T A B L E_T A L K Visiting the Big Apple? Discuss what's happening in New York City in Table Talk's Wanderlust area R E C E N T L Y Sex, drugs and Armenian vodka By Drew Fellman What goes on behind closed doors in Iran (07/27/98) Mondo Weirdo No place like Oz In Japan, a bar with no alcohol or music, only coffee (07/24/98) Mondo Weirdo Nude beaches of the week Favorite places to bare all (07/24/98) Safety strategies By Dawn MacKeen Savvy safety tips for business travelers (07/23/98) Tampax nightmares By Susan Hack It's hard to find a good tampon in Yemen (07/22/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives		LIONS AND TIGERS ARE PC, OH MY! | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - Being able to sit down after all this walking is refreshing, but the actual journey is more or less standard zoo-going on wheels. The view is spectacular as you bump along in open-air cars, free to point, free to stare. Around every bend is a new group of animals. First there's the coffee-colored okapi, looking quite satisfied. Then there are hippos, startlingly close, and crocs. "It's all part of the wild Africa we're working hard to save," the driver says, as we slosh through artificial tire ruts and man-made mud. Behind a tangle of rough branches are Thompson gazelles, sable antelopes and a bumper crop of reclining wildebeests. Giraffes nibble the acacias. And here are marvelous elephants, elands, zebras, marabou storks, oryx, rhinos idling on a hill and pretty waterbuck. But no lions. Somebody forgot to wake them up. Look, lions sleep 20 hours a day. If you get to the park at 7 a.m. when it opens, you might see one. But you can't get to the park that early unless you've got a car. Other sites allow the nice, cheap city buses to drop off tourists. Not Disney -- they've got a shuttle, and it's not only expensive but it doesn't leave you a lot of choice about when you come and go. This is great from their perspective. If you're stuck by the gate, exhausted, you can always shop. Nevertheless, the safari gives you something to chew on. You can expand the flavor after you debark if you step around to the hippo pool: A big window offers a view of the lovely blubberbeast cavorting underwater. The next best thing to this, and the necessary next step, is Gorilla Falls, another variation on the new Disney formula of a socko view at the end of a fairly linear, relaxing stroll. Right now, behind the huge safety window, is a mother with a babe in arms who looks like a dismally hairy little human. If you keep walking, you'll pass another corner of the exhibit where the uniformed snack lady may appear on a rocky perch. She signals to the bachelor group by buzzing something between her lips. The four hairy buddies pick themselves up from their de-fleaing ritual and knuckle on over, placing their enormous, tender feet with disarming care as they cross the stream. Why is she feeding them? "We're doing visibility studies," she replies. Disney employees are called Cast Members for a good reason, if field biology jargon is the new language of entertainment. What was that she used, a whistle? "It's an audio cue," she said. Actually, it was a woodpecker call, but we didn't want her to fall off her rock. She could have said the apricots were a bribe, but the new fashion in animal display doesn't allow for such efficiency. There's but one animal-o-centric avenue left to explore as the mood begins to congeal. (Camp Minnie-Mickey and Dinoland still await, but these are only must-sees if you brought children.) It's time to see the "Conservation Station." This outpost, actually an elaborate video pavilion, has but one thing to recommend it: the old-fashioned, sideways-seating open-air train that gets you there. On the way out, the conveyance snakes by the wood and concrete compound where the biggest animals spend the night. (No, they don't get to snooze out on the savanna.) This is undoubtedly Disney's idea of being truthful about its operations. Just like a well-kept zoo, the compound has chain-link fences and huge, heavy steel barriers. There's no close-up view, of course, but the evidence is that it's clean. Animals are notoriously uninterested in amenities when other requirements are in place. Are they really? Oh, absolutely. Michael Eisner says so. At the end of the line, it's just a few steps to the air-conditioned comfort of what Disney would have you believe is the last word in eco-education. The message spieled out of the Conservation Station's swarm of TV monitors would sound right at home on the head honcho's lips. "You can save the rain forest," tapes drone. Although they don't say how. They lament the disappearance of several species, none of which are Floridian. They don't tell anyone to boycott bloated corporations that retool nature and call it natural selection. They don't say anything about not buying plywood. On the train ride back to the hub of Animal Kingdom, when you're facing a different direction from before, you rumble by thousands of board feet of Disney's speciousness. Asia is yet unfinished, but you can see over the vast plywood construction barrier to the partially completed roller-coaster ride that's supposed to be the spitting image of -- are you ready? -- the temples of Angkor Wat. Fake anti-logging graffiti is sprayed along the wall as you roll past, encrypting a bundle of conflicting messages about what part of the earth is being destroyed, and by whom. Bulldozed dirt and sliced-up trees are clearly visible from the train. The equipment is Disney but the land is supposed to be IndoChina. The object of all this chaos is to get rid of the obstructing native vegetation and make room for more of Asia. Stupefying, isn't it, that Disney would come right out and say it? If this were Indochina, or someplace like it, they'd be cutting it down. People would be protesting. You, perhaps? Never mind the phoniness of the savanna or culture vulture opportunities waiting at the gift shops.It's behind this plywood wall that the looped-back layers of market-driven ingenuity begin to fester into hypocrisy. You can save the rain forest. We saved it for you. We don't need the rain forest. You don't need Asia. You must have Asia. Animals die. Animals have to die in order to live. Big corporations do bad things to beautiful places. The air suddenly seems thick and still. A boy of 7 peers over the train railing, aiming his toy rifle, trying to nail everything in sight. His father stares liquidly off toward Cambodia. In the gift shop, shelves sag under the weight of the generous spirit so blindingly absent in the managed landscape outside. How about a colorful straw hat that makes you look like Lynton Kwesi Johnson? How about a rubber animal? The elephant, with his odd, rough, fuzzy texture, is a good buy at $50. Over in the corner is a shelf full of fake African pottery, each urn bearing an incised image of Mickey in a pith helmet. I turn it over. "Made in Kenya," it says. SALON | July 28, 1998 Sally Eckhoff is a Large Animal Critic and regular contributor to Salon. She is currently at work on a book about animal tourism in America.