Artimals

Artimals
Background information
Park attractions	March of the ARTimals
Group information
Members	Various animals
Occupation	Performers Musicians
Status	Defunct

The Artimals are the titular characters from the former Disney's Animal Kingdom parade March of the ARTimals.

Background

The Artimals consist of various animals decorated in different colors, hence their name. They can appear as performers or as decorations throughout the parade, impressing visitors for their colored designs as well as their performance. They can consist of vertebrates or invertebrates parading across Animal Kingdom. Despite having no dialogues spoken, they occasionally vocalized throughout the parade such as making non-verbal vocals (such as croaking, roaring, or buzzing).

Development

The Artimals were created for Disney Animal Kingdom's first parade under the name "March of the Animals". During development of the park, show producer Douglas May wanted the entertainment at Animal Kingdom to take on a different attitude. Forgoing a more traditional Disney parade loaded with characters, he instead decided to develop a concept of the residents of Discovery Island (then known as Safari Village) putting on a carnival. Directors, writers, and musicians began developing this show in the fall of 1997, followed by casting taking place around December. After six weeks of rehearsal and another two weeks for developing the parade, they prepared to debut the show for May. Costumes and floats for the show were designed by Swiss artist Rolf Knie. May commented, "It's very intimate. There are insects, seahorses, birds you can dance with". This parade featured no Disney characters from other franchises interacting with the parade's original characters, which May declared, "A lack of Disney characters for this venue has really opened up".

The animals were portrayed by people wearing animal costumes as in Cast Members working for Animal Kingdom. In order to emphasize the parade to become a fanciful procession, the name was changed to "March of the Artimals" (portmanteau of "art" and "animal") in reference to the different colored textures decorated around the animal costumes worn by people working for the park

The quirky end result was mostly confusing for guests and efforts to liven up the show with more live music and a storyteller did not succeed in boosting its popularity or clarity and the parade ended its run in June 1999. Despite the discontinuation of the parade, the costumes were later occasionally used for entertainment in the Discovery Island area and Animal Kingdom would not have another parade until Mickey's Jammin' Jungle Parade, which opened in 2001 and ended in 2014.

Appearances

March of the ARTimals

The parade began with a parade float with the titular parade's name decorated within - consisting of an elephant and a giraffe decorated with the name. Occasionally, performers dressed as a tiger, monkey, a strange ungulate-like animal resembling a babirusa or tapir, and two praying mantises would randomly appear within either unit depending on the time the parade performed within the park interacting with guests while dancing across the park.

After the float, performers wearing fish and seahorse costumes passed by - the fish costume decorated with chimes around while the seahorses danced across the street, followed by a performer riding on a small rickshaw decorated with a sea turtle. After the sea creatures passed by, actors wearing frog costumes appeared holding fishing poles while entertaining the crowd, followed by a frog on a parade float singing in front of the crowd (through unintelligible dialogues) and later more frogs passing by. Later, actors wearing long-legged stork costumes passed by accompanied by musicians with panpipes and drums while walking across the parade.

After the storks passed by, performers dressed as bees passed by doing the waggle dance (done by real-life bees) to entertain the crowd, followed by a parade float with an actress dressed as the queen bee sitting on her honey throne. After the bee unit passed, performers wearing elephant costumes passed by - their trunks decorated with a tuba, saxophone, and trumpet respectively using them to entertain the crowd. The next float following the elephants showed a performer wearing a lion costume passing by. The lion used his bones to play a xylophone made from skeletons and unfortunate gazelles, while roaring to entertain the audience. After the lion, the last unit of the parade showcased a float with a gigantic spider puppet passing by, followed by performers dressed as a beetle, a ladybug, and a wasp respectively and later a performer wearing a spider hat. Later, performers dressed as ants passed by passed by the spiderweb float entertaining guests, using maracas to impress the crowd, just before the parade ended.

Christmas overlay

The Artimals reprised their role in the short-lived holiday-themed parade at Animal Kingdom during the 1998 Christmas season at Disney World. The animals played Christmas themed songs in the spirit of the holiday season at the Disney World, as well as the parade floats being themed around Christmas elements for Animal Kingdom's first Christmas celebration.

Gallery

Trivia

• In the Disney's Sing-Along Songs volume of Flik's Musical Adventure at Disney's Animal Kingdom, the March of the Artimals parade was briefly shown during the part where Flik decided to take a look at the parade when two pillbugs (presumably referring to Tuck and Roll) told him about the parade down by the bridge, showing footage of the parade at Animal Kingdom. The sequence then ended with one of the explorers taking a picture of one of the performers dressed as elephants just before the segment looped to the "On Safari" musical number.