Five of the Wilderness Explorer badge stations have been removed from Disney’s Animal Kingdom, mainly due to a lack of staff. The map in the guidebook given to participating guests has been updated to no longer include the Asia, Africa, signaling, explorer, and ham radio badges.
Here is what an old map looked like.
Here is the new map with those stations removed.
The large map at the main Wilderness Explorers station has not been updated.
This is where guests could previously earn the “signaling” badge in DinoLand U.S.A.
Signs have been removed from this post.
Flags still hang above the location.
In Asia, this is where guests could previously earn the “explorer” badge.
The main Wilderness Explorer logo is still on the post, but the specific badge sign has been removed.
According to a Cast Member, the experience is currently short-staffed.
At this Wildlife Field Station, guests could earn multiple badges.
The Asian culture badge has been removed from the map and signage for now, but guests can still earn other badges here.
In addition to being generally short-staffed, the experience does not currently have cultural representatives for Asia and Africa and other Cast Members did not feel comfortable talking about a culture they are not part of. Until Cast Members more representative of those cultures are hired, the badges will not be available.
As with the Asia field station, this Africa station has other badges available but not the African culture badge.
The sign for the badge has been removed from this post for now.
Cast Members used two different stations in Africa for the ham radio badge.
The Cast Member we spoke to said that the ham radio badge was removed because it lacked relevance to the modern world.
While it seems possible the other four badges will be available again someday, the ham radio badge may be gone for good.
Have you become a Wilderness Explorer at Disney’s Animal Kingdom? Let us know what badges you got in the comments.
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Going with an 8 year old who was actually excited for this experience, I’m glad they’re doing what they can to keep the other stations going. For as busy as last week was, these cast members were above and beyond awesome and engaging!