FASTPASS TO THE PAST: THE THEME PARK HISTORY PODCAST Season 2 Episode #11: Welcome to the Jungle (Cruise) Opening: Welcome to Fastpass to the Past. The Theme Park History Podcast and Season 2. Episode 11. Have you ever wondered what is the origin story behind your favorite attractions and theme parks? Well, you’re in the right place. Today I am going to Welcome you to the Jungle …. (song plays) That’s right, today we are talking about the history and development of my personal favorite attraction, Jungle Cruise. Introduce Yourself: Hello I’m your host, Austin Carroll. I am a history nerd a former Disneyland Cast Member And a current annual pass holder at the Disneyland Resort. Episode Introduction Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. I have gotten so much positive feedback and just unbelievable support. I am so excited to bring you folks a whole new season of theme park history. For season two we have a lot of fun surprises planned, including more interations of our Lost Lands series and one or two extremely special guests. I also want to say we are now a completely clean show suitable for those young listeners and aspiring historians. So - without futher ado - to launch this season we are taking you deep into the jungles of Disneyland’s original ‘Adventureland’ to seek out the origins of everyone’s favorite punny skippers, ambushes, and piranhas. I’m so glad you could join me for the next five exciting days and six romantic nights. In April of 1998, the Walt Disney Company created an entire theme park filled with animals from around the world. There was lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Children of all ages could come and explore the safaris of Africa, the rainforests of South America, and even witness these spectacular beasts up close with a real guide on a real safari vehicle at Kilimanjaro Safaris. However, the original theme park safari it was not. That honor is instead bestowed on an attraction that has come to have its own ecosystem (literally and figuratively). Of course, we are talking about Jungle Cruise - a Disneyland opening day attraction that has spurred copy-cats around the world including at Florida’s magic kingdom, Hong Kong, and Tokyo Disneyland. In the 60 years since its inception, the jokes and to an extent the animatronics haven’t gotten any better - yet it goes down in history as one of the most beloved Disney attractions and (for some reason) is currently being made into a major motion picture with Dwyane the Rock Johnson. Despite its recent foray into movie stardom, ironically enough, Jungle Crusie was one of the only opening day attractions not based on an existing Disney animated film. This begs the question of how such a quirky and seemingly non-Disney attraction came into existence in the first place? Part #2: Live Animals, oh my When Walt Disney and his original team of designers, later known as Imagineers, planned Disneyland, they came up with a group of potential attractions during a so-called ‘Blue Sky’ period. Of course, not all these ideas came to fruition. If you remember from our season 1 podcast, the intended holidayland was scrapped during this period. In addition to the hub locals of Fantasyland and Tomorrowland, Walt envisioned a another co-existing land. He christened this land inspired by the jungles and markets of Africa and Asia as ‘Adventureland’ explaining that “the spirit of adventure is often linked with exotic, tropical places. Many of us dream of traveling to those mysterious, far off regions of the world.” He hoped that the instant future guests reached the sign for what he called the Adventureland portal, they would feel transported. A big part of this land was to be the attraction that eventually became the Jungle Cruise we all know today … although it ended up being very different from what was originally intended. To say Walt had slightly ambitious expectations for his Jungle Cruise attraction would be a severe understatement. He was inspired by a popular series of documentary films and shorts called Walt Disney’s True Life Adventures. In particular, he was fascinated by the film The African Lion, which the Walt Disney Company company had filmed in Kenya in 1952. Similar to a National Geographic or Animal Planet show today, it focused on the brutality of the African Safari - one of the most compelling scenes being a lioness hunting her wildebeest prey. Walt loved his film’s examination of the many different species of creatures uneasily sharing the same savannah. He also admired the sweeping backdrops of Africa and wanted to recreate those majestic jungles in Adventureland. However, as difficult as it may be to comprehend over 60 years later, these Southern California construction workers had never concealed ride equipment in a man-made jungle or built a switch-back for boat storage that appeared to be a natives village in Africa - not to mention both of which must pass the California building inspection code. This was a new challenge - a new type of storytelling that (with the noted exception of Knotts Berry Farm) had barely been attempted in the United States in 1954. In addition to the no-doubt serious on-the-job learning for all the construction members involved, the early Disneyland builders had to deal with a seriously underestimated construction budget. Instead of the 4 million estimated, it cost Walt almost 17 million to build the opening day park. According to lore, a frustrated Walt, already famous for his films and TV shows at the time, would complain on visits to the construction site that “By the time you get through burying all our money underground, we won’t have a thing left for the show!” At the Jungle Cruise construction site, Walt took issue with the world-famous Schweitzer Falls named after that famous explorer: Dr. Albert Falls. Although a show-stopper and home to the 8th wonder of the world, the backside of water, Walt was less than impressed when he learned how much concrete and steel bars were utilized in its construction. Afterall, he thought, no one would ever even walk there! If not for Joseph Fowler, a Naval Academy and MIT design graduate, it is likely Walt’s penny-pinching may have derailed the entire project - not just Adventureland and Jungle Cruise but the entire theme park. A unintimidated World War II War Hero and head of Disneyland construction, Joseph was always quick to reply with his reflexive catchphrase, “Can do” - no matter how crazy the idea. However, none of the park hubs proved more difficult than Adventureland, though. At its start, it would feature but one attraction, Jungle Cruise…. With live animals. Yes. Live animals! Walt’s original idea for Jungle Cruise included live animals as part of his so-called show. That was what he loved about The African Lion, after all. All of the animals shared the same living quarters. Walt thought that a 'cruise' through wild and exotic lands featuring animals in their natural habitat would be the ideal way to present them. People could see these animals at the LA Zoo, but having them featured on his boat ride would allow guests to get up close and personal. However, it was not meant to be. After many consultation with animal-care specialists, Walt was convinced that although the domesticated mules and horses in Frontierland could generally be counted on to perform their roles, live exotics animals would never provide the consistent show he wanted. They couldn’t be trusted to stay in areas in which they’d remain visible, they’d sleep most of the day, and they’d surely be irritated by the constant boatloads of gawkers and the special effects required to tell the story. Anyone who has visited Kilimanjaro Safaris at Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom knows that even today, with 60 plus years of theme park construction knowledge, Disney-coached animals still eat, sleep, and perform on their own time. The entire landscape has clusters of animals in order to guarantee that a person riding through the attraction will see at least some members of the heard. Such challenges were thought to be insurmountable in 1954. Park designers couldn’t even guarantee that the animals would remain in their designated living quarters at a given time. Imagine the hysteria the occasional escaped animal would have created - a lion loose on Main Street - located just one 20 feet jump away. It kept these early Imagineers up at night. Part #3: A Complicated Solution to the Animal Problem However, enter our good friend the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which seems to come up a lot in this podcast. Walt noted that the giant squid his special effects team had created for the 1954 Walt Disney Pictures was extremely life-like. As almost all of his ideas for Disneyland were expansions of premises that Imagineers tested on their Burbank soundstages first, Walt imagined that creatures such as crocodiles, elephants, and monkeys should prove easy for his team to bring to life. You think this would solve the Imagineers woes… but instead they were now faced with the problem of creating animatronics, as animals just standing still would negate the Jungle Cruise experience Walt desired. This was a major problem as animatronics were expensive and still at their earliest development stages. They also required electricity… in an attraction where the land was mostly water. By this point, Harper Goff, the project lead, had modified the plan for the Jungle Cruise to mimic one of the most popular movies of the day, 1951’s The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. The American Film Institute consistently names this film one of the top 100 of all-time, but it was only two-and-a-half years old when developers broke ground on Disneyland on July 16, 1954. The movie’s story focused on people sharing a riverboat adventure. Jungle Cruise would be similar in that it would provide a riverboat cruise experience to the public with the captain of the ship performing the roles of protector and narrator during the ride. They would pretend as if every second of the trip involved peril and, potentially, mortal danger. Hence, the original Suwannee River idea for The Jungle Cruise was scrapped, and Africa was in! Ironically, this classic film also inspired an answer to the wiring quandary the Jungle Cruise team was facing. Walt knew that Director John Huston staged The African Queen in a way that the titular tramp steamer was never “totally clear of the water or the underbrush.” Hence, this became the blueprint for Jungle Cruise. If they cleverly placed the animals in the right spots, Imagineers found they could supply power to animatronics without the guests ever seeing the wiring. In this manner, they could protect the illusion of the riverboat adventure while making all the animals seem life-like. Jungle Cruise would cement the idea that a person entering Adventureland was truly entering a new place, an exotic land full of mystery and excitement…and really bad puns. But we’ll get to that. Part #4: One Man Creates an Ecosystem Although the animals didn’t need to be real to convey the feeling of the jungle, the plants certainly did. If only for the very famous joke in the present day attraction - “Since we are in an area filled with rare tropical foliage, I'd like to point out some of the plants to you. There's one. There's one...” There were precarious problems in bringing a jungle to southern California. The primary one involved the short construction timeline. As you may remember from our earlier podcasts, Disneyland broke ground on July 21, 1954, and it opened on July 17th of the following year. That’s only 361 days of construction… much too short for an actual jungle to take root. Enter horticulturalist Bill Evans. During the Great Depression, Bill dropped out of Stanford to learn the family gardening trade. Drawing upon his world travels as a elite Merchant Marine staff during World War II, he convinced his family to offer exotic plants as picturesque backdrops for the nurseries of the richest people in Los Angeles - including Walt Disney’s Holmby Hills estate. Having impressed Walt, Bill Evans, gardener to the stars, suddenly found himself responsible for one of the largest orange groves on the West Coast, only they were supposed to look like exotic places in Asia and Africa. He was actually the one responsible from moving Adventureland from the east side, near Tomorrowland, to the west side of the park to incorporate the large eucalyptus trees already on the property. Planted to function as a windbreak for the original orange groves, these trees made the perfect visual barrier, hiding a great deal of the mysteries that lay within the Jungle Cruise. Also saved was “the Dominguez Palm,” ;located just outside the now entrance of the Jungle Cruise is a large palm tree. The tree dates back to 1896 and it is named after the family who lived there before the land became a theme park. The rancher who sold the land to Disney requested that this particular tree be spared. Even with this existing vegetation, Bill had just 12 months to fundamentally alter an entire landscape, and while he performed his job marvelously, he still largely failed. When opening day arrived at Disneyland, despite the cover from the eucalyptus trees, the jungle forests were notoriously thin. Due to the lack of tall trees encompassing the line of sight, Jungle Cruise riders in 1965 could see beyond the anticipated forced perspective range. This created multiple issues including one amusing story where future Disney Legend Marty Sklar illegally parked his car near the watery cliffs of the attraction, which was visible to guests just beyond the underdeveloped trees. As talented as Bill was, he wasn’t a miracle worker. Trees don’t grow tall overnight, which agitated his boss, Walt Disney. Disney wondered aloud if they couldn’t just increase the size of the tree by adding artificial wood, the equivalent of tree stilts. While people presumed he was joking, the idea had merit. In fact, the addition of enhancements to a living tree proved easier than anyone anticipated. They were able to add artificial size whenever needed in this capacity. Bill was also able to use those plentiful orange trees in Adventureland as additional foliage. He simply turned them upside down to resemble jungle branches with tangled roots. He also searched the boom-town of Los Angeles for discarded palm trees that were in the bulldozer’s way. Instead of seeking to recreate the dense forests he saw during his Marine days, Bill decided park visitors would prefer a Hollywood jungle instead. He discarded Amazon realism in favor of what people’s perception of such tropical region should be. To create his Hollywood Jungle here in Anaheim, Bill also was known to smuggle foreign exotic plant seeds inside the cuffs of his socks. In fact, nowadays, scientists have declared the ‘Jungle’ flora and fauna to make up their own unique and self-sustaining ecosystem. Through the years, the tall trees engulfing the Jungle Cruise have created a lush canopy that regulates the temperature inside this Hollywood Jungle, allowing plants that you won’t find anywhere else in Southern California to thrive right here in Disneyland park. According to Karen Hedges, director of the Disneyland Resort’s Horticulture and Landscaping, it now has a large tree canopy made up of coral trees, ficus trees, some of the large palm trees and bamboo overhead that is as high as 100 feet in some areas - providing the idyllic setting for Adventureland and, especially, Jungle Cruise that we know and love today. In conclusion, that bamboo can grow to be six stories tall. People say it can grow to seven stories, but that's a whole other story. Part #5: A 3 Hour 10 Min Tour While designers had long planned for Jungle Cruise to operate as an actual boat cruise, yet another issue arose for our poor original Imagineers. For starters, the timing of the cruise had to remain constant. Any captain can tell you that no matter how calm the waters are on a given day, scheduling arrival and departure times is dicey at best. While Southern California didn’t have the rainy concern that would plague the designers of Walt Disney World, would, it still was susceptible to the elements on occasion. In other words, actual untethered boat rides downstream could cause traffic issues. In order to prevent things like capsized boats, crashes, and to sequence the boats properly, Disney Imagineers decided to put each Jungle Cruise boat on rails. Because of this choice, boat captains would never control the path of their travels. They could, however, influence the speed during the journey. Unfortunately, this meant those early ride-operators needed to time their movements perfectly - starting to get a Jaws Ride flashback here. Once, while riding the Jungle Cruise attraction, Walt was horrified to realize that the entire trip was going too quickly. His intended ten-minute jungle experience only lasted four minutes. The guilty captain and the entire Jungle Cruise staff received re-training on how they should time their ride movements. Now, let's talk the brown water. Because of the tracks, there was one other necessary stipulation. The waters beneath the boats required coloring. The coloring serves two purposes: It provides a more realistic portrayal of swampy waters, of course, but it also conceals the fact that the cruise ships are in a pool with tracks that’s less than four feet deep in most areas. If you’ve ever heard someone complain that the Jungle Cruise or even the Rivers of America water is so nasty, you can explain to them that the murky depths are intentional. That murky water passengers sail through is dyed brown, dark green, and muddy blue. Part #6: A Joke? What’s that? Before the Jungle Cruise filled with brackish water, Walt drove a car through the dry riverbeds to promote the ride on Television. The car was a Nash Rambler (one of the show’s sponsors) and his tour featured the controversial Schweitzer Falls and the crude mechanics of the animals. Later, when The Jungle Cruise opened to the public n 1955, only two boats were running: Ganges Gal and Congo Queen. Now for the biggest joke of all… when the original Jungle Cruise opened, there were no jokes. None. It was a serious ride, with a serious story, and… fake animals. Afterall, it was based on the Oscar award-winning True Life Adventures documentaries. The skipper’s narration highlighted the perils of the trip, pointing out danger at literally every turn. Shortly after opening, Walt overheard a conversation between mother and son. The little boy indicated that he wanted to ride on Jungle Cruise. His mother dismissed the idea out of hand, stated that they’d ridden it before. There was no point in going again. What Disney learned from this conversation was that his park patrons were fickle. If something wasn’t new and exciting, they would quickly lose interest in it. According to legend, this is when he came up with his mythic philosophy: “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.” However, it wasn’t until 1961 that his desire for change fell onto the Jungle Cruise. Having outlasted the tomorrowland boats and the precursor for the Storyland Canal boats (which you’ll remember from our Sunken Boats episode), Jungle Cruise still had become something of a problem child for the park. Guests loved it, as demonstrated by its continued drawing power. However, the waterlogged animatronics broke down so much that Walt once joked to a reporter that he knew they worked only because he’d seen it on television. Rather than allow a struggling ride to operate indefinitely, Uncle Walt tasked one of his favored Imagineers with improving the ride experience and that man was Marc Davis, known as one of Disney’s Nine Old Men. Tasked with improving the ride, he decided to instead fundamentally alter Jungle Cruise as a concept and turn it to a hilarious jaunt through the rivers of Africa and Asia. He was responsible for the four men cowering on a totem pole above a giant-horned rhinoceros that you see in the ride today, along with the now legendary “They’ll get the point. In the end.” joke. Davis meticulously researched the amount of time guests would spend at each sight gag. Then, he drew a scene that he believed they could enjoy in the given timeframe. His concept sketches for Jungle Cruise were often translated exactly as they appeared on paper and many of the original sketches Davis created still exist in some form today, including the pygmy canoes and the infamous Sleeping Zebra. To accentuate the change in tone toward satirical humor, the verbiage in the narration also changed from formal documentary to playfully macabre. This seemingly innocent modification proved wildly divisive at the time. A vocal group of naysayers complained that the switch from serious boat adventure a la The African Queen to a silly romp was a travesty. Fifty years later, those complaints seem crazy as many have forgotten the ride was ever serious to begin with. However, this was (arguably) the first time that Walt Disney overhauled one of their most attractions. Nowadays, the outrage goes both ways. People loudly complain if a ride grows outdated in tone or if a beloved attraction like Disneyland’s Tower of Terror is modified. That’s because Walt Disney refused to rest on his laurels with Disneyland, even when it was just five years old. His dedication to keeping everything fresh redefined all of our expectations for what we should expect from theme parks Part #7: The Legacy The legacy of the Jungle Cruise is unmistakable. The unlikely combination of comically extreme jungle scenes and pun-intensive onboard narration has entertained millions of theme park guests over the past 60 years. Walt Disney himself created the ride and demanded its overhaul. Due to its popularity at Disneyland, Jungle Cruise was an automatic inclusion for Walt Disney World’s debut. It’s since received implementations at the Tokyo and Hong Kong resorts as well. Since its debut, The Jungle Cruise has continued to evolve to delight and surprise even Disney veterans with the addition of new scenes. The elephant bathing pool was added in 1962, the safari camp in 1964, and in 1976 there were seven entirely new scenes added. Nowadays, a holiday overlay called Jingle Cruise also sets sail in Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom - also home to yet another famous Disney sinking boat. Perhaps its name was prophetic, because “Sankuru Sadie” at the Magic Kingdom did, in fact, sink. In 2004, the boat took on more water than it could hold and went under—though, given how shallow most of the water is, it probably didn’t go far. The boat was refurbished and put back into rotation. As we mentioned earlier in this podcast, the original vision for Jungle Cruise inspired Animal Kingdom’s 1998 Kilimanjaro Safaris. This attraction was, and is, about as close to a real African safari as you can get and is the biggest Disney has ever created! Guests board a safari vehicle in the fictional village of Harambe at Animal Kingdom park’s Africa. They then travel through a very realistic looking reserve where live African wildlife roam freely! It’s an experience like no other, and way better than the zoo; but if you know about the original plan for the Jungle Cruise, you know that this was not a new idea. The Kilimanjaro Safaris of today was Walt’s vision for his original Adventureland attraction, just slightly altered for Animal Kingdom and minus the water and steamboat. Kilimanjaro Safaris is evidence that Walt truly was ahead of his time and that his ideas still have the power to create magic for today’s guests. The ‘Thanks for listening’ close. I hope you enjoyed this look into the origins of an iconic Disney attraction that promises danger, adventure, and a whole lot of laughs! Jungle Cruise is one of my favorite attractions and I am lucky enough to have ridden on three iterations at Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and Tokyo Disneyland - where I understood nothing. Interestingly enough, in the international versions they changed the gags quite a bit to appeal to local humor. Thank you so much for your continued support of Fastpass to the Past! Make sure you check out our brand new store on Teepublic for all of your theme park history expert merch- you can find the link at themeparkhistorypodcast.com. Email me at fastpasstothepast@gmail.com if you have show ideas, disagree with anything I said, or just want to say hi. I love that. You can also message on Facebook - if that’s easier. I love to read some of these responses on air. 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