The Excavator

When it came to the updates that Disney’s Animal Kingdom was receiving, there was one clear point of guest complaints: Chester and Hester’s Dino-Rama. Even if it was Disney’s own heightened spin on a cheap tourist trap, it still felt ultimately like a cheap tourist trap. Something had to change. Thankfully, a solution came within Disney’s own archives of an attraction once considered but never built. Reaching back and brushing away the dust, Imagineers decided to resurrect an old concept for DinoLand U.S.A.: a wooden roller coaster known as The Excavator. Along with that came a change to the backstory for the land, shifting the Dino Institute’s base of operations from Florida to New Mexico and adjusting some of the land's surroundings (covering from the theater for Finding Nemo: the Musical to the Cretaceous Trails) to match this new backstory. With these decisions in place, Imagineers were ready to get rid of Chester and Hester's Dino-Rama and give guests something to really enjoy.

Gone is the cheap roadside carnival that had once seemed like an eyesore for guests. Now, guests find a desert from the American Southwest, a stark environment compared to the lush jungles throughout most of the park. It is here that they find a dig site being worked on by the Dino Institute, with camp stations set up in the shadow of the nearby hills. Signs advertising a tour for Dino Institute visitors help point the way to the main camp office built into the hillside, which serves as the queue for the ride. Entering inside, guests walk through the halls of this busy station. Displays and maps are pinned to the walls charting the region of the dig site and its history as a former ore mine before the fossil discovery, while work stations (featuring helpful signs) showcase various tools used in the process of unearthing fossils. Along the way, radio announcements by Dr. William Mantell welcomes guests to their tour of this local dig site. As guests approach the loading area, they pass by a collection of photos showing the evolution of old ore cars into fossil transporters and eventually their new life as tour cars. Eventually, guests climb inside the tour cars, which begin their trek along the rickety wooden track.

Leaving the station, we rumble along through a rock formation. Taking a turn, we head forward into an uphill climb (which can be seen by most guests passing by this attraction). Reaching the top, we find the wide pit of the dig site before us…right as we then pitch forward and speed down into the dig site. Our tour cars charge along the wooden tracks, with dips, hills, and turns offering plenty of excitement. Also exciting are the many fossils that we pass by. Some are still in the rocky walls to our sides, while others emerge fixed in hunks of rock jutting up from the ground. One last dip sends us sailing past two completed velociraptor fossils, posed as if they were on the attack. With that, we slow down as we enter a cave. Inside, we find ourselves reaching the unloading area, where we disembark from our tour cars.