” factor as Up Close with Rhinos, or even a good ride on Kilimanjaro Safaris, because the elephants are still relatively far away.
Having the elephants there definitely relieved the experience of a lot of awkwardness, but this is not an experience where I’d say seeing the elephants is the highlight. The true highlight is only going to be found if you enjoy hearing about the elephants and their care or if you just want the experience of going backstage.
Now, let’s talk about the time. This is an hour long tour, and for most guests it’s a good use of that time.
As much as I love Animal Kingdom, the park doesn’t require a full day for most guests (to be clear, Animal Kingdom can fill a full day if you’d like). Adults visiting Animal Kingdom may in particular have more time on their hands, as they might be less inclined to ride a few rides (looking at you, TriceraTop Spin) and meet characters.
But, especially since the addition of Pandora—The World of Avatar, the park easily takes more than a half day for all guests. In this middle-ground, an hour-long tour is the perfect addition.
Back to the money and to the big comparison. Based on our experiences, I’d say Up Close With Rhinos at $49 per person is the better value than Caring for Giants at $39. I really don’t think it’s even close unless you have a lot of passion for elephants and want to learn about them and their care.
We did both tours in a single day, and while I’d like to see them have a combination to cut down on travel time, I actually think $90 per person for the two hours and two experiences is a great use of time in our day.
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