Disney World Guests Forced to Walk After Animal Kingdom Safari Ride Breaks Down in Lion Area

Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom is known for allowing guests to get up close and personal with animals, but one Kilimanjaro Safaris ride recently got a little too wild.

On Friday (Feb. 11), guests aboard the popular trek in the Harambe Wildlife Reserve area of the theme park experienced a roughly 40-minute delay due to a wheel axle malfunction on one of the active vehicles. Ultimately, the riders were forced to walk to the exit.

TikTok user @purely_katelin posted videos of the experience to her social media account.

According to Katelin, her safari truck was stopped near the lion exhibit for approximately 40 minutes. Katelin claims that at first, the driver of the vehicle — an open-air truck — didn't know what was happening, just that they had to wait there.

Thankfully, they had an epic view of the lions, which of course could not reach the guests as they are kept surrounded by a giant moat. Other safety measures in place make sure that the big cats cannot leave their designated area.

According to another rider's comment on one of Katelin's TikTok videos, some of the other safari animals that are allowed to roam freely in their designated sections located along the ride trail were put away so they wouldn't attempt to interact with the stranded guests.

Eventually, cast members showed up and evacuated the guests from the vehicle, along with guests from several other nearby trucks.

The cast members brought ladders to help the guests disembark from the high safari vehicles before they were instructed to walk back to the ride's entrance.

Despite cast members' requests for guests to put their cameras away during the evacuation, the TikToker documented her entire experience.

When a follower asked if the Disney park compensated the evacuated riders in some capacity, Katelin claimed that they gave each guest impacted by the safari vehicle malfunction a Lightning Lane pass for any single attraction.

The Lightning Lane pass allows a guest to bypass a ride's normal queue for a much shorter priority line that gets the guest into the attraction as quickly as possible.