The Enchanted Tiki Room opened to the public on June 23, 1963. It was the first attraction to rely on audio-animatronics, with singing birds, flowers, tikis, and a magic fountain. As many of you know, the attraction was originally intended to be a restaurant, and a beautiful silk-screened poster was produced advertising it as such. Of course the purpose of the poster was really to advertise the three Stouffer's-sponsored eateries.
The Barker Bird is doing his thing...if you look beneath the "U" in the Adventureland sign, you can see a boy looking up at the parrot, but nobody else seems to be paying much attention!
12 comments:
The colors on that poster are sensational! It's so energetic and inviting. Love it! And I want it! :P
Great post Major. I have always liked that poster, but could never afford the asking price.
Very cool pics! On the far sign on the left, under where it says United, it looks like something was photoshopped out on the sign....????
anonymous, nothing was photoshopped out...PS was only used for adjusting the brightness and color of the slide.
Hmmm... something is missing on that sign. Looks like it was photoshopped. It should say 'Enchanted Tiki Room' not just the word 'Tiki'.
WOW what a great post. Sorry I've missed all the fun for the holidays. I have yet to see a slide with the Barker Bird... great job Major. As to anonymous' question, it does look like something is missing... but it appears that there is a large square covering up the area. You can see it pretty clearly. I wonder if this might have been during a soft open. The reason would be the covering up the sign and no one but a boy paying attention to the Barker Bird. That bird had plenty to say and judging that all eyes are somewhere else… maybe his sound (or animation) was turned off. This is just a thought. Great post!
Major, Is it possible that a previous owner of the file photoshoped the text for some unknown reason? There's clearly a lilac patch over the text in two places. Other photos contemporary to yours show the full text as reading: (United Airlines)
"Presents
Walt Disney's
Enchanted
Tiki
Room"
It looks like innocent tinkering since the only thing that might be changed for publicity reasons is the deletion of the old sponsor's name.
Katella's Gate and Anonymous, the image is from a slide that I own, and it was scanned by me! So it is straight from the source. Again, no photoshop alterations were involved. What would be the point?
Amazon Belle, this slide was from two years after the Tiki Room opened, so a "soft open" doesn't make sense. (Unless I wrote down the wrong date, which is certainly possible...).
I wish I could explain the mystery behind the altered sign, but I had nothin' to do with it. I didn't even notice it until you guys pointed it out!
Hey everybody, if you look at my post from December 11th, I think it will solve this mystery. The other lettering is so close in value to the background that it could easily vanish at a distance, and it is so blocky that it also resembles a large rectangle. Both photos are from 1965, so it makes sense (I'm not sure, but they might be from the same lot of slides too...I scanned them weeks ago so I have forgotten).
Good call, Major Pepperidge! Glad you had that Dec 11th shot. It sent me looking for my Barker Bird photos. Sure enough, those missing words were written in a 'dirty pink' that seems to fade with distance. But here's a new puzzlement I discovered... most of my Barker Bird shots show a bird with RED feathers! Did they have two different birds?
Anonymous, I admit that I do not know the anwer to your question regarding whether there was more than one Barker Bird. But the repro that was sold recently had blue and green plumage, rather than red.
Major thanks for the additional photo shots of the Tike Room sign explaining the missing words. You rock my friend!
Regarding colors, my understanding from working the show was that there were back up birds to the Barker. Usually it was identifiable by a thicker coat of feathers (it literally looked like a fur/shag carpet). This was pointed out to me by Working Lead who had been employed for the Park 23 years prior to my arrival in 1986. And if I'm not mistaken the Barker Bird on display in The Walt Disney Story (before the 50th show) was the orange/red color. Major you are again right on regarding the blue/green colors of the reproduction bird. Great questions.
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