Speaker 0:00

The elephant god Ganesha guards the entrance to the enchanted bathing pool of elephants. The natives of the jungle say that whole herds of playful Indian elephants migrate here to bathe. Watch out for some wet surprises from those big shots, and the little ones too, their playful little squirts.

Kelly 0:41

We talk in, over, about, and through our week's topic, and then, with literally no concern for practicality, safety, or economic viability, we come up with ways to make them better. My name is Kelly McCubbin, columnist for the theme park website Boardwalk Times, and with me as always is Peter Overstreet, University Professor of Animation and Film History in Northern California. So, Pete.

Pete 1:07

Yeah. What are we talking about today? Well, today we are venturing into one of our favorite parts of the park.

Kelly 1:16

Nice.

Pete 1:16

Of Disneyland Park. Let's be specific here. Yep. And uh this is certainly one of my favorites, and I know it's a lot of uh people's favorites uh at the park. The Jungle Cruise. The Jungle Cruise. Yes, indeed. But I think we should start off by saying that this particular episode is focused uh a little bit more uh tightly than some of our previous shows. We are going to limit spillage. Yes. In our previous shows, we kind of ramble all over the place and we realized like we could do that on this one for a long time. But we decided to keep things nice and focused on this one. So uh Kelly has graciously given us a list of things that we will not be discussing.

Kelly 2:00

That's right. And for so the parameters that we we decided on this one were that we were sticking to Disneyland's jungle cruise. Yes. And we were sticking to Disneyland's jungle cruise prior to the introduction of Indiana Jones, which changes a lot of things and causes a lot of rebuilding and and makes complicates things. So, in that spirit, here is a list of things you will not be hearing about today. The Society of Explorers and Adventurers, Dwayne the Rock Johnson, Emily Blunt.

Pete 2:35

The disarming and subsequent rearming of skippers, the Jingle Cruise, The Falls Estate, Felix Peshman, the 13th, Siobhan Puffy Murphy, The Irrawaddy River, Leonard Moss, Hirana, Con Chunosuke, The Lost Delta, Rosa Sota Dominguez, Indochinese Tigers, The Temple of the Forbidden Eye, Alberta Falls, The Jungle Navigation Company, Limited Skipper Canteen, and the Tropical Hideaway. Yes, so for those of you who are going, how come you're not talking about this stuff? We're gonna say we're not gonna talk about this stuff tonight. Right. However, we are planning already on doing another episode on the jungle cruise in the future, and we will be covering the indie onward version of the jungle cruise. So this is literally the jungle cruise from the launch of the park in 55 up until about 1994-95.

Kelly 3:33

Yeah, right about then. Yeah. It's interesting because as we started talking about this, we realized this is a big story. This is a foundational attraction. Um, not just at Disneyland, it's a foundational attraction at theme parks overall. Oh, yeah. At first I thought, if we cut this in half, is there actually still going to be enough, though? And I realized part way in that, oh, there's plenty. There is plenty to talk about as far as the jungle cruise goes for the first couple of years. And you know, or for the first couple, for the first 40 years. Yes. Yes. You know, one of the things I uh that we kind of have been doing with this show, uh, there's there's no way we can give a an absolute history, a a complete thorough breakdown of these attractions. Uh people have looked at them forever and ever, and people have dug into them, and people have written up these things. So what we try to do is find, you know, some some cultural context, some historical context, and maybe bring a little bit of attention to some people that maybe you didn't know about. Uh people that you didn't know about that were precursors to these attractions, people that you didn't know about that worked on these attractions. And I've got, I'm I'm gonna find a way to squeeze three of these guys in that that are unheralded, either imagineers or uh imagineer adjacent. Is one of them who I think it is? Maybe.

Pete 5:12

Well, on that on those lines, uh let's just get right down to the interesting note on the jungle cruise itself. Yeah. Despite the fact that there is precedent of a cruising along a river in Africa in history. I mean, that happened throughout the Victorian colonial era and also during World War I, which is very, very prevalent at that time with steam locomotion and eventually diesel engines in order to transport troops and supplies all the way along the Nile and in various, you know, deep into Africa in that way. As far as rides go, one of the earliest forms that I could find of this type of ride is um the jungle cruise is so unique because it is kind of its own beast. It is. No pun intended.

Speaker 5 6:00

Yeah.

Pete 6:00

Um, where they really innovated. Now, ever since the jungle cruise came about, there have been boat rides galore. Yeah. Universal adopted this type of model for their Jaws attraction in Florida.

Kelly 6:14

Yeah, in fact, in fact, I'm gonna bring one up a little bit later uh that was an almost direct ripoff of uh the jungle cruise that happened in Texas not too many years later.

Pete 6:23

And also here in the Bay Area as well. So we're gonna we're gonna have our our childhood jungle cruise ripoff uh reveal today, which is gonna be really kind of cool. But I want to take us back to New York. And in 1895, there's a man whose name was Paul Boyton. Yeah. And he was a uh ride designer, and he had designed some roller coasters and scenic railways, which would eventually become what we now know as dark rides. Yeah. But he created a ride that was called the Old Mill.

Kelly 6:56

And I have heard about this and I cannot place it, but I boy, it it's it's an early tunnel of love, right? Exactly.

Pete 7:03

Yes, and it's so it basically the the main point of it is. I'm really amazed that I pulled that out. I'm I'm really like shocked. You're like, this rehearsal went, oh my god, he's ahead of he's looking over my shoulder here. Uh yeah, so the the old mill originally started off as just a simple tunnel of love. And for those who don't know what a tunnel of love is all about, basically you're floating in a boat with uh your your boyfriend or or girlfriend or girlfriend, but girlfriend, whatever, I don't care what your proclivity is. You're with your your sweetheart, and you have an opportunity to have a little privacy while you're floating through basically a timed tunnel boat. Yeah. Um and it was a place for people in a relatively conservative 1890s environment to actually make out. To canoodle. To canoodle and and whatever, whatever, and they they wouldn't bust you. It's like you do whatever you want to in there, man. You got two and a half minutes go. Because we are talking about Coney Island's Luna Park. Yes. And Luna Park was definitely a playground for adults. Yeah. This was not, you know, this is where you got to see Little Egypt, the famous stripper, you know, uh, as uh immortalized by the coasters with their song. And little trivia fact, I actually got to sing with the coasters once.

Kelly 8:20

What?

Pete 8:21

Yep.

Kelly 8:22

Wait, okay. Stop right there, pal.

Pete 8:25

How did that happen? Okay, so I was about 11 or 12, and my father's company that he was working for, Gwyn Masonry, um, which did a lot of the brickwork in Morgan Hill, California's downtown area. Okay. Because of that contract, yeah, they threw a lavish like Fourth of July company party. And it was at some like Elk's Hall or something like that in Los Gados.

Speaker 4 8:53

Okay.

Pete 8:54

And it and it's the usual, you know, you show up and everybody's eating and having a good time, and the boss gets up and gives a speech, and then he says, Ladies and gentlemen, our band is here. It's the coasters. And my dad had raised me on the coasters. Sure. Like I love their music. And so I knew their entire repertoire. Yeah, he's a great guy. Um, but he had raised me on this repertoire, and you know, they had gotten up and they'd sung Charlie Brown, they got up and sang Poison Ivy, they did all their usual. And then one of them said, Anybody got any requests? And I was up in front going, You guys are great. Oh my gosh, the coasters. And I went, do run red run. And they were like, Look at this, look at this funky whack kid. You know, like you know that one? I go, I know it by heart. He goes, You want to sing it? I go, Yeah. And you know, and so I got up and I got to sing that song with the coasters. So I actually have sung with the coasters. Who knew?

Kelly 9:49

That's an amazing story. I never I I've known you for a while. I've never heard this.

Pete 9:53

Yeah, so that's that's my little claim, one of my claim to fame with 50s uh RB bands. That's super cool. Um, but their song Little Egypt is tied to Luna Park. Right. Um look it up, YouTube, great song. But the old mill is basically kind of like a scenic railway, but with water. Yeah. And because Coney Island's proximity to the coast allows them to pump seawater through it at an easier rate, because these types of boat rides, boat rides are expensive as hell.

Kelly 10:24

Yeah. Um to maintain. Because water will find a way into everything.

Pete 10:30

Ask anybody who works in Imagineering about the lagoon in Tomorrowland. And they will tell you that's the most expensive part to maintain in the entire park.

Speaker 5 10:38

Yeah.

Pete 10:38

Yeah. Above like is Indiana Jones because of all the the mechanics. It's like, nope, uh the lagoon. It's because water finds a way.

Speaker 4 10:45

Yeah.

Pete 10:46

Uh and the old mill was basically more akin to the Disney film, The Old Mill, where it was just a bucolic setting that gets a little creepy because it's dark. Yeah. And then it comes out and you're fine. Like, real simple. Because this is 1895.

Kelly 11:00

Right.

Pete 11:01

The mill chute became the um was a descendant of the old mill. And this was also um built by uh Paul Boyton. And it was a variant of the old mill, and this one would actually have uh a way of kind of giving you the cold shower of going through the tunnel of love. So you're you're hot and heavy with your sweetheart. Yeah. Uh, but then it gave you a drop at the end of the ride, in which you come down and come down with a big splash. Okay. And the thing with this splash is that it's a boat, it's not on a track like a big splash down that you normally have at like a Six Flags Park. The boat would actually skim and shimmy along because it had a key. Wow.

Speaker 5 11:42

Yeah.

Pete 11:43

So like it was kind of dangerous. Yeah. Uh, and they eventually figured out, no, let's make it a flat bottom boat. Oh, okay, that's good. And they actually had a photo- my favorite is there's a a great book called Amusing the Million. Uh-huh. Uh please forgive me. I do not know who the author is off the top of my head, but that's the title of the book, Amusing the Million. It's about the history of Coney Island. And there's a great photograph in there of all these tourists from that time holding their hats and going down, pretty much like a splash mountain photograph.

Speaker 5 12:08

Yeah.

Pete 12:09

But you realize they're not actually in the ride. They're sitting next to the ride in a boat that's tilted, so you can pretend like you're going down the chute. And there's like and somebody's behind them with a bucket of water throwing water up, so it looks like there's water going behind them.

Kelly 12:22

It's a precursor to a photo stop. It totally is.

Pete 12:24

It's great. But that's kind of the first time we actually see this type of simulated boat attraction. Yeah. And after that, it's you know, you have log rides and you have little simple boat rides. Um, but nothing up until 55 could I find. And I could be wrong, I'm gonna dig a little bit deeper, maybe for the next episode. Sure. But nothing could I find that was a real documented amusement park attraction of the scope and scale and the feel of the jungle cruise. And so that's before Walt really gets into this notion, that's about it.

Kelly 13:02

So just because of the year you're talking about, because of 1895, remember how I said I was gonna shoe shoehorn three people in? Let's go. I have something from 1896. Uh-oh. One year later. Yes. One year later, Other Coast. Okay. In 1896, a palm tree was given to the Dominguez family to celebrate the grandparents of one Ron Dominguez's marriage. It was given to the Dominguez family and planted in Anaheim, California. Nice. It was planted on the Dominguez's farm, the farm that his grandparents owned, the farm that his parents owned and that he grew up on, and the farm that was sold to the Disney Company. There was one stipulation about the sale of the farm to the Disney Company. A single stipulation. Really? The palm tree could not be cut down. Wow. So in 1954, the Dominguez family sells Walt Disney the farm that takes up a big hunk of the Disneyland Park towards the Adventureland side. Oh wow. They agree. They don't remove the palm tree. In 1955, the Jungle Cruise opens with the rest of the park. They build the Jungle Cruise boathouse around the palm tree. It stays. And Ron Dominguez becomes a ticket taker at Disneyland. Ron Dominguez then works job after job after job, claiming at one point that he's worked on every single attraction at the park. And he begins to move up through the ranks. By 1970, Ron Dominguez becomes director of operations at Disneyland and the palm's still there. Wow. By 1974, Ron Dominguez becomes vice president of Disneyland. Jeez. And his palm's still there. Nice. And in 1990, Ron Dominguez becomes vice president of Walt Disney Attractions. And his palm tree's still there. And it's still there today. Wow. If you walk up to the Jungle Cruise building and look just to the right, one of the largest trees in the park is that Dominguez palm. Wow. And I was super lucky, and this was totally by chance. I was at the park the day Ron Dominguez got his window on Main Street.

Pete 15:46

Oh, dude. I walked up and said Is it like a tr tree? Does he have like a tree trimming service or something like that?

Kelly 15:53

Oh, you know, I should have looked it up. I wish I had.

Pete 15:55

We'll have to figure that out. Yeah.

Kelly 15:57

I'll put it in the notes later. But yeah, I just I happened to be there that day and uh was like, what's going on here? And someone explained, it's like, this is Ron Dominguez. He has been here since 1955.

Pete 16:09

Wow.

Kelly 16:09

Uh this was built on his family's land, and he's getting his window on Main Street today.

Pete 16:14

That's so great. So 128 years that palm tree has stood on this site.

Kelly 16:19

Yeah. And I and I really urge everybody to, when next time you're at Disneyland, go over to the jungle cruise, stand in front of the boathouse, look to the right. You can't miss it. It's the tallest tree you can see.

Pete 16:31

Yeah, it's the tree. Yeah.

Kelly 16:34

Yeah.

Pete 16:34

You know, it rivals the Swiss family treehouse tree. Oh, yeah. And that's, you know, fiberglasses. Yeah, and that's fake. Um so speaking of National Geographic, let's talk about the origins itself of this ride. Yeah. Okay, where the idea came from, besides we need a ride.

Kelly 16:52

Yeah. Um I've I've got I've got two sources. Okay. What do you got?

Pete 16:56

So from where I stand as an animation professor, this really actually starts, uh, at least the seeds are planted with the production of Bambi, in which Walt wanted the animals to not be the usual uh rubber bandy, funny, laughy, goofy animals that they had done in the past. Yeah. Where some of the animals were semi-realistic. Yeah. But he wanted a level of realism that had not existed before.

Speaker 4 17:26

Yeah.

Pete 17:27

So working with the Chernard uh Academy, uh doing figure drawing, sending his animators to school, but he also sent a bunch of filmmakers out into the wild to get uh video footage on film of various animals. Yeah. And through that, he went, Well, that's great. Get some more of this. Get some more. We're gonna make probably make a movie about seals. Let's make, you know, let's make some seals. Let's do some stuff about whales. Let's do some stuff about that. Let's make one about lemmings. But we won't talk about that one. Because contrast.

Speaker 1 17:57

We don't talk about lemmings.

Pete 17:59

Some people, yeah. Some people don't talk about Bruno. We don't talk about lemmings. I have a pair of guinea pigs looking over my shoulder. So anyway, you have true life adventures. The first one being the seal pictures.

Kelly 18:11

Seal Island. And and you you are exactly spot on. Like this is one of my two sources, is the true life adventures. It it's worth pointing out that the great Didier Goetz just put out a book last year about the True Life Adventures. It's wonderful. I I I have a copy, I I can't recommend it enough. It um really goes into some of the depth of how strange a project it was. I mean, there really was a sense of him going, uh, here's these people who want to go to the Arctic and shoot film. Sure, go ahead. Uh well, what do we do? The f the cameras keep freezing and the gates keep freezing open. I don't know. Figure it out. I think that um so my understanding is that there are kind of two true life adventures that really influence this. The the first one's from 53, which is Prowlers of the Everglades. Um, that's why we see a lot of alligators, or as Walt used to like to say, what's up with that croc? Right. And did you know that in the early years they actually had live alligators in pens at the front of the attraction? Actually, and there's one uh live animal story that ties into our previous episode on the golden horseshoe, which is uh this this predates the Barker bird. Oh but uh Walt wanted to get uh I don't recall if it was a parrot or minor, but it was it was a bird that could vocalize. And he wanted to get a bird and put it over the jungle cruise to say certain phrases, like to try and teach it to say things about Mickey Mouse and stuff as an attraction. So what they did was they they got a bird and they made recordings of the things they wanted the bird to say and they put it in an office above the golden horseshoe. And would just play these tapes. But do you know who was working at the golden horseshoe? Lolly Bogue. They learned very quickly that that bird was saying things that it could not say to the public.

Pete 20:41

So we don't know for the bigger.

Kelly 20:46

We don't know for sure if Wally was the one that went in and taught it other things, but I would lay money on it. I would I would guess that, yeah. I would uh I would guess that. And then the other true life adventure that I think was really influential, and this was the one that was being made right as Disneyland was about to open, was uh The African Lion.

Pete 21:09

Oh, yes, absolutely.

Kelly 21:11

And that the you can kind of see that all over the place in this ride. Uh, that it much of the ride looks like that.

Pete 21:18

Aaron Ross Powell And a lot of these were award winners. I mean, that's what's amazing. I mean Walt got a lot of Oscar nominations and actual awards. Yeah. And I mean Walt, when I say Walt, Walt's team. Sure. Let's be clear. Yeah. So that way it's not saying that Walt did it all. Right. But um, but the the Disney the Disney film, you know, Walt Disney Productions won awards for these. Yeah. One of them, in 1951, it's called Nature's Half Acre. And it won an Oscar for Best Documentary in 1951. That same year when it won the award. There was another film that I feel also, and it's been Acknowledged was also a great influence on the Jungle Cruise. And this film was nominated for four Academy Awards and only won one of them. And that was for its star, Humphrey Bogart.

Kelly 22:11

Yeah, this is you've you've picked my same two films.

Pete 22:16

So, and that we're of course talking about The African Queen. The African Queen. 1951's The African Queen, one of my absolutely favorite movies. I love this film so much. I do too. It has a level of cheese that you just cannot scrape off, but you don't care because it is so delightful on so many levels.

Kelly 22:36

There's something so magical about that film, uh partially in that it really subverts uh what you think the paradigm is. Yes. You know, if you you've got Bogart, but Bogart is something very different in this movie. Oh, yeah. Uh he's he's over he's like it's overly polite. He's um I don't I don't even know how to describe it. It's it's not the Bogart character.

Pete 23:03

Yeah, it's not you know channeling a sweetheart. You know, it's none of that. It's he's not a tough guy. He's not a tough guy. Right. No, he's he he doesn't he actually wants to avoid conflict completely in this film, to the point where he drinks himself to oblivion over it.

Kelly 23:16

He does, which it turns out he and John Houston actually pretty much did every day while making the film. We're gonna go down to Africa, so that way I can go kill me as an elephant. Well, and that's an interesting point, too. So like Houston goes to the Congo. The book it's based on is in a uh version of Lake Tanganyika. And Houston decides to go to the Congo specifically because he wants to hunt an elephant there. Yeah. And it makes me wonder, I mean, I I don't know if we can draw a direct parallel here, but it makes me wonder if the jungle crews, particularly in the African sections of the jungle, would look different if Houston had actually gone where the book said to go. Yeah. Did Houston wanting to shoot an elephant, which he did not do?

Pete 24:10

No, no, Catherine Hepburn actually talked him out of it.

Kelly 24:13

Yeah. I I I I heard that he took a shot at one point, but wasn't even close, and it seemed like his heart wasn't in it.

Speaker 6 24:18

Yeah.

Kelly 24:19

Um, but if if he hadn't wanted to do that, would the ride look different? And I think it might.

Pete 24:26

Well, I mean, if you really want to talk about, I mean, we I love connections in history. Yeah. So I'm not gonna go down on too bit too far of a cul-de-sac on this one. That's what we do. I know. But I can I can go really deep on this one. Yeah. Because you have to keep in mind when this film was made and why it was made. Yeah. This is the 1950s, so this is the beginning of McCarthyism. Yeah.

Kelly 24:46

And the you know, the the um And they they wanted to get off out of the US so that they could work with people who'd been blacklisted.

Pete 24:54

Absolutely. And some of the people were actually suspect, including Bogart and Hepburn themselves, were actually kind of like I knew Hepburn, I didn't know Bogart. Yeah, they were kind of viewed as sympathizers, if not conspirators of communists, but no one had proved it or had you know pulled a finger on them and went, you. They hadn't they hadn't done what Walt Disney wound up doing, which is naming names. Yeah. But we won't talk about that right on this episode. Again, like I said, Walt is complicated with this show. Walt Walt's complicated. Yeah. Um, but the book itself, 1935, written by C.S. Forrester, who originated the Horatio Hornblower uh books. Yeah. Um, it was such a big departure for him. Yeah. And if you've never seen anything about Horatio Hornblower, the movie Master and Commander is actually based off of loosely off of some of those, along with some of the other books that are out there. It's that type of Admiral in the 1700s style. So if you're thinking of that style of book, that's where I'm talking. I'm not talking the actual author of those books.

Kelly 25:55

Yeah, because I was gonna say Patrick O'Brien wrote the book. Yes, that's Patrick O'Brien. But it's very much like Patrick O'Brien is is the ultimate realization of the kind of book that Horatio Hornblower said.

Pete 26:06

Exactly. And there was a movie with Grigory Peck that was about, you know, Horatio Hornblower. Yeah. Um, and but it was a big departure for C.S. Forrester to do The African Queen. The film uh was heavily scrutinized uh because of the whole connection to sympathizers of communism. So they literally wanted to get out of the country. Yeah. And you have Lauren Bacall going along as basically a de facto nurse, supporter, production assistant, script editor, medic, the works, cook.

Kelly 26:37

And and and keep keep Bogart from going off the deep end.

Pete 26:40

The story of the making of the African Queen is insanely cool. There's a book about there's several books that talk about this.

Kelly 26:49

It's a terrific movie. Clint Eastwood's White Hunter Black Heart is wonderful.

Pete 26:53

Yeah. It was originally filmed in Uganda and in the Congo. Yeah. Now let's talk about the boat itself, because the boat, it was the ri the the African Queen itself was originally named the Livingston.

Kelly 27:04

Oh, uh like when you say originally in the book or no, the actual boat itself.

Pete 27:11

Oh, okay. That was used in the film, the African Queen, was originally built in 1912 for British service in Africa. Huh. So um, I mean, we're talking you know, probably not a lot of the wood survived over that time period. Yeah. But certainly the engine, the boiler, and all that, certainly do. Uh and was originally built and it was originally named the Livingston.

Speaker 5 27:33

Yeah.

Pete 27:34

They built a second boat and it was used on location in Uganda. Uh, and it's still that boat actually still lives in Uganda. It still exists. Oh, wow. Uh, but the original, which was mostly used for a lot of the hero shots on the more calm rivers scenes, yeah, the one that they built was built to sustain some of the lighter rapid scenes and some of the more you know heavy-duty shots. And you can totally see the difference just by looking at the weathering on the boats. Yeah. Um So the original boat was shipped to America and was passed through many hands, and it eventually wound up in the hands of Thess Parker of Davy Crockett fame. Davy Crockett? Davy Crockett owned the African Queen for a time. Um, until it finally arrived in Key Largo, and it is now there as a tourist's excursion boat. That's so interesting. And that boat is one of the influences of the look of the jungle cruise boat itself. Oh, I think it is apparent.

Kelly 28:32

Yeah, and I think Harper Gough, who designed those boats, was pretty open about it. He said, I'm I'm taking this from the African Queen. Uh and I know that part of the one of the things they changed about the design of the boat is to put a s a stronger and bigger canopy over the top of the boat. Yeah. And the reason for that was because Disneyland, in its early years, had no vegetation. Or, or at least before they opened, had no vegetation, and they were putting it in as quick as they possibly could. And that was under the supervision of Bill Evans. Bill Evans is my number two person that I try to get listened to. Bill Evans. Bill Evans is, I think Bill Evans.net, you'll find some of the most well-considered and insightful writing about the Walt Disney Company, Disney history, and the universe of theme parks available anywhere. Come join us at boardwalktimes.net. Bill Evans. Bill Evans is, I think Bill Evans is a hero. I mean, people in the know appreciate him, but but people don't know about Bill Evans and how absolutely critical and brilliant Bill Evans was. So Bill Evans was part of the influence of putting that canopy in because he said, hey man, there's only so fast I can grow this stuff. But you know, Bill Evans was tasked not with just putting in one jungle for the cruise, but putting in multiple environments for the cruise. Yep. He got to start. Well, he'd been working for years with his brother Jack and their company. Uh he first met Walt Disney when Walt asked him to come landscape his home, his Holme Hills home. From there, like the miniature railroad that he built around. In the miniature railroad, yeah. He was he was critical to that. Yep. Then Walt came, went to him and said, Hey, can you di you know help me with Disneyland? And he said, sure. And then realized how little money he had was going to be given and how much vegetation they were going to need. But Bill Evans found a way. And, you know, he did he would put in like um he would put trees upside down to make them like bury them in the ground upside down to make them look more jungle-like, like they had tendrils. And what trees were those? Well, those were walnut trees. Uh-huh. And they were made to look like mangroves.

Pete 31:25

Right.

Kelly 31:27

You thought you were going to catch me on that, didn't you?

Pete 31:29

A lot of people go, orange trees. And it's like, actually, not as many as you think.

Kelly 31:34

No, and he did save some orange trees. When he came in, they were basically bulldozing them down, and he said, wait, wait, wait. Yeah. We don't have any money. Um, save anything you can possibly save. And he jumped through hoops to save trees and preserve them and put them somewhere. When you look at the magnificent work he did on the jungle cruise, it's incredible. He had to find trees that looked like other environments, like, you know, the Congo, the Nile. It was crazy. He had to find things that looked like them, but would survive in boiling hot Orange County.

Pete 32:12

Uh-huh.

Kelly 32:12

Because it does not have a rainforest quality to it. And then the those plants would have to grow to maturity as quick as they possibly could. And within two years, they had a lush forest. Oh, yeah. And they had to be plants that would not overgrow. Oh, man. Because there was no real way. I mean, you could maintain it, but it was going to be pretty difficult once it was a jungle. Right. And he pulls it off. And it's astonishing. One one of the things that he did, which I thought was absolutely brilliant, was that, you know, part of the reason they chose the Anaheim site was because they knew the highways were coming through. Yes. You know, the the uh I think it was the five coming up that way, right? And uh so what he did was he would find out where they were about to put the highway, and he would real quick run ahead of the highway and tag all of the available trees that were there, and then go to the people in the bulldozers and say, I'm gonna pay to keep these trees, don't knock them over. Right. And then he could get those trees for a couple of bucks apiece because they were gonna knock them over anyway. And that's how he got like all of this vegetation moved back to Disneyland for cheap because otherwise there was no way they were going to afford it.

Pete 33:28

One of my other favorite uh anecdotes about uh Mr. Evans's uh endeavors along these rights is this was uh the 50s. Yeah. And it there was a craze in architecture and in pop culture and in music, and it was the tiki craze. Yes. And at this time in Orange County, there were a lot of apartment buildings and homes that, in order to kind of cash in on this uh 1950s tiki craze, they were planting exotic plants and ferns and banyans in their front yards. Yeah. And he would drive all over the neighborhoods and go knock on doors and go, I notice you have bamboo in your front yard. Yeah. Can I pay you to get some cuttings or can I just take the plant?

Kelly 34:14

Yeah. And people would, okay, sure. Right, because bamboo grows so fast and so crazy that people don't really know what they're in for.

Pete 34:25

So, and he also traveled around the world for seeds and for cutting, but a lot of those plants at first were all like so cal natives. Oh, yeah. As far as I mean, not necessarily native plants, they were invasive species, but at the same time, it's like that's where he found them was in Orange County in Los Angeles.

Kelly 34:43

Yeah, I mean, he used tons of walnut trees. Um the he described at one point that the the thing that really fleshed out the jungle in the jungle cruise were fig trees. Yep. Because you can't people don't know from a distance what they are. But you know, he didn't just and and we can bring him up probably over and over again as we talk about this stuff, but he landscaped everything. The whole park. Then he did Disney World. Later he did Disneyland Paris. I mean, I I think this guy is a true unsung genius. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Pete 35:15

He kind of is. And and what's interesting is when you have a job like that, you would think like it would actually threaten the integrity of your marriage or something like that with that much travel. Yeah. No, his wife was in charge of the hat booth, which is now uh Trader Sam's in Adventureland. Oh, wow. So she she ran the hat concession selling rubber snakes and hats and imports from Indonesia that Bill would bring back from his excursions to pick up plants and other cuttings from around the world. Amazing. I've never heard that before. So that became that became the connection.

Kelly 35:50

Wow, that is so fascinating. What one one of my and this will be my last Bill Evans story. Um one of the things that happened because you know, inevitably, and and and by the way, they they were able to fairly quickly pull those canopies back off. I mean, there's still a little bit of them there, but yeah, um, they were able to pull them off because the jungle did grow so quickly. Yeah, um, just stunningly quickly. But one of the things that happened early on is that you know, they'd be going around in the boats and there'd be all these kind of saplings and stuff. And because the early jungle crews didn't really have the kind of skipper spiel that that we have today, it was less of a comedy thing and more of like, let's pretend like we're actually giving a nature lesson.

Speaker 6 36:34

Yeah.

Kelly 36:35

Um and so when they went around the jungle cruise at one point, Walt finally said to Bill Evans, like, is there anything we can do about this? And he was like, I don't know. I mean, they can only grow so fast. And Walt told Bill Evans to go put uh labels with long-sounding Latin names on all of the saplings so that it looked like there was instructive. I never knew that one. That was awesome. I actually I read an interview uh with Bill Evans himself. I don't know from how many years back, but where he talks about it. And he's just cracking up.

Pete 37:13

So let's move on uh and kind of jump back. We mentioned one of you we we talked about Bill Evans, one of your favorites. Here's my favorite. Harper Goff. Yes. The mighty Goff himself. The mighty Gough. The mighty Gough. Harper Goff began as an illustrator, actually. Uh he worked on illustrations for National Geographic, Esquire, etc.

Speaker 5 37:35

Yeah.

Pete 37:37

But then during World War II, he was goofing around uh with creating kits for service people. Okay. To have a hobby while you're out there, you got nothing to do while you're waiting around. Once you've done all your work and you're like sitting around, you can listen to records, you know, that might be you know in the tents or whatever. Right. Um, or you might be reading comic books or letters from home, but what else do you got to do? So he devised a paint by number kit for service people. Uh-huh. And then he started experimenting with different paints.

Speaker 4 38:12

Okay.

Pete 38:12

Like the chemistry of it. And eventually this got word got around to the brass about this kit.

Speaker 10 38:18

And they said, you know, we're looking, you know what we're looking for, you know, private golf. What we're looking for is we're looking for someone to put together a well, we got this new fangled thing called camouflage. Okay. And all the boys, when they're doing those, then they're going out there, you know, whatever they're doing, they're they're grabbing branches and they're throwing it on top of the tanks and everything, but it's not quite right. You know, we just making it up as I go. Is there any way how to like make a paint by numbers version of that?

Pete 38:44

And he devised a paint by number pattern. Okay. How to set up the pattern, what colors to use, and devise the actual like color scheme so you can mix that particular color paint, the paint that could be washed off later with a particular chemical solvent.

Speaker 4 39:02

Yeah.

Pete 39:03

For camouflage as we know it. So for all of you who wear standard classic World War II camouflage paint on your pants, that's Harper Goff. That's unbelievable. I never knew that. And he it got so good, the Navy actually approached him because they had what was called um, I think it was called baffling, baffle camouflage, which was basically you want to fade in with the horizon when you're on a battleship. So when you look at the camouflage on a battleship from World War II, it's crazy. It's all these crazy lines. He came up with ways to actually make it look like waves. Wow. So that way it would truly be camouflage. So he used these design sensibilities, but also his kind of brilliant mind. After World War II, he became a production designer at Warner Brothers.

Speaker 5 39:46

Yeah.

Pete 39:46

And one of the things we talked about in one of our previous episodes, uh, he created the look of a Western saloon for a movie about Annie Oakley. Calamity Jane. Calamity Jane, sorry. And and in which that would be replicated almost perfectly because Goff built it. Yep. That's the golden horseshoe. Yeah. It's just dead on the golden horseshoe. And he and he just didn't want to draw anything new. Yeah. But while he was while he was doing production design, I found out that he dabbled in acting. Yeah. And he did a lot of great little background bits. You know, he would play a an undertaker here or a businessman coming through on a stage wagon, you know, and that kind of stuff. Yeah, he's he's in wagon train. He's in a couple other films and TV shows.

Kelly 40:26

Which is bizarre because if you look at him, he is the antithesis of someone you would think of as would be an actor.

Pete 40:32

He's a and he's a you know, he's a sweet guy, but he just kind of looks like a misshapen sack of potatoes, and you're just like, but he's perfect. He's actually a very clever little character actor. Yeah, yeah. And you find this out uh when you watch him, his performances as various characters on Dragnet.

Kelly 40:47

Yeah, you which you just showed me.

Pete 40:48

And I showed Kelly an episode uh in which he plays an eccentric model railroader, little probably making fun of Ward Kimball just a little bit. Maybe uh and helping out Jack Webb, and he's you know, it's like, oh wow, yeah, I love these old trains, they're pretty great. And you're like, that's wait a minute, that's Harper Goff. That's crazy. And uh, but he really proved himself to Walt when he worked on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Yeah. Designing the look of the Nautilus, yeah. Um kind of designing the look of the cannibal tribe uh when they're out in Tobago. Um he designed all of the he worked with Peter Ellenshaw in order to design the look of that film.

Speaker 5 41:31

Yeah.

Pete 41:31

Just brilliant. Yeah. Um basically, I would actually make the argument that Harper Goff really created the look of steampunk as we know it. And for those who don't know, I actually did, I was the uh head curator of one of the first, not the first, but one of the first museum exhibits in America about steampunk, called Steampunk History Beyond Imagination, which was done at the museo in Anaheim, just down the street from Disneyland. Uh but I learned a lot about Goff through that and and his contributions to that science fiction genre look.

Kelly 42:08

Particularly because it was 20,000 Leagues.

Pete 42:10

Specifically because it was 20,000 Leagues. And here's why that becomes very, very um important. Yeah. While they're working on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, they had an incident that got solved by a couple of people at Walt Disney Animation and Imagineering at WED. Yeah. Uh and the problem was is that they had a big finale sequence of a giant squid attacking Captain Nemo's Nautilus. Yeah. When they first filmed it, when Goff had originally done a quick little uh drawing, and there was a line in the script that basically says, you know, a blood-red sun over a sunset over the waters as the squid attacks. At first, in your imagination, it sounds great, but when you actually film it, it looks like a bad Muppet show routine. Yeah. With you know, squid tentacles on wires, and it's just placid. There's actual footage. Get the Blu-ray or DVD of 20,000 Leagues, watch the making of you can see the footage, it's atrocious. Yeah. And Walt uh was absolutely upset by this because um this movie was starting to go over budget. Yeah. And also, so was Disneyland. Oh boy. And so he was like, if this movie fails, we're hosed.

Speaker 5 43:26

Yeah.

Pete 43:26

So he bet the farm on 20,000 leagues under the sea. It was a good bet. It was a good bet. Yeah. And two of the people he called upon was one was Harper Goff and the other one was Bob Maddie, who we'll talk about a little bit later. Yeah, I got him right here on my paper. There you go. And they fixed it. They made the giant squid sequence exciting. They put it in a storm, it they rebuilt the squid, and they learned a lot about mechanical effects of animals on this film. Yeah. And that would prove to be very, very useful.

Kelly 43:55

Do you do you know who's who's the what's the the famous other underwater? Animal that Bob Maddie did. Well, that would be Jaws.

Pete 44:05

Yeah. Bruce the Shark. Bruce the Shark. From Steven Spielberg's Jaws. There's an anecdote that Rolly Crump talks about in More Cute Stories, the CDs that came along with his book. That's kind of a cute story. Yeah. And I don't know if it was, I cannot remember who the Imagineer was, but there was one Imagineer who, after the opening of the park, and after the opening of the original Jungle Cruise, kind of badmouth Maddie behind his back, saying, Maddie only makes stuff for movies that only lasts like three weeks. I'll redesign it so that way it'll work later. Maddie was instrumental to get the thing started. But as far as making stuff that lasted, Bruce the Shark and the Giant Squid and some of the animals at the Jungle Cruise actually did prove that. But that's not saying he was a bad engineer because he was actually very brilliant in coming up with the ideas that he did.

Kelly 45:02

Well, yeah, and and I mean people were they were doing this for the first time. In a very short space of time. In a very short space of time.

Pete 45:14

So before and speaking of which, let me let me just finish off with Harper Goff. Absolutely. Here's how fast they had to work on the jungle cruise. Yeah. The story goes is that when they got out to the plot of land where they were going to actually make the jungle cruise, Harper Goff basically took a stick and drew one bank of the river on the outside, stepped a certain amount of feet to the other side, and drew the inside of the curves and the lanes, and said, dig that out. That's the trench.

Kelly 45:46

And you and you can see both photos and film footage of this. Uh you can find it on YouTube. I think they showed it in um the Imagineering story. And it's great. I mean, it's this guy just walking around with this honking big stick bigger than him, just going, There, that's where it goes. Dig it.

Pete 46:03

Dig it, buddy. And there was no blueprint. Right. There was just he just felt it. Which is insane. Right. It's crazy. But it worked. And my my favorite anecdote about all this, after they dug it out, while they're building everything else, they're building the park, they're putting all you know, Bill Evans is putting in the foliage. They would drive a station wagon. They just leave it in the trench, and then you get in the station wagon and drive around going, that's where the lions are gonna go. Yep. That's where that's gonna go. I'm like, I want to be on that ride. You know, like the station wagon, the station wagon jungle, you know. Like that's crazy.

Kelly 46:39

Yeah, and I do know it was fairly quickly that they made that change with the from the the Bob Maddie stuff. It was like 1956, they started putting in glass fiber versions of the animals and and the because it used to be just these belt-in chain drives that would sort of run from off in the jungle and just keep rotating around. Eventually that stuff's gonna wear out. And so they replaced those with hydraulics and water jets and and cams.

Speaker 1 47:09

Yeah.

Kelly 47:09

Um, which actually this leads me to a thing that I kind of wanted to talk about in the context of the jungle cruise, because it's a really interesting place to talk about it, which is how we get from these sort of to quote Shakespeare, rude mechanicals. We get these mechanical animals that move into audio and animatronic animals and then later animatronic animals. Yeah. And and I just wanted to kind of pause here for a second because this is a a good time to sort of draw a distinction between what these things are. Yeah. So the jungle, because the jungle cruise has all of them.

Speaker 6 47:47

Yes.

Kelly 47:48

Uh the jungle cruise starts with these mechanical things, like the the Bob Maddie pieces. These animals they can't do anything other than move up and down, up and down, back and back and forth, back and forth. You know, they've got like one motion that's run by a belt that goes to a motor somewhere else and it's just circular. It's going to do the same thing over and over and over again. Yeah. And it's not until they get back from the World's Fair. Yeah. You know, my they've already called Mark Davison to do some new designs for the attraction. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Pete 48:23

And let's talk about that just for a second. Yeah. Because the main reason why this changed, and we we mentioned this earlier, is that the jungle crews really start off as this is a simulated safari. Yeah. And they wanted to make it so educational. Right. And you can actually hear what that spiel is like. If you listen to the Disneyland Records LP, uh, from 1964, narrated by Thurlow Ravencroft. That's right, Tiger.

Speaker 48:51

This is the original voice of Tony the Tiger takes you on the smoking lamp is out.

Pete 48:56

Yeah. Thore Ravenskroft is this great basso profundo voice actor that was a regular in a lot of Disney features. Right.

Kelly 49:05

But he's he's one of the singing busts in the Haunted Mansion.

Pete 49:08

Physically and vocally. Yeah. Yeah. And he was the original voice of Tony the Tiger. He's uh you can hear his voice everywhere in the park.

Kelly 49:16

He's doing a bunch of rank and bass stuff.

Pete 49:18

Oh, yeah. He's everywhere. Um one of my favorite Thoreau Ravenscroft thing is a Halloween offering called Children's Day at the morgue. But uh that's a different story. Uh Thoreau Ravenscroft, yeah, does the entire educational version. Right. Even though it actually has a little bit of the jokes in there, you can see it creeping in. Put a pen on this.

Kelly 49:39

Go for it. I actually want to I want to get back to it, but let's uh and because this leads me to my third guy. Okay. So can't believe I'm gonna get all three in.

Pete 49:47

But but the thing with Thor Ravenscroft is the reason why we get there is because Walt started overhearing patrons going, I don't want to go on that ride, I've already seen it.

Kelly 49:56

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right. Yeah. And and and this story, I I've heard people say maybe this is apocryphal, but it's been repeated a lot. Uh so let's go with the legend that Walt heard a woman tell her child, let's not go on the jungle cruise, we did it last year. And he says, Okay, we got to do something to spice this up. He brings Mark Davis over. Mark Davis says, There's no humor here. Yeah. And he does uh similar things with the jungle cruise that he does with the mind trained through Nature's Wonderland, which is he starts building relationships between the characters. And he he says, you know, you've got these two, you know, beavers here doing something. If they're both looking at each other, they have a relationship. Anyway, it's very it's very interesting. And so he starts adding these comic elements to the jungle cruise. But getting back to animatronics, yeah. So they're they're getting ready to start implementing some of Davis's designs. While the fair is being designed, they're they're actually kind of carving out the space, but they haven't put the creatures in yet.

Pete 50:58

Yeah.

Kelly 50:58

Uh but by the time they come back from the fair, they have got audio animatronics down. They've they really understand it. And I just to make a distinction of what's different about what they had before to what audio animatronics did. What they had before, you know, very cyclic cyclical, like you you had a motor, it went in a circle, the same motion happened over and over and over again. Audio animatronics allowed you to program. It allowed you to have more complicated movements. And the reason, and it's interesting, a lot of people get this wrong, including Walt himself. Like you can see him get this wrong in specials. The reason there it's called audio animatronics is not because the creatures make noise or because a song is sung or you hear them. It is because the audio signal fires off the hydraulic or the circuit or whatever it is. So there's literally it's it's taken direct from because this is the technology they know, it's taken directly from film. You've got a visual, and right next to it, you've got this audio pattern. And they're saying, okay, let's use that. Let's put this audio pattern, and maybe we'll put several of them next to each other, and they all do different things. And this audio pattern is going to fire off some uh fire off a circuit and it's going to make something flick. And it's going to make something move up and down, and it can do it in whatever pattern we want to do it. And then they do something really interesting, which is they say, what if we want to start getting more complicated movements? So they stop using what they would at that point call digital audio to do it. So, you know, I make a noise, this thing buzzes, it causes a circuit to catch and causes this hydraulic to fire. Right. They start using analog. So it's no longer off and on anymore. It's a sweep of sound. And they say, okay, now this sound is going to feed this amount of electricity. I'm drawing with my finger, no one at home can see it, but Pete understands. We feed this amount of electricity based on the level of audio. And now we can get a sweeping motion. If it's quiet, it just moves a little. If it's louder, it moves a lot. And that's where we get audio animatronics. And we see these come into the jungle crews in 64-65 when they start implementing Mark Davis's designs. Right. And then later we end up with the thing that we call animatronics, which is just basically the now we have computers. Right. So it's not as cool.

Pete 53:46

We can program that's brilliant.

Kelly 53:49

Yeah, I just I I think it's so interesting because I think the jungle cruise is one of the very few attractions that actually does that whole run. You know, it's it starts at just the uh up and down robots driven by a chain or a belt or whatever. Two audio animatronics, two animatronics. Um I I I struggle to think of any others.

Pete 54:13

That's true. Yeah. I think the closest thing would be the tiki room, but I don't think it's I mean, the tiki room still runs very much off of very much.

Kelly 54:20

Yeah, I mean the tiki room is is audio animatronics. It is mostly those what they would call digital animatronics, so it's on and off. Yeah. Because all you really need is a mouth to open and close and a a bird gestapuff. Right.

Pete 54:33

I always loved that effect. I thought it was so cool. Breathing birds, yeah. Uh that impressed me more than the singing birds. Yeah. It's like they breathe. That's cool. Yeah. You know.

Kelly 54:43

But getting back to Thurl Ravenscroft and his recording of the Jungle Cruise narration, there is this sort of mythology, and you you've punctured it already, and you're correct, to do so. There's this mythology that the humorous spiels start when the humorous vignettes come in, the Mark Davis vignettes. That is when it that is certainly a point at which they take off and become something else. Right. But the humorous spiels start way, way earlier than that. They start almost as early as late in 55. And it's because, here's my third guy. Okay. It's because of this guy, Charlie Thompson.

Pete 55:23

Okay, Charlie Thompson. Tell me about Charlie Thompson.

Kelly 55:26

Charlie Thompson. Well, to tell you about Charlie Thompson, we have to talk about C. V. Wood a little bit. Pete's making a great expression right now, and I wish you could say that.

Pete 55:34

No, this is my head of Memnon moment for me, going, oh my okay, I'm gonna sit and listen.

Kelly 55:39

Go for it. So C. V. Wood was basically Walt's partner. He was he was managing the construction of Disneyland. C. V. Wood was this guy from Texas. He was a little bit of a huckster, but he also did know how to get stuff done.

Speaker 10 55:54

Yeah.

Kelly 55:55

And he and Walt butted heads like crazy, but together they got Disneyland built. You don't hear about C. V. Wood very much because he was pushed out real fast. I mean, Walt was only going to put up with someone he didn't like for so long. Right. But he did get the place opened. And he he was around for a year-ish, maybe two, but I doubt he made it to two after it opened. But Charlie Thompson and C. V. Wood was a good old boy from Texas. And Charlie Thompson was one of C. V. Wood's guys. So Charlie Thompson came in and was put in charge of Adventureland. Uh-huh. He was the very first manager of Adventureland. He was from Amarillo, Texas, came in with C. V. Wood near the beginning of this process. He was considered a really key person. You know, a lot of the C. V. Wood people just kind of got buried. They they sort of disappeared from the history because, well, they had such a clash with Wood. Right. And a lot of them went away as soon as Wood went away. Charlie Thompson falls into that category. But there's a great quote from uh now we have to talk about Buzz Price. Go for it. Harrison Harrison Buzz Price is uh the the guy who did all of the uh feasibility studies for Disneyland and stuck and was with Walt and the company for years. He was one of the people that Walt trusted the most because he was the one that could actually run the numbers and say this is gonna work or this is not gonna work.

Speaker 6 57:32

Right.

Kelly 57:32

He's one of the people that could really talk Walt out of stuff because Walt trusted him.

Pete 57:37

Right.

Kelly 57:38

He said about Charlie Thompson, he said, I credit him with much of the development of the jungle cruise, included including the tagline in the narration of if your mother-in-law is still with us, you've missed a golden opportunity.

unknown 57:51

Oh jeez. Wow.

Kelly 57:53

Yeah, right. Wow. So Charlie Thompson, it turns out, early on started saying, This is not as fun as it ought to be. Pepper it up a little bit. He's the guy that starts encouraging the skippers to go off script and to be funny. So that's where that starts. It starts uh all all the way back to 1955. Wow. And here's an interesting uh this is a sort of the fascinating end to the Charlie Thompson story. So he gets booted out with the rest of C. Woods people. And or or he quits because he can see the writing on the wall. It's hard to say. Sure, sure. Goes back to Texas.

Pete 58:35

Okay.

Kelly 58:36

By 1961, maybe a little earlier than that, he's working at Six Flags Over Texas. Okay. Okay. Six Flags Over Texas in 1961 opens the LaSalle Riverboat Expedition. Uh-huh. Which is almost a carbon copy of the Jungle Cruise. With the and and by that point, but but with actually some improvements. They're they're already doing funny patterns. They have an internal section of the ride like they were going to have at Disney World many years later, but they they got it at uh they built it in Texas early on. He actually took everything he'd learned from the Jungle Cruise, took it back to Six Flags over Texas, and improved on it.

Speaker 10 59:27

Wow.

Kelly 59:27

Yeah. Fascinating stuff. So that's your hometown jungle cruise ripoff. That's my hometown jungle cruise ripoff. Early on, early Six Flags also had a Skull Rock ripoff. They had their own Skull Rock Island. Wow. Yeah, which was like Tom Sawyer's Island combined with Skull Rock from Fantasyland. That's crazy.

Pete 59:46

Yeah. So can I tell you about my uh my my uh jungle cruise childhood ripoff? Yes, absolutely. So in 1968, uh there was a fellow who used to be a promoter for circuses who had found a cross-eyed lion and had to come up with a way on how to promote it. Uh-huh. And actually said, you know what? There's this whole theme park thing here. Out in Redwood Shores, right near Redwood City. Yeah. Uh here in the Bay Area. They uh bought a parcel of land, which is kind of a weird swampy grotto area. Yeah. And they built a bizarre little theme park that would center around four different sections of Africa. So there's like the Congo, the Velt, etc. etc. And there was this river that ran all the way around it. And you would get on a boat, except there was no animatronics, it was the real thing. You were on a real, like a zoo slash safari with real animals. So you got to see real lions, real giraffes, real rhinos, the works, real monkeys. And the park was called Marine World Africa USA. And they had a speedboat, you know, stunt extravaganza and highly toxic water.

Kelly 1:01:08

Uh yeah, which they were forced to clean up.

Pete 1:01:10

Yes, which they were forced to clean up. I mean, there the this park has a lot of it's the park where when I was five years old, I got to pet a tiger. Wow. Which is insane when you think about it for a minute, because yeah, the tiger was literally like just being walked around like a dog in the park. And the tiger just sat down and I went up and I just started petting it. And it was like, I got to pet a tiger. What? This is insane. Yeah. And but their jungle cruise boat was like a real boat that if it sprung a leak, it would it would sink. This was not on a trail, and it was a real motorcycle. They didn't do anything funny. They were, they were just kind of they didn't do any funny spiel, but they definitely took you around and showed you the animals.

Speaker 5 1:01:50

Wow.

Pete 1:01:51

Which is bizarre. But it had that kind of jungle cruise flavor. Yeah. That and it had a look that actually was more reminiscent of the jungle cruise as we know it now, where the boats looked a little weathered, they looked like they were really from a safari. They weren't like the clean Harper Goff river boats. Right. Which, if you watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which Goff also designed. Which Goff also designed the chocolate room. When you look at the Wonka boat, you could see that striped canopy, and you go, that's a jungle cruise flourish that you threw in there. But you know, and it's basically Willy Wonka's jungle cruise, where he's you know. So that's my ripoff, is is this real Safari boat.

Kelly 1:02:32

I never knew that they had that. Now, Marine World Africa USA is is uh the location of that is mere minutes away from where we sit right now. But it is an entirely different park. It's been bought by Six Flags. Yeah. Interesting piece of trivia. Um it's interesting to me. Um the Six Flags Corporation owns every Six Flags park except Six Flags Over Texas and Six Flags Over Georgia, the first two. That's wild. Isn't that interesting? I found that out today. I'd never known that before. No idea. That is wild. They do own a stake in both of them. Of course. But they're both owned by like uh limited corporations that that the Six Flags Company can only have a stake in.

Pete 1:03:11

I think we're gonna have to take a trip. Yeah. I've I've I've only been to the one in Georgia, I've never been in Six Flags, Texas. But let's get back to the jungle cruise itself. Yeah. This is also the time of the rise of this is just when when the spiel changes and they start individualizing the spiel. Right. This becomes the rise of, I think everybody loves the animals. Everybody loves the foliage, everybody loves the boats. But no matter what, everybody, everybody has their favorite skipper. Yes. This becomes the rise of the skipper in this time.

Kelly 1:03:47

Absolutely. I mean, you're right. Everybody loves the scenery and the animals and and all of that. But the ride is about the skippers now. Yep. And has been for some time. And there's there's a kind of waxing and waning of how much control Disney Corporate wants to put down onto the skippers. Like there are points where they're given a lot of leeway, like in the 70s. Yeah. And there are points where the management looks and says, Yeah, we can't let you do what those guys in the 70s did.

Pete 1:04:19

Well, here's an interesting quote. So I'm reading a quote from a book. There's two books that Kelly have been using for reference. They're written by Mr. David Marley, aka Dr. Skipper. Yeah. And uh published by uh Theme Park Press. Yeah. So go to themeparkpress.com to get your copies of Skipper Stories and More Skipper Stories.

Speaker 5 1:04:38

Yeah.

Pete 1:04:39

These books were gifted to me for my birthday by Jason Simpson, an old friend of mine. Hello, Jason. I love you.

Kelly 1:04:44

Yeah, these are these are funny books. I I heard an interview, actually was listening to a podcast with him on it and a bunch of jungle cruise skippers the other day, and it was delightful.

Pete 1:04:54

So he talks about how this there would be this back and forth between management and skippers. Yeah. So there was a um a skipper by the name of Tom Nabby, who was a skipper in the 1960s, and he says it went through many cycles. There were times when the ad libs were actually taking over the spiel, and people from WED would come down and ride the boats and check everybody's spiel. Then later, an edict came down that said you had to stick to the script for betum. And they got a lot of complaints at City Hall, so they loosened that back up. Right. And then it just went back and forth. Tighten it up, loosen it up, tighten it up, loosen it up. So it went through several scenarios. So it's starting to find its feet, but yeah, there's this weird tug of war between the management and the skippers. Right. And the skippers are very interesting when it comes when it comes to the cast, the cast members of Disneyland. Yeah. The skippers are kind of their own beast. It's kind of a fraternal order. And it has its own mystique. Yeah. It has its own lure. I mean, I I've never worked in the park, but the one job I've always, always wanted. Do is to be a skipper.

Kelly 1:06:01

Oh boy, you'd be good at it.

Pete 1:06:03

I I would love it. Would love it.

Kelly 1:06:05

Yeah. This month on Boardwalk Times, the Boardwalk Store celebrates its first anniversary. We team up with our friends at the Diz Insider to answer a whole boatload of reader questions. We're keeping tabs on New Doctor Who and X-Men 97, and I revisit last year's article about theme park technical debt with TechDet 2 Galactic Boogaloo. Come check it all out at Boardwalk Times.net.

Pete 1:06:49

Let's talk about the actual Jungle Cruise outpost for a minute. Okay, yeah. Because the outpost itself, I mean, I've there's always been that one question when you're a kid, like if you could live anywhere in Disneyland, like if it was a real place and you had to live there, where would you live? And answer for me, I mean, I we are of an age, Kelly and I, that we remember this early version of the Jungle Cruise. And I remember going to Disneyland when it was shut down and they were refurbishing it and being very, very heartbroken. Yeah. That I couldn't ride it. Yeah. Because I love the Jungle Cruise so much. And when they reopened it, I was blown away. But that's the next episode to talk about that. But the outpost itself is like one of the most environmental breakthroughs because you really are transported, not just by the plants or the skippers. The minute you're there, you feel like you are on a safari and then you've wandered off into some foreign land in uh Adventureland. Right. Which is interesting because of the design of Adventureland itself. Once again, Mr. Harper Goff, whose name as a Disney legend is actually, you know, in the park now in this area over Trader Sam's. Um but he was one of the production designers on Casablanca.

Kelly 1:08:07

Oh, is that true?

Pete 1:08:08

That is true. Huh. I didn't know that. He was one of the design, he wasn't the production designer, but he was one of the designers for the film. And boy howdy does that ever show in the architecture of Adventureland. Yeah. Same thing with the jungle outpost, which originally started off with a tower built on the top that was an observational tower for the ride managers to keep an eye out where the boats are.

Kelly 1:08:29

Right. And and then once the jungle actually grew up, that became useless. So they tore it down.

Pete 1:08:34

They tore it down. It sucks because it's really cool looking.

Kelly 1:08:37

But that was why they needed to start employing the gun signals. And the gun signals, so when you're riding the jungle cruise, you get to the hippo pool. Right. And the hippos seem like they are going to attack. And depending on what era you are doing this in, but the area era that we're talking about, the skipper will fire off two gunshots. And specifically two gunshots. Oh, yeah. The reason that it is specifically two gunshots is because nobody can see the boats anymore. So you are, obviously, it's a little bit of an illusion how deep into the jungle you actually are. Right. But you do have a bunch of guests in a boat in water. Yes. So they fire off the gunshots partially as part of the show to scare away the hippos, but to also let people behind them and the people back at the home base know that everything's okay. Right. If they fire more than two gunshots, that means something. Uh-oh. If they fire three gunshots, that means the boat cannot move forward anymore. Uh-oh. Usually means machine uh mechanical problems. Oh dear. If they fire four gunshots, there is a medical or a security emergency on the boat. Someone needs to get out there real quick. Wow. They never fire five gunshots because it becomes too confusing to determine between four and five. But then they jump to six. If they fire six gunshots, the boat has been derailed. Oh dear. And there are a couple of places that the boat can get derailed if you're not careful. Gee, let me guess which one of those is.

Pete 1:10:29

That sharp turn onto the Nile. Yep, yep. Right in front. Yes. Had to throw that in.

Kelly 1:10:38

And it's that turn onto the Nile just as you first see Schweitzer Falls. Yeah, yeah. And take off to the right, that's one of the places that you can fairly easily become derailed. It's it's considered something of a major embarrassment if you are a skipper that gets your boat derailed. Oh dear. But so if if you are in line or on the jungle cruise or anywhere nearby and you hear any amount of gunshots other than two, there is a problem.

Pete 1:11:06

And one person who might have been able to hear that was Walt himself. Yes. One of his great annoyances is the fact that his apartment in Disneyland, before he started building the one in New Orleans Square, was the fabulous apartment right above the firehouse on Main Street.

Speaker 5 1:11:25

Yeah.

Pete 1:11:26

Now, if you are standing by the firehouse, every time I go to Disneyland, I make a pilgrimage to the firehouse and I sit on the fire engine, and I this is kind of weird, but I have a little private conversation with Walt.

Speaker 5 1:11:37

Yeah.

Pete 1:11:38

Because despite his complicated life, what I'm really talking to is kind of that spirit of imagination and world building, etc. But every time I sit there, I hear that elephant sound effect going off. That's going off in the background.

Kelly 1:11:57

The other side of Main Street is up against the jungle cruise.

Pete 1:12:00

Literally butted up against it. If you are in Adventureland, you can actually see this Rattan hut ceiling. That's actually the back of the Carnation Villa, you know? So it's like it's decorated so it looks like another jungle building, but it's actually the backside of Main Street. So Walt would be kept up awake late at night because those sounds don't go off. Right. Because they gotta they gotta clean the place, they can basically run all night. So it's like, oh my god, turn that thing off, please. Drove him insane. So I think what I like about the original jungle cruise, what I what I refer to kind of quietly to those who don't really know the park that well is the candy striper years. Yeah. The boats have that delightful Harper Gough kind of white and some other color striped canopy. Right. And it looks more like a cutesy boat than an actual, you know, jungle adventure. Yeah, yeah. It looks more like a tourist excursion rather than you're on this dangerous attraction. Right. You know. I have fond memories of that because I I've I got to see that tail end in the 70s and 80s. And I remember some of these old gankier animals and the very mechanized, almost concrete-looking lions. Yeah, yeah. It's like, okay, I'll still roll with it. It's still fun. Yeah.

Kelly 1:13:16

You know. And and you know, you see you had a mix at that point of the kind of janky stuff and the nicer stuff.

Pete 1:13:21

Right. And then you've had the ducks like standing on top of the crocodile, and they start riding spiel to go with that because they realize that the ducks are like, I don't care, it's an animatronic. What do I care? But I I do actually, in some ways, miss this original one.

Speaker 5 1:13:36

Yeah.

Pete 1:13:36

As much as I like it in its current incarnation. Yeah. I do miss the older one because this ride was made in a time again of kind of the best way I can describe it is misguided, um, misguided innocence. Because let's talk about Trader Sam for a minute and some of the natives and all that kind of stuff. And the Rhino scene that Mark Davis brilliantly designed. Yeah. You know, it some of the stuff is, yes, a little questionable.

Kelly 1:14:08

For sure. And and you know, we both know Jeff Bain a little bit. Um I heard him say something recently about this sort of thing that I thought was brilliant. And he said we should be careful about casting blame or or negative feelings on people that were building this stuff at the you know, for building it through a cultural lens where it meant something different to them. Yes. We should be careful about that. That said, that care should not trump our not wanting to hurt people now. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. Right. So we we should we should be able to say, hey, what we did with the jungle cruise with uh Trader Sam's the great example or the the nasals. Um that whole thing. And we should be able to say, yes, I understand why that was a delight to people, and even as a kid, me. And I also understand why it needs to not be there anymore.

Pete 1:15:19

Aaron Ross Powell So I do want to mention one last thing of influences. Yeah. Uh before we we go and now we're closed, right? Yeah. Close for renovation. Yeah. Which is one of the stranger influences because we've come we've we've reached a point where I can bring this up.

Speaker 5 1:15:35

Yeah.

Pete 1:15:35

And part of it is that exoticism and that cultural pull of huh, let's let's go someplace with this, but let's go over the top with it. Because Mark Davis's humor, again, with like the porter scene and the natives coming out of the jungle and that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's got it's got some teeth to it, but there's an influence on it that I don't think a lot of people know, which is one of the first 3D movies done with the classic uh red and green anamorphic style of 3D movie.

Speaker 4 1:16:11

Yeah.

Pete 1:16:11

It's called Buana Devil, starring Robert Stack.

Speaker 5 1:16:15

Yeah.

Pete 1:16:16

From Unsolved Mysteries fame, for those of you who don't know, or Airplane, if you like in the movie Airplane.

Speaker 5 1:16:21

Yeah.

Pete 1:16:22

Um he's evil, he's also in the Beavis and Butthead movie, but that's a different story. Robert Stack. Um he he plays a great white hunter, and it's loosely, loosely based off of the actual occurrence known as the Ghost in the Darkness, which were two lions that became man-eaters. Okay. And they basically were packless. The females had kicked them out of their pack. Yeah. And these two males basically latched onto each other to hunt in unison and started going after whatever they could. And they're two great white hunters. There's actually a movie with uh, I think Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas called The Ghost in the Darkness. Oh, yeah, yeah. And it's based loosely off of that. And those lions are actually, I think, still on display at um, I forget it, like the the British Museum or something like that. They're taxidermied. Okay. Anyhow, Buana Devil is full of a lot of this type of humor and also approach to the cultures. Yeah. And so I would actually argue that this, these weird little, there was a it was a culture-wide. Not necessarily laughing to be mean, although I am sure that that did exist. I'm not apologizing for it. But it it's more of this cultural thing of this is really interesting because it's not the 50s America, where it is so stodgy and so conformist and so post-World War II. Don't want to think of anything more except the dreams that we had where we were in the Pacific, or when we were in Europe, or when we were in Africa during the campaigns in World War II. Yeah. We don't want to think about Rommel. We don't want to think about Okinawa. We want to think about the fun stuff. So that's where you get the tiki phenomenon. That's where you get the African pursuit where you see a lot of African sculpture starting to come into America at this time. So I would actually make the argument that before we really start, like like Kelly said, before we really start throwing judgments on this, it's actually done with this kind of weird, innocent, misguided pursuit of escapism that it's not done out of, you know, I don't think it was done. I mean, maybe it was. I don't know, because I wasn't, I'm not the people who designed this. But I honestly think culture wide, it was accepted for so long.

Speaker 5 1:18:38

Yeah.

Pete 1:18:39

And it be it's because that people found the escape just enough. Like I I can be on this, I can feel like I'm in danger just enough that this is so exotic that it's so otherworldly in finger quotes for me. Yeah. That this is safe for me.

Kelly 1:18:54

Yeah, it's i it is as if it uh we we're viewing it as a fantasy rather than actually being representative. Um at the same time, we do have to acknowledge that there are people who feel like this is an ugly stereotype of them.

Pete 1:19:13

100%. Yes, you have to acknowledge that. And it's and it is and and the Disney Corporation over time has taken steps to to curb that and also to change it enough so that way the the core of the joke is not the fact that it's a bunch of black people on a pole being shoved upward at by a rhino. Right. It's the fact that there's a bunch of people being put up a pole by a rhino. So you could change that very easily. Right.

Kelly 1:19:41

I and we'll see if this works. If it doesn't work, we'll cut it up. But I uh I was reading a thing uh about The African Queen, which we were talking about earlier, and there was a a book uh what was it called? Uh Modernity and the African Cinema, by a Nigerian scholar, Femi Okiramuete Shaka, and he proposes eleven conventions of the colonialist film. Okay. Right. So these these are things that are like, you know, white people going into, say, Africa, right, you know, one of the African nations, and and viewing it specifically through our lens. And I thought this was interesting, and I thought, let's try and experiment. Let's run through these 11 things and talk about them in terms of the jungle cruise. Oh, wow. And see what happens.

Pete 1:20:29

I like this. Okay, let's do it.

Kelly 1:20:30

Let's do it. All right. And and I think some of these actually fit, and some of them don't. Okay. Um so number one, prolonged shots of the African landscape, the safari shot. The wildness of Africa is served up for the sedentary pleasure of European audiences. Such shots include river scenes as well as panoramic views of animals and landscapes.

Pete 1:20:52

Okay. Yeah. That's the opening of the Lion King. It is, for sure. Yeah, for sure.

Kelly 1:20:56

You're absolutely right. Okay. No question. I have I have all sorts of issues with the Lion King. Well, yeah, Kimba. I mean, Simba. Yeah. But but do you think it applies to the jungle crew?

Pete 1:21:08

I I do, because the whole thing is nothing but a panorama.

Kelly 1:21:11

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Um, number two, Africans presented as cannibals.

Pete 1:21:18

Ding. Yes. Yes, sadly, yes. Yeah.

Kelly 1:21:21

Um number three, Africa as a symbolic garden of Eden, but with diseases.

unknown 1:21:28

Wow.

Kelly 1:21:29

God. Um, I don't actually see that.

Pete 1:21:33

Not in the jungle cruise, but I do see it. I I can buana devil. I can actually see films like that. Yes.

Kelly 1:21:40

Yeah. And and and uh you know African Queen. Exactly. And they were talking about this in terms of African Queen. I was like, oh yeah. Number four, binary oppositions in which Africans are characterized by the negatives of European values. For example, Europeans are cultured, as educated, sophisticated, but Africans are primitive, childlike, simple. Yeah. Yeah, sadly, yes. Yeah, unfortunately. Five. I don't think this applies, but I'll read it anyway. Africans as sexually perverse with attitudes and behavior considered only by European value systems. I don't I don't see it.

Pete 1:22:18

I the I don't remember any sexual innuendo i in the jungle cruise. So the jungle I mean, but I yes, that is in cinema and that is pervasive on many, many levels in cinema, but not necessarily in jungle cruise.

Kelly 1:22:32

Yeah. Okay. Agreed. Okay. Number six. African kings slash leaders as despots? No.

Pete 1:22:40

Well, I don't think so. Okay. I don't remember a chief or or king or anything like that. I mean, Butalesi does not make an appearance in the Jungle Cruise. No.

Kelly 1:22:49

So I think we're good. Number seven, the African environment viewed metaphorically as something to be overcome symbolically by heroic European adventurers slash leaders. Overcome. I don't know because So the and they're they're they're seeing a difficult environment and it's something that they have to overcome as as from from their point of view.

Speaker 1 1:23:16

We have to bring Oprah to the rainforest.

Kelly 1:23:21

Was that your Klaskinsky?

Pete 1:23:23

That no. That's my I don't know what the hell that was. Um maybe it's iffy on that one.

Kelly 1:23:31

I think the problem is is because the ride doesn't have that much of a strict narrative. In fact, it's it you're jumping from point in the world to polar other point in the world. Yeah. Uh it can't. There's no way to really tell what most of these people's motivations are.

Pete 1:23:49

Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, I'll go with that.

Kelly 1:23:51

Um number eight, two contrasting African protagonists, the good and the bad, where the good is defined by willingness to conform to British ways.

Pete 1:24:02

Depends on which version of Traitor Sam you get to. Yeah. But not really.

Kelly 1:24:08

Not really. Not really. Um I totally see it in the African Queen, though. Oh, 100%. Yeah. The Robert Morley character. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Um, number nine, narratives which present the heroic deeds of a European male as a key factor in civilizing the natives.

Speaker 6 1:24:27

No.

Pete 1:24:27

I don't know about civilizing the natives or anything. I think they the natives are presented as I think the only thing that's close to that is the safari with the rhino. Yeah. Which is just showing a hierarchy of the guy on the top who's obviously the leader. Right. But he's actually made out to be the buffoon.

Speaker 5 1:24:46

Yeah.

Pete 1:24:46

Because he's, you know, he's the monocle wearing explorer caricature. Where it it's like it's a British caricature as well. And I'm not saying white people too. I'm just saying that particular character is actually a buffoon.

Kelly 1:25:01

Yeah.

Pete 1:25:02

And it's not necessarily a heroic approach.

Kelly 1:25:05

Yeah, and I mean there's there's certainly troubling things about the position of the porter and stuff in that scene, but um I don't think it's what they're describing here.

Pete 1:25:15

I don't think it matches it 100%. Yeah. I can, yeah, I but I do see what they're they're talking about.

Kelly 1:25:19

Yeah. Uh number 10, depiction of pre-colonial Africans as spear-carrying and war-painted warriors.

Pete 1:25:25

Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Yeah. Well yeah.

Kelly 1:25:29

That one, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. Uh number 11, the display of traditional African dances and rituals purely for the pleasure of European audiences, not necessarily for the narrative.

Pete 1:25:42

Yes. Yes. They've got a whole dancing section.

Kelly 1:25:46

Yeah. So about half of these. Yeah. Less than the African Queen. Yeah. But that's mostly just because of the lack of narrative. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Mostly because of the lack of narrative. So I just I I thought it was an interesting perspective. That was fascinating. To take on it. And and to acknowledge, you know, there's problems. There's things we love about this. There's things that we are wary and probably know that are problematic about this, but um just it gives some perspective. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Pete 1:26:19

Yeah. And I also think that we need to keep this in mind when we talk when we get to our next episode of the Jungle Cruise, which will be in the future.

Kelly 1:26:27

Yeah.

Pete 1:26:28

Not necessarily the next episode, but the future episode.

Kelly 1:26:30

Yeah, I gotta get out of the jungle for a little while.

Pete 1:26:32

I do too. I've got a weird rash.

Kelly 1:26:35

Um leeches, Mr.

Pete 1:26:37

Allnut. Oh creepiest scene ever, because you see Bogart's bare feet. Oh, yeah. Anyway, but there there is this approach to uh when they revitalize it, when they when they make the the 90s version an onward version. Yeah. They actually try to address some of this. Yeah. Which is which is nice. And they do a very good job. Yeah, and they've been revitalizing it ever since. They've they've done it again recently. So I think ultimately why the jungle cruise has left such a mark.

Speaker 4 1:27:12

Yeah.

Pete 1:27:13

This is my take. And I want to I would love to hear your take.

Speaker 4 1:27:16

Yeah.

Pete 1:27:16

My take on the Jungle Cruise, even this pre-indie version.

Speaker 4 1:27:21

Yeah.

Pete 1:27:22

And why it has left such a mark is because of the fact that again, people need a level of escapism that goes beyond we're gonna tell you a story. Yeah. It's like you are in the story.

Speaker 5 1:27:35

Yeah.

Pete 1:27:36

There's an element of I'm a little out of control here because I don't know if a crocodile is going to snap me. I don't know if a hippo is gonna overturn our boat.

Speaker 4 1:27:46

Yeah.

Pete 1:27:46

I don't know if that tiger really can jump 300 feet.

Speaker 4 1:27:49

Yeah.

Pete 1:27:50

Right. So I think what this does, apart from most other rides, until we get to Haunted Mansion and the Pirates. Uh-huh. We don't have that simulation of you are in this environment with whatever baggage you bring. Yeah. Yeah. I think the only exception to that, kinda, is nature's wonderland. But it doesn't quite feel the same. Yeah. It doesn't quite feel the jungle cruise, especially when it finally finds its feet with the skippers, with the jokes, etc. Then it really feels like, okay, you can be the star of your story. I'm literally the supporting cast.

Speaker 5 1:28:34

Yeah.

Pete 1:28:34

You react to it however you want to react to this. But we're just gonna we're just gonna hand you this buffet of adventure and jokes. Yeah. You can either look at this as serious, you could look at this as silly, you could look at this as offensive, you could look at this as buffoonery, however you want to look at it. But it this is your escape that you get to write half the audience becomes half of that story. Because that's the last element that I don't think we've acknowledged is the audience, what they bring to it. Their cultural context is different. Yeah. In which people from some of the regions that come there, they either go, they shake their heads and go, no. Yeah, no, or they go, I haven't seen that's my national flower. Right. That's amazing. Right. And it's literally what you bring to it that makes it, and the audience becomes part of that attraction. It fills in that last gap, which is the cultural context of how you absorb it.

Kelly 1:29:27

Yeah. Well, and you know, it's interesting because I I heard a thing recently where someone was talking about actually talking about the jungle crews, and and and said, you know, the an interesting question to ask about it is whose story is this attraction trying to tell? Right. And I think that's actually an interesting exercise with almost any themed attraction. But it's it's a really interesting one here because I don't know. You know, and and like you can look through other attractions, uh particularly at Disneyland, and you can see at least what they're going for.

Speaker 10 1:30:03

Right.

Kelly 1:30:04

In Snow White, it was initially you because you were Snow White, uh, but then it was Snow White. Right. And you know, it's a sim similar sort of thing with uh, you know, Alice in Wonderland or Mr. Toad. Or Mr. Toad, absolutely. Yeah, your Toad. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, 100%. And if you and if you look at something like Storybook Land, for example, another boat ride, the story is about you again. Because you are being shown this thing by someone who has a certain amount of authority and mystical power to show you these magical lands. You are being taken through. The jungle cruise is tricky because it it isn't about you. Um it isn't about any particular one character. Like what and this leads into I I have a plus up for this, and I'm not sure if it's a good one.

Pete 1:31:04

All right, you want to start off with our with the part of our show that we uh we ignore all uh precepts to safety and budget, et cetera. And we actually plus up yeah a so this is the plus up. We've given you enough of the down low. Let's do it do a plus up.

Kelly 1:31:19

Yeah, let's let's see what we can do. Um it's difficult with this, particularly because the attraction has been plused up since the thing we're talking about. So uh I kind of have two things. One is they just need that cool interior thing like they've got in Florida. Like it's that is that is so cool. The monkey god temple or whatever. Yeah. It's a made it's creepy. I love that it is the one place on the ride the skippers are not allowed to speak. It is it you go in, there's like cobras. Like that is just cool. They have the similar thing at Six Flags over Texas. Well, the that riverboat ride's gone now, but when it was there, they had it. Right. But the other thing is sort of in answer to this question, who whose story are we trying to tell? Maybe we should pick one. Maybe it's us. Maybe we're going through some sort of adventure that that allows us to jump from place to place. We are occasionally a little bit in danger in the attraction as it is now, but it's not clear that most of the things we see are aware of our existence. Right. So maybe it's about us, maybe it's a recurring character. I don't know. And this is why I say I don't know if this is a good plus up, but it's an interesting one. What if we decided who the story was about and st and stuck to it? What if we m made a narrative through line? It didn't doesn't have to be thick, you know. We we we don't have to put Jack Sparrow in there. Like I know. But that's right, just put Jack Sparrow in the jungle. Yeah. That's my and I and I'm still gonna roll this around for a uh a while after this and just trying to decide if this is actually a good idea or if nailing stuff down like this is maybe not. But I'm gonna put it for right now, like maybe we decide on who the story is and decide if it's us, or just or we put a character that has a through line in into the attraction and say it's about them. Okay. Um just my thought.

Pete 1:33:35

I like that. I like that. Uh here's my plus up. And I've got, and it's kind of vague, because like you, it's like, but we already plus it up.

Speaker 5 1:33:44

Right. Yeah.

Pete 1:33:47

But the one thing that I keep thinking of, and again, this, you know, our plus ups, if we're gonna talk about this as the jungle cruise from 55 to roughly 94, yeah, 93, 94. The Indiana Jones ride hadn't been built yet. What if there was a second outpost that actually introduced that narrative? Yeah. And the only way to get there was to take the jungle cruise.

Kelly 1:34:21

Why wasn't that part of the plan at one point?

Pete 1:34:24

I think it was part of the plan at some point, but they never actually did it. But the thinking would be basically kind of like an early version of what would eventually become the adventurers club at Disney World.

Speaker 5 1:34:36

Yeah.

Pete 1:34:36

Where when you got off, that's where you got your shrunken heads from Randatti. Yeah. That's where you would actually so it'd really be this outpost to get to. But you could still get to it on foot, so that way you could access the rest of Disneyland. Yeah. But there's nothing like going on an adventure and arriving at this, you know, unusual port. It's like getting let's get to most icely space port. It's bizarre, you know, not the wretched hive of scum and villainy. But it would be the you know, the adventureland equivalent of uh the sheriff and Black Bart running around at Frontierland, where you actually have characters that were of you know appropriate for the time, but maybe not appropriate now. Yeah. But it still had that theme, because again, we're talking about something that existed in the past. So we're gonna run with that precept of what was acceptable in the past here for just a minute here. Um and you would take the the jungle cruise, you'd get on, and then you take the second half of the jungle cruise, which would be, you know, either more so like the first part would be more adventurous, and the second part would be a lot more humorous. Yeah. Because you're going back to quote civilization, you're going back to the main outpost. Yeah. You could walk to either one of them, but the fun part is actually pulling up to it and going, Hey, yeah, I'm at this port, and I'm I'm I'm gonna see the second half of the ride by getting on the ride again and finishing it. Yeah. But I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go to Trader Sam's, I'm gonna go to this, you know, uh shooting gallery, or I'm gonna go I'm gonna go train up and be an adventurer. So it's the training camp for real Safari adventurers, real jungle adventurers.

Kelly 1:36:11

So this this would be like a a literally the port to Adventureland. Right. Is that kind of what you're thinking?

Pete 1:36:17

If you had an area where you had different activities, like you had in front, you know, what what would the jungle equivalents of panning for gold, yeah, watching a show at the golden horseshoe, going to a shooting gallery, yeah, watching a Lass Su show, or going meeting Native Americans at remember because they used to have the Native American part where they would have you know dance ceremonies and crafts people. What would the equivalent of the jungle be like? Yeah. And that would be that weird Trader Sam's outpost in the middle of the jungle cruise. So you would actually plan it to be where the indie ride is now. Not the not the queue, the actual ride, the building itself. So it could be built in a cave. So it's actually an indoor part. So no matter what rain or shine, kind of like pirates, it's nighttime in the jungle.

Speaker 5 1:37:06

Yeah.

Pete 1:37:06

And then you come, you get on the boat and you leave, and you're like, oh, we're out in the sunlight again. It's next day you arrive back home, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. And that way becomes a little bit more of a fun little adventure. You can either walk to it or you could boat to it. So you don't have to, you don't have to take the ride to get to it. But if you really want to get the full narrative experience, that's how you could do that. Yeah, so that'd be my that would be my uh that'd be my plus up, I think, for for this era. Yeah. I mean, I have other ones for the future of what holds for it, but for now. And uh Kelly and I were threatening to do what we we would do as skippers, but I think we're gonna save that for the next episode. So once again, uh I'm Peter Overstreet. And I'm Kelly McGovern. And you've been listening to The Lowdown on the Plus Up. Thanks again for joining us. And uh next time we get together, we'll talk about something else. Yeah. All right, talk to you later. Bye.

Kelly 1:38:06

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of The Lowdown on the Plus Up. If you have, please tell your friends where you found us. And if you haven't, we can pretend this never happened and need not speak of it again. For a lot more thoughts on theme parks and related stuff. Check out my writing for Boardwalk Times at Boardwalk Times.net. Feel free to reach out to Pete and I on our Lowdown on the Plus Up Facebook group, or send us a message directly at commons at lowdown-plus-up.com. We really want to hear about how you've plus these attractions up and read some of your ideas on the show. Our theme music is Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy by Kevin McLeod at incompetec.com. We'll have a new episode out real soon. Why? Because we like you.