Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Tiki Room Entrance, January 1965


Before guests entered the Enchanted Tiki Room, they first waited in an outdoor garden area and enjoyed a pre-show introduction. Various tikis (Kor, Maui, Pele, Rongo, Tangaroa, and Tangaroa-Ru) would introduce themselves to guests. To the right is Tangaroa, "Father of all Gods and Goddesses. Here in this land of enchantment, I appear before you as a mighty tree! Stand back! Oh mystic powers, hear my call. From my limbs, let new life fall."

Dig those crazy trash cans! I haven't visited the Tiki Room for a long time, does anybody know if those are still there? The next time I am at Disneyland, I am going to make a point to check it out. It was great to hear that the attraction got a beautiful upgrade for the 50th celebration, since it represents an important step in audio-animatronics technology, and was such a personal point of pride for Walt Disney. Hopefully folks will be able to hear the "birds sing words and the flowers croon" for many more years to come.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The tikis are still there in all of their tiki glory.
The only one that isn't there is Uti who lived in a canoe above everything.

Daveland said...

The tikis are still there but I do not believe those way cool trashcans remain.

Matterhorn1959 said...

Hey Major- I think the new trashcans are the square ones. I will check them out today...

Nice view of a scarcely photographed area.

Anonymous said...

Howdy Major and *many* thanks for digging out this early Tiki Room slide. I've been trying to establish the original color palate for this attraction for some time and while the art direction hasn't drifted as far from the original concept as, say, It's a Small World, there's a lot of details that have been lost over the years.

A particular problem is the casual "tribal art" painted on the walls between the bamboo... the modern stuff has always had kind of a juvenile look but the original art is hard to document.

As for the dome top trash cans, they are long gone, as are the ash tray stands on each side of the door. The new ones are the standard-issue square pattern painted with generic jungle jazz.

Daveland said...

Here's a pic of the trashcans and that area today:
http://davelandweb.com/adventureland/images/10_06_DSC_2595.jpg

Connie Moreno said...

OMG those trash cans!!!!