The Lowdown on the Plus-up - A Theme Park Podcast
Kelly McCubbin and Peter Overstreet take on all aspects of theme parks - Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure, Six Flags - discussing them in historical context and then finding ways, to quote Walt Disney, to "plus them up!"
No considerations of safety, practicality or economic viability even remotely entertained!
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A Boardwalk Times Podcast
https://boardwalktimes.net/
The Lowdown on the Plus-up - A Theme Park Podcast
Jungle Cruise Evolution: The Indy Years
Pete takes mercy on Kelly, who's been under the weather, and does the heavy lifting on our follow-up to last season's "Rude Mechanicals - Jungle Cruise: The Early Years."
Bill Evans is back to see the fruition of the project he began over 35 years prior. His dream becomes a reality in the best way!
Disney doubles down on immersion with unintended consequences!
The jungle grows, transforms, and becomes something even more mysterious as it tries to embrace the Forbidden Eye of Mara!
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Howdy folks Watch your step as you enter the boat. If you're entering from the back, come up to the front. If you're in the front, just follow the simple instructions of your simple-minded loader.
Speaker 2:Now please listen to the boat loaders.
Speaker 1:They used to work in a sardine factory until they got canned they didn't mine too much, though they worked for scale Well anyhow, be sure to keep your hands and feet inside the boat at all times and watch your children, because this here's the wildest boat in the jungle.
Speaker 4:Hello and welcome to the Lowdown on the Plus Up, a podcast where we look at everyone's favorite theme park attractions, lands, textures and novelties. 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. Hey, pete yeah. What are we talking about? Today.
Speaker 2:Well, today we're going to go back into the jungle, my friends, because we're going to revisit one of our previous episodes where we covered the Jungle Cruise. But we did something very specific with that episode in which we said we're only going to talk about the Jungle Cruise before the opening of Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, that's right.
Speaker 4:So Pete and I are going to be your host for this adventure and we are ready to get this cruise underwater. Oh yeah, underway, underway. Hey, before we start this, I read something today that was a little bit sad, but I think we should pay a little respect. To little bit sad, but I think we should pay a little respect to the great Porch Potato Frank, the guy who has sat on the bench on Main Street, usa at Disneyland pretty much every day for the last 20 years passed away just shy of his 80th birthday.
Speaker 4:Oh, that's too bad. He was a good guy. I waved at him once or twice. I know a lot of people that talked to him. He always gave people fist bumps and he was always sitting out there with his Dodger jacket and his porch potato button. Oh, yes, yes, yes. And he used to tell people that every day was his best day.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's really cool. Our condolences to his loved ones, friends and family. Yeah, but another unofficial Disney legend.
Speaker 4:Unofficial Disney legend yeah, rip Porch Potato Frank. So the Jungle Cruise one of our favorites Jungle Cruise, yeah.
Speaker 2:Kelly and I hunt it down. You know, it's like Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion and all of these other rides that have become legendary, not because that they are based off of any particular property or dot dot dot. At least they weren't when they first opened.
Speaker 4:Yeah, to an extent Walt was interested in promoting his true life adventure films, right. But it became pretty clear fairly early on that there wasn't going to be much that was very realistic about the Jungle Cruise.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. And as we talked about during the previous episode where we talked about pre-Indiana Jones ride Jungle Cruise in its earliest conceptions, another inspiration was the African Queen. That's right, and you can see those elements in there. But I think Disney Walt himself had sanitized it so much that it didn't really resemble the African queen.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and we're going to see an interesting sort of time swing happen here, because the Jungle Cruise starts off not really fixed in any particular time and then kind of becomes fixed in the time of the African Queen, which is about 1914. When that takes place Roughly yes, yeah, and then Indiana Jones pulls it like a black hole forward through time until it settles where it is right now, which is 1938.
Speaker 2:Yep 1938. So we're not going to cover the whole premise of Tony Baxter coming up with the Indiana Jones ride itself. It definitely influences what we're talking about today and at some point I'm sure we'll go and we will do the Indy ride, absolutely yeah, we'll have a great time doing it, we will look forward to it. But we don't want to get bogged down with that, because there's enough to talk about with this attraction.
Speaker 4:As a quick aside yeah, is the Indy ride Tony Baxter's best ride.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in my opinion it actually is. I think so too. I think he got to do everything he wanted to do in it, and I once had the honor of having lunch with him and a mutual friend of ours, tim O'Day, and sitting down with him at an ice cream parlor of all places, but asking him what his favorite designs were, and he said, man, I really wish I could have had the Indiana Jones that we first came up with, right? And so this is why I mentioned this is because in the initial, they were talking about doing the Indiana Jones ride in the early late 70s. Yes, like pretty much as soon as Raiders came out, that was it. Like let's start talking about this what year is Raiders?
Speaker 4:Is it like 79, 80?
Speaker 2:I said 70s, that's a misnomer, I meant 80s.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Early 80s, though Early 80s though Raiders.
Speaker 2:As soon as that came out, they said this is a ride, yeah. Which it certainly is. Yeah, and they would make a list of all the things that people would say, and the things that were repeated were action, adventure, snakes and a giant rolling boulder, and they said that's what we're putting in the ride.
Speaker 4:And you know, kind of pursuant to this conversation, the significant thing about the Jungle Cruise as far as the Indy ride is that the Jungle Cruise, much in the same way that the People Mover used to go through America Sings, and it would go through bits of Space Mountain and stuff like that, or the Disneyland Railroad would go through Splash Mountain or Tiana's Body of Adventure Now, and the Jungle Cruise would have transported through the Indy ride.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's some fabulous piece of concept art that shows this, basically a whole Indiana Jones world, yes, in which there were like three or four different attractions all connected with this one underground system and there are lava flows going over a jungle cruise boat and the train is going through some of the parts and there's a rollercoaster and a mine cart from Temple of Doom.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the rollercoaster ended up actually being built in Paris. Yes, and what's useful? I mean? Obviously it didn't happen. That would have caused Adventureland to become Indiana Jones Land.
Speaker 2:It was going to be so expensive, it would have been its own theme park entirely.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, it would have been cool, but I'm glad Adventureland is Adventureland and not Indiana Jones Land, as much as I love that ride. But what is significant is they as part of this. When was it? It was like 1993. They had done kind of all the prehab for how the Jungle Cruise was going to fit in next to Indy. This caused them to actually move the boathouse back to where it was originally. Yep, so you know, about 16 feet to the right Again, wrapping around the Dominguez poem which we talked about in our last episode. Yeah, still there. Saw it last time we were there and we get to welcome back our friend Bill Evans.
Speaker 2:Bill Evans, bill Evans. Okay, how does Bill Evans fit into this, kelly?
Speaker 4:So Bill Evans had obviously planted all of these plants for the Jungle Cruise. Though here's the thing I just found out just today when I was over at the Walt Disney Family Museum recently the nice man, john, who runs the bookstore there he was like Kelly, do you have this book? And it was the new Don Hahn Chris Merritt 70th Anniversary Book of Disneyland. And I was like I don't need another history of Disneyland. He was like no, no, no, you do, and I trust him. So I got it and it does have some amazing things.
Speaker 4:One of the things I just saw today was pictures that Harper Goff had taken of the excavated Jungle Cruise track, with his handwritten notes to Walt on it. Oh, wow. And one of the things he said was that he had turned the walnut trees upside down to make the roots look like strange exotic plants. Harper could have been lying, he could have, but I'd say maybe there was a little more give and take between Bill Evans and Harper Goff than we previously thought. Anyway, that was interesting.
Speaker 4:So Bill Evans is called back in in 93 because now they have to put something between the opening, the entrance to the Jungle Cruise, and the Swiss family treehouse, which was still the Swiss family treehouse that was about to become the Tarzan Treehouse, which was still the Swiss Family Treehouse. Then it was about to become the Tarzan Treehouse, but not yet. There's 50 feet there, oh yeah, so there's not much room at all, and at the time it was all trees. So who do they call to figure out what to do? Well, the guy that put the trees there they call Bill Evans. Right, he came back in, he looked at all of the trees, he went through and tagged the trees Huh, and they took out in that area 500 trees. Whoa, yeah, it's crazy, right, like I don't even know. I mean, some of them must have been saplings or something that type of square footage.
Speaker 2:I think some of them must have been saplings or something. How do you expect that within that type of square?
Speaker 4:footage. I think part of it's because the Indy entrance goes so far in. Oh, okay, so you've got the entrance between the two things.
Speaker 2:The width is one thing, it's the depth.
Speaker 4:Right. So the depth, it just keeps going and keeps going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you have to understand a lot of those trees. When you look at the Jungle Cruise in the 50s and 60s, when it first opens, yeah, it's more like the Veldt the Veldt Cruise.
Speaker 3:Yes, it really is. It's like the trees haven't grown up yet.
Speaker 2:You know, like they have to put in fake trees just so the giraffes have something to hide behind. Right, you know, but now you go. It's an honest-to-God rainforest because it's so huge.
Speaker 4:Well, this is an interesting thing that happened. So, you know, in our Tomorrowland episode from Live at the Hojo, I mentioned something about, you know, the monorail being one of the most magical things at Disneyland, because it went from being a ride to an actual functional piece of transportation, which is true. Bill Evans' jungle Because, in 2010, environmental scientists and government regulators declared that the jungle around the Jungle Cruise was no longer a fake jungle. It was a self-sustaining real jungle. What I didn't know, this it is officially a jungle in Anaheim. Wow, and the way that they make the decision. You know there's a lot of people involved when they decide this, but ultimately they're like if we stopped doing anything, would it keep going? And they're like, yes, it will. It will survive on its own without us at this point.
Speaker 2:So at some, point Disneyland will close. We all know this. Yeah, nothing lasts forever and at some point Disneyland will close we all know this. Yeah, nothing lasts forever and at some point Disneyland will close and then that jungle is going to take over. Yeah, that's kind of a cool thought. Where it's like Orange County, the OC jungle is going to take over completely.
Speaker 4:It's just going to keep growing and keep growing. It's like okay, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know, there's like a fiberglass temple in the middle of it. You know, like thousands of years from now, like wait. We went into the jungles to find what 21st? Century. People were like back then and we found this temple and apparently they didn't like people with eyeballs. We couldn't make heads or tails out of it Because the temple was forbidden eyes. I don't understand why they dislike that. That is my accent for how people will talk in the future.
Speaker 4:Yeah, in the future I always think they're going to talk kind of like Cary Grant, that kind of mid-Atlantic thing.
Speaker 5:Well, Clark Gable, don't go away. Folks, this ought to get good. It's me again.
Speaker 4:But yeah, so Bill Evans brought in, tagged somewhere akin to 500 trees which were pulled out and either replanted somewhere or stored alive, just mostly to save them and to figure out what to do to clear out that space. So you know, bill Evans just keeps on ticking, mostly to save them and to figure out what to do to clear out that space. So you know, bill Evans just keeps on ticking, I do want to put a pause real quick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I have a little thing to share. We are friends with many, many people within the Disney fanatic world. Yeah, and there is somebody who I've done many shows with really sweet guy, but he's probably one of the most visually seen in more recent years, especially on social media. His name is Bill Burns. This is the gentleman who cosplays as Walt Disney Right, most famously showing up in front of Great Moments with Mr Lincoln and having Mickey Mouse have a flip out about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was very heartwarming, heart touching. Well, I don't know what the event was, but he was at Disneyland once again as Walt and they were having a tour, a special tour, slash seminar with Bob Gurr. Yeah, and Bob was being wheeled through. I mean, he's in his 90s, so to get through Disneyland he's being wheeled through in a wheelchair to save his stamina and so forth. And Bill Burns, as Walt, comes up to him and shakes his hand and Bob Gurr gets this very funny look on his face. He says I miss you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's like, oh man, that's a testament to how the real Disney magic works Immersion and memory, because Bob Gurr and Bill Evans and all these other people that contributed to things like the Jungle Cruise, that have created this world, sometimes forget that other people can do that too, and it's a thank. Do that too, yeah, and it's a thank you that brings them back. So, even though you know Bill is not the animatronic although I know a lot of you are actually out there right now lobbying to have Bill actually work as the animatronic in Rainbows with Mr Disney, which, by the way, we predicted on this very show. That's right, I'm just saying Like two years ago or something we called that two years ago which? By the way we predicted on this very show.
Speaker 2:That's right, I'm just saying Like two years ago or something. We called that two years ago and we actually said I think we should just have Bill Burns do it.
Speaker 4:So we got Bob.
Speaker 2:Gurr getting fooled going hey it's.
Speaker 1:Walt.
Speaker 2:Disney. Well, you know.
Speaker 4:I'm pretty sure Gurr knew the difference between the illusion and reality. But I think I sure hope so I do too. But he was obviously touched. I saw that clip, yeah, and it's real interesting too, because when you listen to Mr Gurr talk— yeah, which we have, yeah, and I got to chat with him for just a brief minute he tends to kind of hold his feelings for Walt at arm's length. Minute. He tends to kind of hold his feelings for Walt at arm's length. You feel like there's something going on there that maybe he's not saying or it's hard to say. He certainly talked about often about, like, leaving Disney and how happy he was to work at other places. But you see moments like that and you're like, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:I think. Well, it definitely hits on the nostalgia part where he misses the Walt that he first started working for, Right. You know, like that's, and that's something that is pretty interesting, that people who are purveyors of nostalgia yeah, you know.
Speaker 4:Well, and then you know, after Walt, he worked for a couple of different people and he would always sort of rate them by how much they were willing to go. Here's the thing I want. Just go do it.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 4:Which you know you certainly first experienced with Walt. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So back to Jungle, Cruise Jungle. Cruise. Yeah, there was this pursuit and agreement with Lucasfilm. Yeah, to have Star Tours open up, mm-hmm. And then, once Star Tours was open, they said, well, what else have you got? Well, we got Howard the Duck. No, let's not do that. Well, we got, we have.
Speaker 4:Indiana Jones Willow.
Speaker 2:Willow, no, no.
Speaker 4:As much as.
Speaker 2:I love Warwick Davis, sure, but we have Indiana Jones, and at the time Indy was hot, hot, hot. I mean it had literally set the standard for so many action films from that point on. Yeah for sure. A lot of copycats and a lot of it's like Indiana Jones dot dot dot, but in Brooklyn, right, yeah. Or in Astoria, washington, whatever Goonies, it was kind of marketed as another Indiana Jones, only with kids, and it has short round in it. So how could you get wrong? How could? You go wrong with it.
Speaker 2:Good old Ki'e Kwan, it's still pretty fun. Oh, I love Goonies, but the trick with the Jungle Cruise now is that it's in the way, yeah, yeah, and, like you said, you've got that passageway, so it's in the way.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's in the way.
Speaker 2:So they embraced it rather than getting rid of it, and there was actual fear. Yeah, which? Is brilliant yeah.
Speaker 2:There was actual fear. I remember this. There was actual fear from the fans that they were going to get rid of the Jungle Cruise Right Just to accommodate Indiana Jones, because it's so big. There's no way we won't be able to accommodate an Indiana Jones. Well, they found a way, but we'll cover that in an Indiana Jones episode. Yes, let's get to the Jungle Cruise Right, and one of the best things that they did is as much as I love the look of the old Jungle Cruise boathouse, the landing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, boy, that new one is great.
Speaker 2:There are places. There's always this great conversation. Kelly and I have had this conversation. I'm sure Many of you listening who are Disney fans and fanatics and Disney adults out there who have had this conversation. If you could live all the time in one place in Disneyland, where would you live and some people go? I'd live in Cinderella's Palace, or I would live in Mr Toad's. I'd live in Toad Hall or I'd live in Mr Toad's. I'd live in Toad Hall, or I'd live in the Haunted Mansion. My answer, believe it or not, is actually I want to live in the Jungle Cruise landing house. I want to live there. I literally want to wake up with open walls around me. I'm in a canvas hammock and I've got a hornbill right over me, taking a poop on my shoes and waking me up.
Speaker 2:And I hear today on the Jungle Cruise there'll be more water on the Irrawaddy River.
Speaker 4:And you wake up in the morning, lean out the window and go, you young lad, get me a bingo barbecue skewer Right. Yeah, is it Christmas yet?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what day is it? It's Jungle Cruise Day. Wait, did you just see that? Ostrich? What? The biggest one, as big as me. But if it was a real place, that's where I would be totally content to live out the rest of my life just being a skipper. Yeah, but living in that outpost because it was so well-developed. It really was All the detail which, over time since 95, has been slowly but surely been whittled away.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's still pretty nice though it is, it's wonderful.
Speaker 2:It's still one of my favorite places, like I actually enjoy standing in line at the Jungle Cruise yeah, just to kind of go. I'm here. Yes, I'm surrounded by 900 other people who just want to get on the ride. Yeah, but I'm actually perfectly content to go, and now I'm standing here.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and check out this cool pinned scorpion on the wall.
Speaker 2:Oh look, here's the medical officer's area yeah, oh, look here's the radio hutch. Yeah, oh, area. Yeah, oh, look here's the radio hutch. Yeah, oh, look here's the chess set with bullets. You know it's like, yeah. Now here's the interesting thing. Yeah, the fact that it's set in 1938 is because it's linked to the Indiana Jones ride. Yes, that's when that ride is supposed to take place is in 1938, and this caused a little bit of trouble. Or maybe not necessarily the Imagineers, because they've got all the resources that they needed, because they poured everything into Indy.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, I remember that year. So at the same time Knott's Berry Farm was opening their Mystery Lodge attraction, which is an attraction I really like, but it's been closed for a while for some reason.
Speaker 2:Which, if you have not had a chance yet, go back to our previous episode on mystery shacks. Yes, little show plug.
Speaker 4:But I remember someone saying like the mystery lodge cost a million dollars, indiana Jones cost a hundred million dollars, and you know today. So this was, you know, early 90s money. So today would be significantly more.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, oh yeah, big time. So what they did? There's something that I find absolutely fascinating. Kelly and I have both had the pleasure of being at Disneyland pretty close to when both of these attractions opened. Yeah, so, especially for the Indiana Jones, yes, I was there the day they were doing previews for famous people.
Speaker 4:You know, and I didn't know I had actually. So here's my embarrassing nerd credentials. I was down in the area because I had gone to a Doctor who convention and you know I wanted yeah no lie, kelly and I are massive Doctor who nerds.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I don't just mean the new show, I mean we are old school Doctor who nerds.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, I wanted to meet the fifth Doctor and Tegan, who were both there.
Speaker 2:As I'm talking to Kelly right now. Kelly literally has a diorama of little Doctor who figurines on his shelf here. They're all black and white. Yeah, it's pretty great.
Speaker 4:I have two separate TARDISes with different crews around them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so now that you know there's his credentials, so he really was there.
Speaker 4:Yes, I really was.
Speaker 2:You can look up the date on this convention.
Speaker 4:And so I went and went to Disneyland, because I was down there anyway and I was like I'll take a day, and back then it was a lot cheaper. And I went in and there was something going on and that was the day that Ron Dominguez got his window on Main Street. Nice Same day, so I stumbled into that which took.
Speaker 2:Kelly and I forever to find. By the way, kelly's like we're going to go find Ron Dominguez. Yeah, one hour later it took a long time. I mean we found the magical brick wall. We found the half red and white light bulb. All these are things that Kelly was telling me about. I had no clue. I was on the Kelly tour. It was really great. And we finally found the Dominguez window. It was kind of anticlimactic because we were like when we saw everything else. It was great. Climactic because we were like when we saw everything else. It was great, great, let's go get some lunch.
Speaker 4:It was actually a really great window. And I get there and there's kind of all of this new stuff set up and Indiana Jones is not officially open yet, though we had heard that there might have been some soft openings, but it was all roped off. And I'm standing there and I'm like, oh, look, there's George Lucas, like going into the Indiana Jones ride, Right, you know, there's this person. And at one point someone taps me on the shoulder and it's like, excuse me. And I look back and it's it's Roy Disney jr. And I'm like, and I'm like, get out of his way because that's what you do. And I'm like this is amazing. We didn't get to go on the ride that day. It was all for famous people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't let all those people on board, because I'm showing all the fancy people what Indiana Jones is all about Also it's breaking down every 15 minutes.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, but anyway. So Jungle Cruise. So yeah, they've moved the boathouse a little. They've done this beautiful design on the boathouse. They have not yet redesigned the boats, but they're going to in a couple of years.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, so it's a weird transition, because the boathouse got fixed up first because they needed something for people to do at Disneyland, while these giant walls are built all the way around the treehouse. Yep, the treehouse was shut down for a while to construct Indy because it was that complicated, yeah, and so it was actually kind of unattractive. They also didn't want people to go up in the treehouse to look down on the construction. Yeah, that was the other part of that.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They also shut a lot of. They painted over a lot of the windows on the side of the building from the Disney Gallery which was at the time. It's now the Uber Celebrity Magic. Suite or something like that, but this was Disney's second apartment that was supposed to be above Pirates of the Caribbean.
Speaker 4:Right, I miss the Disney Gallery being above Pirates of the Caribbean. I do too. I used to really like that. There was something classy about that, yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know why. I think it was the circular staircase and you got this beautiful view of Tom Sawyer Island.
Speaker 4:And it was very peaceful up there and, yeah, I really liked it up there it felt exclusive without being exclusive.
Speaker 2:By the way, I just looked this up In 1995, strap in folks. Okay, I'm not doing this to make you feel angry or anything like that, but in 1995, it cost you $31 to get into Disneyland for a one-day pass. Wow, $31. And it had increased from $16.50 in 1985. It cost you $16.50 to get to.
Speaker 4:Disneyland in 1985. Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:Wow. So anyway, in 1995, the Indiana Jones attraction opens, as you know, and the Jungle Cruise had this crossover where it had the white and black and color striped boats Right and color striped boats Right, and then when the Indy ride comes over, there was a concerted effort of saying the boats are looking a little too clean compared to the rest of jungle, of this whole Adventureland area. Right, it needs to tie into the Indy world First off Indiana Jones when it opened up. Yeah, and again, we're going to go further into this in much more detail, but it's obvious to say that, because of the popularity of the property and the hype surrounding the opening of this, ride lines were ridiculous. Yes, they were.
Speaker 2:It was impossible to get onto that ride. Yeah, you could ride it once if you were lucky in a day, right and again, with all the interactivity that the Imagineers had put into that line. You know the don't pull the rope, don't move the bamboo, all that kind of stuff that was in there, and again we'll talk about this another time. They decided in the entertainment department well, we can do that too, and it caused a huge schism among cast members and executives alike through the jungle cruise, a drama that is actually more akin to Evermore. See, all of our Swifties are going to come on back. If I say Evermore a couple more times, I'll put it in the show title. Okay, great, we even talk about Evermore. So what happens is I forget the name of the fellow who was running the entertainment department at the time. He was responsible for revitalizing the spiel.
Speaker 4:Well, and I know, at that point, when they reopened for Indy, they were forbidden from making any jokes that referenced anything that was modern. They were not entirely forced to tighten it down to a script, but they were told you cannot say anything. That's out of the period.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the only joke they were still allowed to make from what I had gathered, having remembered hearing this was referencing you know, don't leave your children behind, don't leave your belongings behind, don't leave your children. If we do, we're going to nail their little feet down.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a small world.
Speaker 2:That's the only joke that was any sort of reference to a modern thing. Right right. So they had built this beautiful, immersive environment and the entertainment department said, well, let's use that immersive environment. And the entertainment department said, well, let's use that. The lines are going to be ridiculous anyway because people are going to say, because of their fast passes, well, we have until now then to ride Indy, let's go on the jungle cruise, let's give them something to do. Well, they got flooded with people and he thought it was going to flow like it normally flows. Yeah, going to flow like it normally flows. A good, solid flow is anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes on a really bad day, yeah, but like 15, 20 minutes because that thing's a people eater. Yeah, he changed all that Because, whoever this person was, I remember reading this. I think it was in a book called Mouse Tales. It was like an unofficial guide to behind the scenes kerfuffles of Disneyland. It talks about the deaths at Disneyland. It talks about all this stuff.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I have that book. Okay, it's somewhere in this book.
Speaker 2:I believe this is where I read this. The story goes is that this executive said first off, we're going to fire all the original skippers.
Speaker 4:Oh, bad idea. That is a tight community and you don't screw with them.
Speaker 2:And we're going to get a whole new set of them and they're all going to be—we're going to audition them they're going to be actors. We're going to get all these improv actors that are starving for work. We're going to put them on the Jungle Cruise because they know how to improv. It would be perfect, you know. And we're going to give them a budget to go off to costume departments, antique stores and put together little details on their costume that fit in the realm of 1938 and make them individual characters. So suddenly we get the equivalent of Wally Bogue's Pecos Bill. Only now you've got Whiskey Pete and Irrawaddy Wally and all these other characters suddenly showing up at the Jungle Cruise Depot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and all of those environments the radio room, the medicine room, the part that's underneath the stairs where there's gas cans all over the place, but there's that chessboard. Yeah, were populated with these actors. Wow, that would also double as skippers. So, like you've got time in the environment and then you have time on the boat, and they trained. They trained on improv, they came up with all of the new spiel that was going to go on the Jungle Cruise and it was a hit. Yeah, with audiences. Yeah, it was not a hit with the rest of the cast members of Disneyland? Yeah, because all of those other skippers either left or got siphoned off to other parts of the park, a lot of them winding up on the fairy tale land boats.
Speaker 2:Yes, Storybook Land, Storybook Land yeah, or they became Haunted Mansion butlers, or they became yeah that'd be my guess right Canoe operators around, or they were piloting the Mark Twain, whatever, or they became Tiki Room operators. Yeah, they were furious. Yeah, and they would watch from afar going what are these guys doing? It doesn't have the same flavor, it doesn't feel right. Yeah, and the new guys were like it totally feels like we're in the world. Man, we're making this immersive. It's totally cool, Uh-huh. We're making this immersive.
Speaker 2:It's totally cool and I remember this. I remember standing in line and interacting with all the characters. I got to play chess on that chess board and help them make a move. Wow, I got to interact. Somebody did a spiel with oh you need this type of medicine in your ear much akin to Shrunken Ned over in Trader Sam's. All of this stuff was going on with these characters in the depot and so by the time I got onto the boat, I feel like I've pretty much been at like a Jungle Cruise equivalent of a Renaissance fair. I mean, this sounds actually pretty great. It is fantastic, it was wonderful. The problem was and one of many, but the one that killed it First off, the executive branch of Disneyland actually had to intercede because there was so much talking behind the scenes between the old skippers and the new skippers yeah, that they were like just shut up, Just stop. Yeah, Just stop. They would have secret meetings of the old skippers.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, To talk about oh, these guys, we're going to take it back, man, we're going to take it back. You know like it really caused some serious interdepartmental drama. Yeah, and what really killed it was one day was Tony Baxter going to Disneyland and seeing this line out in front of the Nickelodeon on Main Street, yeah, and saying, oh wow, what's this line for? Is there something like a celebrity or a special event? No, this is for the Jungle Cruise. Oh what, it would take two hours to get through the line at the Jungle Cruise because these actors slowed it down so much. Oh wow, they became the show so much that the line had nowhere to go and it took forever to go from spot to spot to spot. Yeah, because they're not all coordinated, so it's not like they're all doing their spiel simultaneously and then moving the crowd. Right, the crowd would back up until that spiel would be done. But, like anybody knows who's in any sort of like traffic jam ie the 101 or the 405, knows that when one car stops, the one behind it stops.
Speaker 2:And even though the first one keeps going, the other one is still stopped. Yeah, so that caused such a traffic jam. They said forget it. No, the whole point of this was to get rid of the like. The lines were longer for the Jungle Cruise than they were for Indy, so they got rid of it. Yeah, it didn't last very long. So I got to see that when both were open. Wow, I did not get to ride Indiana Jones because the line was so ridiculous. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I mean it'd be like four to six hours. Yeah, it was that bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it took me two hours to get to the Jungle Cruise, but it was one of the most memorable Jungle Cruises ever. Yeah, the sad part of it is you can actually see some of that spiel and some of that attitude that's going on with the Jungle Cruise in the Michael Eisner version of Wonderful World of Disney on ABC, where they're announcing the opening of Indiana Jones but they also say you know, that's right, Mickey, we're here at the. You know, that's my Michael Eisner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, actually no.
Speaker 2:Wait, here's my perfect Michael Eisner. You ready? All right, you know, that's my Michael Eisner. Yeah, yeah, actually, no, wait, here's my perfect. Michael Eisner.
Speaker 2:You ready? All right, you know this is my Michael Eisner, so, okay, all right. Yeah, so we're here at Disney. You know, disneyland, the magical world of Disney, and I'm here with Goofy, isn't that right? That's right, michael, we're here in Disneyland. It's Tony Danza. Hey, how you doing it is, it's Tony Danza getting on the hey how you doing Michael. Yeah, I was going to go get on the Jungle Cruise. And he gets on the Jungle Cruise and his skipper is Charles Fleischer, the voice of Roger Rabbit.
Speaker 2:And they did this. I thought this would have been great if they actually did this on the ride. Yeah, they loaded the boat up with stunt people, uh-huh, and so every time they would come upon something that was anywhere remotely dangerous, something would happen, and Tony winds up being the only one left on the boat, because everybody gets shot with poison darts or gets attacked by a giant snake or gets thrown off the water by hippos, yeah, but you can kind of get a little bit of the hint of the interactivity, it.
Speaker 2:But you can kind of get a little bit of the hint of the interactivity. It's just a little hint of what was left of that brief era of the Jungle Cruise interactive version. But they got rid of almost all those actors because most were like I'm a great actor, I had to audition for this. They felt insulted that. You know, like I'm just going to be a skipper, I have to do all this. I can't improv anymore, I'm out of here. Well, guess what? All the old skippers are like wow, we're back, baby. So the old skippers came back, yeah, and it became what it is now. That's so fascinating. I wish I could have seen that that was a very short period of time. It did not last long.
Speaker 4:But it was. I'm kind of of two minds because I'm like the idea is fascinating. It sounds really really interesting. Also, I kind of trust the skippers that have been doing it for years and if they were like this is not right, I kind of trust them.
Speaker 2:Well, the personalities also slow down the tours, because some of them would say, hey, you got to have some sort of personality quirk, yeah. So like, obviously we can't have Indiana Jones steering the boat and you can't be Indiana Jones, but you could be Whiskey Wally, and Whiskey Wally is like a mechanic. And so what if your boat broke down right in the middle of the hippo pool? Yeah, and then it's that again, it's like traffic Every little couple of seconds that you're throwing it off rather than keeping it flowing Right. It's that delicate balance of being a skipper, of keeping it flowing and yet giving them good show, yeah.
Speaker 1:And when you're adding like yeah, I'm from Brooklyn and I got my 1938, you know Yankees cap on here and I'm telling you the run of these boats across the jungle. It's really hard on an engine over here. So let me tell you you got to really avoid them hippos over there, because they remind me of my ex-wife. Let me tell you something.
Speaker 2:You're like shut up and just say they're wiggling their ears and shoot the pistol. Okay, it's going already.
Speaker 2:Now as much of a hit as it was, I thought it was great. My visit was in June of 1995. Okay, and I remember it distinctly because, like I walked out of there with so—I spent almost the entire day just in Adventureland. Yeah, really, mostly spent my entire day in Adventureland from dawn till dusk to absorb this new world of indie and adventure and jungles and these people in the depot and it's my favorite. Wow, this is so cool. And I walked out with like bags of Randotti. It was one of the few years where Randottis were still being sold, so I got a few Randotti skulls and rubber snakes and Indiana Jones hat and I had the paper decoder and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I found my decoder, book and things not that long ago downstairs that I got that first year over time is what we view as skippers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Before then isn't exactly the same as we have today.
Speaker 4:The Lowdown on the Plus Up is a BoardWalk Times podcast. At BoardWalkTimesnet 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 BoardWalkTimesnet. Yeah, I mean, they certainly had room to make jokes, and they did make jokes, but every once in a while the brass would come in and tighten them down.
Speaker 2:Right, but they didn't have quite the zing that the Skippers have now, nor do they have the mystique.
Speaker 4:Well, I think we're at a place now where you're getting stand-up comics as Skippers.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and future executives of Pixar. Yes, that's right. That's right. John Lasseter, for all of his uncomfortableness, was a skipper. There's a lot of people that actually got their turn. I mean, for goodness sakes, it is such a thing to kind of grow up in the ranks of actually having the expectation of oh yeah, I got my start as a skipper. That Weird. Al. Yankovic actually wrote a song called Skipper Dan.
Speaker 4:That's right, I saw him perform that live, yep. I saw him perform that live, yep.
Speaker 2:I'm a tour guide on the Jungle Cruise ride. Yep, I love that song. I do too. It's great. It's a little mean, yeah. But at the same time it's mean because it's true. Yeah, no, they're all kind of like actors who are trying to make a living, but I'm going to do it because I'm going to make a living. Yeah, you know, yeah. But they also have to bear the brunt of changing attitudes. Yeah, cultural attitudes. I mean the way that things have changed on the ride over time. Great changes, but they have to deal with those changes.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and we'll get to that because there's some fairly modern changes that were pretty big, that I actually like.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about the ride itself. We talked a lot about skippers and the Indy connection, but let's talk about the ride itself.
Speaker 4:So I thought it'd be kind of interesting because when we did the previous episode we went through kind of what all of the rivers that they were going on were. That changed with Indy? But I'll tell you what. I'll read the old one and come back to it. Oh, wow, so the version of the Jungle Cruise that was like post-1964, so that's post-Mark Davis, updating it with all the jokes, right, and sort of moving characters around and adding some more sophisticated animatronics and stuff. Sure, so what you had was you launched from a boathouse, you had the Mekong River with the temple ruins.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 4:It was the Bengal tiger, the Indian elephant bathing pool. Then you had the Congo Basin, which was the base camp with the gorillas. Then you had the Nile, the African Veldt, the Lost Safari, the Hippo Pool, the Headhunter Territory, schweitzer Falls and the Kilimanjaro Rapids. Then you had the Amazon River, giant Snake, trader, sam, nice. That's pretty much the whole ride. After Indy what you had was the Lost Delta, but it was really an ad for Indy because you were passing the Temple of the Friven Nye right then. So the Irrawaddy River, of course, the Cambodian ruins, the Indian elephant bathing pool Some of this is exactly the same, some of it's different. The abandoned camp with the gorillas They've moved some of the gorillas around the Nile, the African Veldt, the Lost Safari that's one of the big things that's changed more recently. The Hippos, the Headhunter Territory, Backside of Water. Between that early one, 1964, and Indy, they had added Piranha to the Kilimanjaro Rapids.
Speaker 4:I love the Piranha yeah, they're so goofy, I kind of like it, though.
Speaker 2:It's just Piranha and it gets kids. Oh, it, does Kids love the piranha? I mean, come on.
Speaker 4:And you know, the Kilimanjaro Rapids were dumb. They just didn't seem like rapids at all. It's like, oh, there's a couple of rocks over there, so now it's the dumb rapids and a couple of fish on a wheel. It's an improvement. Yeah, the Amazon River, the giant snake again, and then Trader Sam is gone and it's Trader Sam's gift shop. So that's kind of the difference between the two. It changed a bit. Most of the changes had to do with sort of promoting that you're sailing past the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, right, and I actually kind of like that. I like that. It's like we're all in this sort of unified adventure area. I am always hesitant to narrow down the narrative of theme park attractions too much, but I think they were okay there. Where I start to get sketchy is the next thing I want to talk about. It is the Society of Explorers and Adventurers.
Speaker 1:Kongaloosh.
Speaker 2:Kongaloosh yes, let's discuss this. We can't go into too much detail because where it develops, yes. However, we do have to touch on it?
Speaker 4:we do. We do have to touch on it, um, because in many ways a off-the-cuff joke forms a very firm like basis of this entire narrative, which is the joke about schweitzer falls right and dr albert falls right um, and I'm sure at some point we'll do a whole episode about the SEA, because—.
Speaker 2:I think we should. It is, I think we should do that fairly soon.
Speaker 4:It's complex. It is interesting. This is just my opinion. I question nailing down this narrative as much as they have. I mean it's interesting that they've spread it across different continents. Oh yeah, it's not just an Adventureland thing, it's Frontierland, like Big Thunder Mountain's involved in it.
Speaker 2:The Mystic Manor in Shanghai is involved. Mystic Manor's deeply involved in it. The Adventurers Club now RIP.
Speaker 4:Yeah, my dearly beloved Adventurers Club, which is interestingly the thing you're talking about happening at the Jungle Cruise. That's what the Adventurers Club was.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, absolutely. That was kind of the beginnings of it all. Okay, little name droppy, but at the Dickens Christmas Fair, when I was running my little Jules Verne attraction, a bunch of Imagineers.
Speaker 4:And it wasn't a small attraction. It was about little Jules Verne. It was like Jules Verne as a baby.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was really cute too. It was like a little Nautilus pram. He didn't even speak French, he would just go. Anyway, sorry, I'm three, but it wouldn't be a show without a baby impersonation.
Speaker 4:Really, is that a rule?
Speaker 2:now the prospector showed up early on in here. He hadn't had him this season, so he might have shown up at some point. Anyway, and in came several Imagineers who had been a part of designing and I don't know if one of them was Joe Rohde, but it sure looked like him and there was a couple of other people who were very definitely involved in FAIR, who were Imagineers, who were Imagineers.
Speaker 2:And one of them looked at it and said this reminds me of the Adventurers Club in Florida. And I said what's that? And he got this really shocked. Look on his face like you don't know. And I go, no, he goes. Wow, it was like this has that same flavor and that's real. I had no clue. I mean we had. We had a swearing in ceremony yeah, at least fog would say. Everybody raised right hand and repeat after me and from that point on everybody would do I, your name and all you know state your name, and all the stupid jokes had no clue that that had been going on zero. And then it turns out Disney had already done it with the Adventurers Club and I felt kind of like and the more I found out the more I'm like, let's get L'Echon Fantastique involved. Like, can Disney buy into L'Echon Fantastique and make this the French branch of the Adventurers Society Never came about, but there was a brief moment where I went hey, wait a minute, you know. So that flavor.
Speaker 4:I only got one vacation when it was open, but I, when I was there, I loved the adventurers club so much it is. It just it did everything I wanted it to do. It was, it was interactive, it was hilarious, it was weird. Um, you know, me and my friend that were there we got invited into the parlor for a special show where many of the characters went on stage and did recitations and there was a ghost piano player that was accompanying them. Oh yeah, so good, and it was just everything about. It was an absolute delight. And who?
Speaker 2:could forget Slappy. Who could forget Slappy?
Speaker 4:As a weird aside. So Disney has been very odd about how they treat the Adventurers Club Because obviously it got shut down I think a little bit before all of Pleasure Island got shut down, but not too far before and you know they had a very devoted following, including the people that work there. It had a very devoted following, including the people that worked there. So they tried to occasionally hold get-togethers or kind of like little recreations where they do skits and stuff and fans could come and Disney really clamped down on it. They didn't like it for some reason.
Speaker 2:I don't know why. Well, I mean, sometimes in the parlor some of the singers would do songs like Mailman, yeah, which look it up, it's, you know, especially sung by the Fox. Yeah, it's unbelievably filthy, but it's like that was being sung, you know. And then you have like Slappy, yeah, who is this foul mouth little like ventriloquist dummy who is the ventriloquist dummy of a ventriloquist dummy? Yeah, that's one of my favorite things ever. The Colonel had his own ventriloquist dummy and he would come out and sing like the toast song and stuff. Right, I like toast, you know.
Speaker 4:And it's like, oh, my God, well, and and and interesting as, as a quick aside, Disney does seem to have really loosened up their grip on this, because when I was at the Disney World Marathon two Januaries ago, they actually had Adventurers Club. You know, because you run along and there's character stops. They had an Adventurers Club character stop. There were two of the people from the club with like an upside down Jeep.
Speaker 4:Oh nice, and I ran along and I saw them and I just yelled out Kungaloosh, and one of them looked at me and went it's a member, heck, yeah, heck, yeah. So they still understand. And the Adventurers Club? This is why I brought it up in the first place. The Adventurers Club got retconned into the SEA. Yeah, conned into the SEA, yeah, so the SEA didn't really exist when that was going on, but not that long later, after an attraction called Fortress Explorations at Tokyo DisneySea opened up, that's when they started building that narrative, right, and eventually they started using the names of some of the characters from the Adventurers Club as part of the narrative, so it kind of got retconned in Wow. And it wasn't until, though, when they had renovated the Jungle Cruise at Disney World and built the restaurant, the Skipper's Canteen, right when they actually fully put Albert Falls firmly in that narrative.
Speaker 4:I got to eat at the Skipper Canteen last time I was out there. It's a lot of fun because it's basically, skippers are now your waiters, right, and it's a really lovely place. Food's pretty good too. But that was the point where they decided, oh, albert Falls is a real person. He has a daughter, victoria Falls, who took over the company. After he died, right Albert Falls started the Jungle Navigation Company, which is now a part of both parks. He supposedly had built the skipper canteen so that he could use a secret room in the back to have meetings of the SEA. Interestingly enough, there's another reference to the Adventurers Club at the Disneyland Jungle Cruise. There's two pieces of cargo that are where the old FastPass machine, the old physical FastPass machine, are and the cargo is labeled, and it's labeled the names of two of the characters from the Adventurers Club.
Speaker 2:There's more than that. Go for it. If you look, if you're in line and if the line is long enough to circle all the way around on the top bank, the top deck around on the top bank, the top deck there is first off, there is a glass elephant that is inside of a crate that you can see from the outer area.
Speaker 2:That glass elephant used to live inside the ice cream parlor in Main Street. Oh huh, Interesting. They took it out and they needed a place to put it. So they popped it out, put it inside of a crate as if it was like an Indian artifact, and just moved it Because people love the glass. It's fiberglass, it's resin, yeah, but it was the glass elephant. You know it was something kind of cool about this, but it was decorated with it's an Indian elephant and it has all of the little horn, you know, the tusk caps and the howdah on the back. The golden howdah built on the back, yeah, caps. And the howdah on the back, the golden howdah built on the back, yeah. And they said put that in a crate. If you look at those crates, they're all labeled the same way as the cargo that's in the Fastpass, so it's still connected. Oh, interesting. So it's really interesting how they built that in.
Speaker 4:And a lot of the sort of artifacts that the adventurers purportedly brought back to the Adventurers Club. When the club was closed down they were shipped out to different places. A bunch of it was sent out to Mystic Point in Hong Kong, disneyland, and especially the small restaurant next to Mystic Manor which is sort of loosely their haunted mansion kind of it's a great ride.
Speaker 2:Yeah, super of loosely their haunted mansion, kind of it's a great ride. It's a great ride, but it is because the society where it was installed ain't that cool on ghosts. Yeah, they had to keep it kind of more about magic than supernatural scary stuff but super neat.
Speaker 4:And there's a restaurant next door called the Explorers Club. A lot of the Adventurers Club stuff went there. Yeah, called the Explorers Club, a lot of the Adventurers Club stuff went there. And if you go to the Bengal Barbecue at Disneyland, just across the street from the Jungle Cruise, you can go in and there's pictures of some of the other members of the SEA. Yeah, and Albert, the Monkey from Mystic Manor, is in a picture with Bogart and Hepburn sitting on the African queen.
Speaker 2:That's a nice touch. Yeah, so there's another member of the society that I think needs to be mentioned, because this character became installed before Indy even opened. He was a transitional character. Okay, that was kind of laying the groundwork for this bigger world wrapped around the Jungle Cruise. Yeah, his name is Albert AWOL, albert AWOL, albert AWOL, I'm familiar with him. He's the voice of the jungle.
Speaker 2:This is if you were standing in line and you hear, you know, my spurs go jingle, jangle, jingle. Yeah, you listen to the old radio and you hear a couple of radio announcements From 1991 on. Those radio announcements would be interrupted by various reports and audio gags, all hosted by Albert AWOL, and so he would do all the jokes like you know, we have found a wallet, you know, full of $500. Please come over to the radio station and we will. We have found a wallet, you know, full of $500. Please come over to the radio station and we will give you back your wallet. You know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:But he, it became a way like they would make jokes like hi, this is Albert A Wall here at the Jungle Cruise. And we noticed that some of you have actually been noticing that the line isn't moving well enough? Who here thinks that the line isn't moving well enough? Who here thinks that the line isn't moving well enough? Okay, for the rest of you, please take a step to the right and let the others go past. People actually did that. Oh wow, it caused some problems, so they had to get that out of the soundtrack?
Speaker 4:Yeah take it out.
Speaker 2:You know, because they thought it was a real dude talking to them. But Albert A Walls, because they thought it was a real dude talking to him. But Albert AWOL is the voice. Welcome aboard the Jungle Cruise. And here we are, we're listening, there's reports of crocodiles out on the Nile and that's the voice. That's Albert AWOL. He started appearing at the Jungle Cruise outpost in 1991. Okay, and has been kind of a fixture ever since.
Speaker 4:Is Albert Ewald. That's the name of the character. That's the name of the character, Okay.
Speaker 2:He eventually was replaced just with Jungle Radio. Apparently, albert Ewald originally was a pre-recorded character that had all these bits as if he lived in that upper tower in the front of the Jungle Cruise which is above the rest of the line. So he's up there looking down on all the. So he's basically kind of like the conning tower operator. Right, that's Albert A Wall. So he was the guy who was responsible of dispatching all of the boats, getting them out there, making announcements, that kind of stuff, and then in the meantime, like Bill Murray in Meatballs, he would mess with people with his radio. Yeah, right, and that was Albert Ewald. But eventually he was replaced just with straight-up radio, with a couple of those gags put in, yeah, and the personality just kind of went further and further away.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, there are various personalities that they comment upon. There's references to Bob Maddy, yeah, winston Hibbler, a True Life Adventure Films person, and of course Harper Goff. The music and the pace is a lot slower. They actually added him. There was a little bit of an overlap of Albert A Walt into the Temple of the Forbidden Eye line, oh yeah, but just by the truck and the generator. You wouldn't hear the rest of it. You know the further along. Oh, okay, because it was too much Jungle Cruise and not enough Indy, so, but there was enough spillover. That's nice, though. Yeah, there's a nice connection there. It was an overlap, so they would make references to the Temple of the Forbidden Eye. Yeah, if you look on YouTube, you can actually still find recordings of the Albert AW, but he's very definitely worth a listen to.
Speaker 2:Do we know who the actor is? There have been various actors playing him. Let me see who is the disc jockey, if it's listed. Yeah, the name of the radio station that Albert A Wall broadcast on was the DBC, the Disneyland Broadcast Company. Oh right, yeah, but he was very much like a Depression-era radio personnel. It doesn't say who played him, but I'll bet you anything if we looked up who it was, we'll have to do it as a supplemental. Yeah, I think it's the same guy who plays the genie in Aladdin's Other Lamp. Oh, that would make sense. So it's the same era.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No doubt he had a part in Tailspin, or at least Darkwing Duck in the back Right, you know one of those voice actors of the 90s Right.
Speaker 2:Everybody was chipping in at Disneyland at that point yeah, I'm not complaining, it's just the state of affairs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, in 2001, they did some things, like they disarmed the pilots. So now they put the gun in the front of the boat and it's on a chain attached to the boat for obvious reasons. Because of Columbine, they were no longer firing at the animals. They shoot it up in the air to scare them away rather than shooting the animals themselves.
Speaker 4:There was a period where they weren't allowed to fire at all and that seemed to cause some chaos, yep, partially because they could no longer signal the dock that anything was wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were reinstated in 2004. So for three years, the poor skippers at the dock are like when are they getting back? I don't know. When do we launch? I don't know. I remember one skipper. I remember writing about that time. One of the skippers was like everybody scream at the top of your lungs Ah Great, it was at the hippo pool. Yeah, that'll get them going, you know.
Speaker 4:I also have in 1999, the boats were replaced. Yes, they were replaced with boats that were four feet longer and again, bill Evans showed up and talked them into getting rid of the awning. Huh, because he said he was like, look at this point, these plants that we planted what like 38 years before or something he's like some of these are 70 feet tall. Let people see them. Yeah, it looks like a real jungle now.
Speaker 2:Yep, Yep. I mean I always thought it'd be neat to actually put like a netting, so there's still an awning, so like on really hot summer days they could roll out a canvas on top of the netting, but the rest of the time it's just snapped up and out of the way for that exact reason. So you're like we're in the real jungle here. So roughly around 2009, 2010,.
Speaker 2:Roughly around 2009, 2010, they decided to plan on something in the Jungle Cruise specifically and Adventureland specifically, because they were already starting to think about what a new land would feel like at Disneyland. That new land was, of course, star Wars yeah, galaxy's.
Speaker 4:Edge, galaxy's Edge.
Speaker 2:Galaxy's Edge and they were trying to figure out how do we make it interactive, how do we play around with this? Yeah, and if you guys tune into our Evermore episode on interactive stuff and the Intergalactic Star Cruiser, you will actually hear a lot more about this. But this is that time period in which they were playing around with interactive games. Yeah, and the Jungle Cruise played very heavily into this, where you would do various activities with various skippers all over Adventureland. Yeah, there were little spots all over the place and you had different jungle activities, like imitate your favorite jungle animal and then take this over here and do that. Take your favorite jungle animal and then take this over here and do that.
Speaker 2:Right, and people thought it was great because they accumulated as prizes. They would accumulate these little tiki's, yeah, these little totems on different things that were based off of different decorative elements, mostly very reminiscent of the works of Roley Crump Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And then, of course, in 2013, I think it was Mm-hmm Let me check my dates because I know all of you Jungle Cruise people are going to correct me 2013, they introduced Jingle Cruise, yes, in which they do a holiday overlay for the Jungle Cruise, with snowmen and hats on the animals.
Speaker 4:And it's really awful, but I like it. Just a shout out to our friends over at the Backside of Water podcast. They're nice people. Yes, they are and they did. It was a couple of years ago. They did a musical episode where they were trapped in the jingle crypt and it's really great. That's so awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean they did it in 2013. They had their own, like the whole tour had its own holiday-themed script. They brought it back in 2014, and then it continued. I'm not sure when they stopped doing it. I don't know if they still do it or not. The jingle crypts yeah, I think they do, do they? I'm not sure when they stopped doing it.
Speaker 4:I don't know if they still do it or not. The Jingle Cruise yeah, I think they do. Do they.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure they do it every year I remember fairly recently, actually, this was when he was 17, something like that, a little bit before that. Yeah, they had to shut down the Jungle Cruise for renovations, so the elephants needed re-skinning and repairs. You know, I got to see them airlift one of the elephants out with a helicopter. That's awesome, it was cool. It was like, wow, I beat unseen everything. Yeah, no, there it is, because I've seen an elephant fly there.
Speaker 2:it is as uncomfortable as that song makes me feel. Yeah, but still, it was really cool. But they did something brilliant. They shut down the ride and everybody who came over to see it got an apology from the skippers standing out front. Really, here's how they handled it. They put the usual giant plywood walls. You know, coming next season at Disneyland, yeah, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. They put that out in front and they would have a couple skippers there with a big map of the Jungle Cruise and they would act out the Jungle Cruise, oh my God. In front of you. They would have a couple little props and things like that and joke with you. This was their way of saying sorry, it'll be renovated. They would answer the question sorry, it's going to be coming back, but while you're here, and they would gather a crowd and be like all right, you're all on the cruise with us. You know, here's the backside of water and you'd drink a water.
Speaker 1:It was great.
Speaker 4:Oh that's awesome.
Speaker 2:I thought that was brilliant and it really got laughs and that's the thing that carries over between the two versions. Yeah, the earliest versions, you know.
Speaker 1:Earl Ravenscroft. Over there you'll see ginger, be careful.
Speaker 2:Ginger snaps, you know yeah, you go from that to today's Jungle Cruise. Yeah, the humor and the playful attitude of all of that has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and so you know, we have an attraction that from the beginning was supposed to be some sort of kind of naturalistic salute to the true life adventures and then became this slightly more comic kind of play on the African queen, a little bit, with just some sort of comic, you know, darkest Africa tropes, right, and then got, you know, dragged into 1938. And elements of all of those are still there. Oh yeah, you know it was never completely redone. There's bits of all of those and the one through line is the Skippers.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, and it becomes its own worst enemy in some ways, because a couple years ago, right in the middle of the pandemic, they began production on the Jungle Cruise movie, yeah, starring Dwayne the Rock Johnson, and I had high hopes for this because I went. Okay, if it's like Brendan Fraser's Mummy, where it's tongue-in-cheek and action, it's kind of fun and there is some of that there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's not because we saw it together. Our families went and saw it at the drive-in. Yep.
Speaker 2:I wish it was a float-in. That would have been a lot more appropriate for us, but it was at the drive-in yep, and there is a lot about it that I enjoy.
Speaker 2:Yes, but it tried so hard to be Pirates of the Caribbean, yes, that it lost the point of what makes the Jungle Cruise good. Right, we don't need, you know, undead conquistadors, we don't even need the Tree of Hope. Yeah, we just need to see an idiot skipper and someone who's on a very serious journey, where the skipper, you know, like the river goes left, the river goes right. Which one are you going to take? We're going to take the serious one with the goofy skipper. So the goofy skipper's attitude actually helps them get through the more serious river. Yes, but the fact that they actually my favorite part of the whole movie is when you're first watching Dwayne Johnson doing his own jungle cruises. Yeah, and everything is pasteboard. Yes, he's got actors dressed up as headhunters yeah, it's great. And his backside of water is literally just a tube hanging over the boat, it's so good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that I laughed out loud at that moment and unfortunately that's the best part of the whole movie. Yeah, and they were talking about doing a full overlay to make it match the movie, because they were so convinced that this was going to be it. This was going to change everything and they said, never mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the movie didn't take off at all, but they did take that budget and they put it into the current version, kind of updating some of the gags, Like the lost safari and Sam, and turning it into his little depot with the monkeys going all over it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I think this is a nice update. I think what they did was pretty classy. They took out some of the more troubling things, you know, just some of the more culturally inappropriate things. Now, uh, they just kind of excise them without sacrificing the jokes.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, well, the loss of Fari. They just changed. They just changed genders and cultures and it was like that's great, that worked out Just as funny hunters. I really here's, here's. This is close to a plus up. Here's, this is close to a plus up the headhunters. What I really wanted to do was to have them be Jungle Cruise recruiters, oh that'd be great.
Speaker 4:So here comes a bunch of headhunters, hey you want to work for us?
Speaker 2:hey, you want to work for us, so that way. Want to be a skipper? No, no, no, no, we've got plenty of skippers, don't worry, they go. Oh yeah, same animatronics but like oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no, no, no no no where we've seen them just sort of update some cultural insensitivities to something a little I don't know if more appropriate is the right word, but a little less shocking.
Speaker 4:And I think with the Jungle Cruise they kind of did it right. And with Pirates of the Caribbean I do think that there were some things that needed to be fixed. With Pirates of the Caribbean and for those of you who are going to kind of come after me going, this is an original Walt attraction. Walt himself was concerned about some of the things in Pirates of the Caribbean and said so several times Like I'm not sure we may have gone too far with this them.
Speaker 4:To update it was not inappropriate, no, that said, in this case it screwed up some of the jokes.
Speaker 2:I agree, yeah, I agree, which I think actually we are to a point unless you have some more tidbits to share, I don't think so reached a point now where this is the point of our show, in which we discuss without any consideration to money or safety or feasibility, our plus-ups. Yeah, and I went last time. Oh, no, punk. So it's your turn to start off our plus-ups.
Speaker 4:Okay, I think that Tony Baxter's idea was a pretty good one and that if the Jungle.
Speaker 4:Cruise could run into a little bit of Indiana Jones. That that would be super cool. So and I recognize this would take a whole bunch of excavation and moving things and doing things that are probably impossible at this point, but it would make the Jungle Cruise longer, which is great. It had to be shortened a little bit for Indy. Yes, Not to the same level that the rivers of America were shortened for Galaxy's Edge by any means, but it was shortened a bit. Extend it, Let it run through some area, even if it just kind of goes through parts of the queue or something I don't know.
Speaker 2:You're just saying that because you want to be able to share your knowledge about the water system of Disneyland. Hey, did you know? Water system of Disneyland? Hey, did you know? No, but so it'd be okay. I'm looking over there behind me and Kelly's wife is giving me the eyeball. Stop, I don't see nothing.
Speaker 4:The weird thing is that the water does flow that way but it hits the jungle cruise and kind of turns back towards the rivers of America. So you've got a little bit of an issue there extending the water farther, because you're kind of extending it farther upstream towards Indy. But I think you could do it.
Speaker 2:With your plus-up. That would be actually kind of cool is to actually I know where we could extend it into is to actually make the river kind of weave in and out a little bit of the temple at the exit portion. So while you're exiting you still have to go over hills and scaffolds, maybe have like a little bit of a rope bridge to go over, so like the boat actually goes underneath the rope bridge. As you're leaving Indy and you've got this boat under—I mean, yes, again spitting, but that's why we don't put nets on top of the boat. Yeah, we didn't say anything about this being feasible or safe, but it would still be cool.
Speaker 4:It would still be cool, but then— and I'd just love to see some more integration between the different attractions.
Speaker 2:Well, and what you do is you change some of the temple. Instead of make it a Bengal temple, the elephant god or whatever, you make it the temple of the forbidden nose.
Speaker 4:And so you go into the nostril through the— yeah, you go into the nostril of Mara looking for the forbidden emerald.
Speaker 5:My friends, my friends, welcome aboard the Jungle Cruise. We're going to be looking for the forbidden emerald inside of the nose of Mara, so hold on tight, be sure to pick the right one. Though there are millions of emeralds, you have to pick the right one inside the nose of Mara. Kleenexes will be available at the exit by the elephant pool. You could wash your hands there.
Speaker 1:Just ask, big Bertha.
Speaker 2:Kelly's almost peeing himself laughing.
Speaker 4:So wait, I'm going to add one more thing to my plus up. Also, let's put a tiki bird on the boat, so that while you're going around the Jungle Cruise, the skipper can do his spiel, but there's also, like, say, a Rosita or something, sitting on the boat, a sidekick, yeah, that can occasionally make comments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there could be hornbills. We could have talking hornbills on this thing.
Speaker 1:Oh, that'd be awesome.
Speaker 2:You know like we haven't heard that joke before. Yeah, like the Greek core, they're the Statler and Walder for the Jungle Cruise boats. Yes. Like, each one gets its own smart ass bird.
Speaker 4:Actually, that would be great. That's a better plus up than my first part.
Speaker 2:I kind of like that one. That is actually a good one and it's doable. It is doable. Yeah, make it more interactive. You know as much as we railed against the possibilities of interactivity. And again, this is like one of my favorite locations at Disneyland. Yeah. Like, the Haunted Mansion is great, but it's great as a ride, it's not really a location. Yeah, as much as a lot of you, I'm sure, will argue against me, I mean, believe me, I've been doing haunted houses for 40 years for a reason. It's because of the mansion.
Speaker 2:But the Jungle Cruise, to me, is a world that I want to play in, so my plus-up would actually have guest skippers, and I don't mean that they do the spiel.
Speaker 2:I mean like let somebody steer the boat, that would be something. But having that Greek chorus is actually pretty close to the plus up that I was thinking. Yeah, but it would be more along the lines where, like, what's his name? Albert AWOL would actually still pop up now and then on the tour, but in, like the Lost Safari area where, like the gorillas have taken over the camp and you hear Albert AWOL like you better look out for those monkeys, guys. You know, it's a little bit like where's the rebel spy?
Speaker 4:Yes exactly Like there's one of you on board the ship that is going to cause some trouble, you know I think it would be brilliant and fairly simple to actually have the Albert A Wall voice pop up on the radio routes where we actually dig out a new river.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it splits, and what happens is that the skipper doesn't know which one they're going to get. Neither does the audience. Yeah, so it could be the left one, or the right one.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and one goes into the nostril of the forbidden nose.
Speaker 2:But you know it could be a lot of fun to actually have just a small veer off to one side with even more gags, more strangeness. Yeah, and this one is like the rivers of the Amazon or the rivers in Hawaii, something different, yeah, just to add a little bit more, a little bit of variety, a little bit more variety, and you're not quite sure. So, rather than getting the entire same tour, like, oh, we're on tour A, I love tour A. I'm a tour B person, you know. I love it when we don't go down the Nile, the Nile's kind of boring. I love it when we don't go down the Nile, the Nile's kind of boring.
Speaker 2:Let's go down this one, right, you know that kind of thing. I thought, yeah, that'd be fun, yeah, that'd be really neat, yeah, so something like that would be kind of fun. I mean, it's not as involved and it's not actually as exciting as your plus-ups, but it definitely is something that I would like to see.
Speaker 4:Yeah, more Jungle Cruise. More is better.
Speaker 2:When it comes to.
Speaker 4:Jungle Cruise. I'm right there with you.
Speaker 2:I mean, I actually love the Jungle Cruise in Disney World. We haven't even talked about that one. I know that one has a temple.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the Cambodian Ruins Temple, yeah, the.
Speaker 2:Cambodian Ruins Temple and the one in Hong Kong. It actually has a volcano that goes off. I mean, that really feels like adventure, whereas Disneyland's purity of we're going to go for a goofy Gilligan's Island type cruise on this jungle ride. Yeah, it's like okay, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 4:It's fun. It's super quaint, it's fun. It does very much hinge on whether your skipper's good or not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know what that does. And this is a credit to the skippers and also to the designers, everybody who put anything into it, into the Jungle Cruise. It's one of my favorite rides and one of my favorite worlds at Disneyland because, yes, even though the animals are animatronic, it is one of the most believable. Yeah, it's almost more believable than, say, you know, going along the rivers of America with the Mark Twain. Yeah, because even if you didn't say you're in different rivers, like, oh, we're going down the Nile, yeah, or we're going down this, or you could have called it the Swiss family jungle cruise and I would have been fine with it, sure, but in the Swiss family Robinson, they've got ostriches and Indian elephants on the same island, and you're like, what, who cares? Yeah, it's a jungle, it's a pastiche of, it's the Anaheim jungle. Right, you can name the rivers whatever you want. We're now going down the. We're following the Gulf Stream. Right, we're going down Evans Falls Rapids.
Speaker 4:And now, of course, since it's an actual jungle, it's become a tautology. It honestly is a jungle. Whatever you say it is, then it's true, because you're saying this is what I call this. Well, this is actually a jungle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and bring the piranha back.
Speaker 4:That's right. They haven't been working much lately have they.
Speaker 2:No, what would be great is if the piranha actually gets you just after Trader Sam's. You know, what would be great is if the piranha actually gets you just after Trader Sam's and just have one of them with a little sign going forget me.
Speaker 4:Miss me. Oh, one other thing before we close up. Yeah, when you hit the new Trader Sam's thing which I think is funny, with all the chimps playing around with this stuff and taking your picture, yeah, does it seem like a missed opportunity that it doesn't actually just take your picture?
Speaker 2:Right, like if you and have a little kiosk Like this is a great plus-up actually. Yeah. And it's a simple one that Disneyland could do, because they could sell this. I mean, they've already got people out there taking your photographs in front of the castle anyway, right? So what if you have it, so it's automated, so like on Splash Mountain or Space Mountain you get the scream photograph, but it's the same thing.
Speaker 2:Only you're on the Jungle Cruise. You're like ah yeah, strike a pose everybody. The monkeys Wave at the monkeys. Ah, give us a good kungaloosh. Ah, yeah, give us a good Kungaloosh. Yeah, you know. And then when you get off, there's a kiosk with your number, yeah, and you can scan it with a QR code or whatever, or you buy it right there and there and you get a little frame around it. I think that'd be great. Yeah, I'm all for it.
Speaker 4:I am too.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, kungaloosh everybody, thank you very much for listening to us. That ends this episode. The next time we get together, we'll talk about something else, Something different, who knows? Hopefully something different. Yeah, because I get so tired of hearing about the Jungle Cruise and how great it is, I'll Jungle Cruise all the time. So, anyhow, I'm Albert AWOL and I'm Victoria Falls, and you've been listening to the Lowdown on the Plus Zone been listening to the Lowdown on the Plus Up.
Speaker 4: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 boardwalktimesnet. Feel free to reach out to Pete and I at Lowdown on the Plus Up on Blue Sky, Mastodon, instagram and all the other socials, or you can send us a message directly at comments at lowdown-plus-upcom. We really want to hear about how you'd plus these attractions up and read some of your ideas on the show. Our theme music is Goblin Tinker, soldier Spy by Kevin MacLeod at incompetechcom. We'll have a new episode out real soon. Why? Because we like you.
Speaker 6:This is the Global Broadcasting Service, serving remote outposts since 1928. The weather here this morning is hot and humid. A typhoon warning has been issued for coastal areas near the South China Sea and a storm watch has been posted along the coast of eastern Africa. Tropical Imports announces that the Special Jungle Cruise Dispatch has arrived, bringing with it a generous supply of extra-fine mosquito netting, guaranteed impervious to mosquito and tsetse fly. Remember, when it comes to sleeping sickness, prevention is the only cure.
Speaker 7:That's mosquito netting at Trader Sam's. And now let's get back to our musical program. You must remember this a kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. The fundamental things apply as time goes by.
