Kids Loving the Jungle Cruise - 1956
Everybody likes the Jungle Cruise, but for a kid in 1956, it must have been the coolest thing ever. Elephants, rhinoceroses, hippos, and of course - headhunters! Today's photos are less about the Jungle Cruise and more about kids on board.
Four moppets are silhouetted against the lush jungle - I think a rhino just circled past us - and these kids are hardly blinking. They don't want to miss a thing! I'm pretty sure that '56 was before the Skippers did their humorous spiels, which in a way might have made things more real for impressionable minds.
I love this one! Two buzz-cut boys watch as hungry crocs swim past the boat - and one of them is leaning waaaay over the railing for a better look. He might be one of those wisenheimers who tries to spot the underwater mechanisms, but my guess is that he was completely immersed in the experience.
11 comments:
Major-
If the wisenheimer who is leaning waaay out over the edge of the boat ventures out any farther, he truly will become "immersed".
Thanks, Major.
The Duchy of Wisenheim was once a flourishing Central European power until they were run over by some very literal-minded barbarians who didn’t read the sarcasm in “Sure, come sack our castles. We don’t care.”
Since then, the Great Wisenheim Diaspora has introduced Wisenheimer blood into family trees all over the world. You can always tell a descendent of the once-mighty Herzogen zu Wisenheim when you see someone without a costume at a Halloween party saying, “I’m disguised as a regular person;” or when you hear someone repeat your words back to you in a silly voice during an argument; or when you see a kid lean waaay out of a boat on the world-famous Jungle Cruise.
After all, didn’t Grand Duke Willibald von Kartoffelpuffer zu Wisenheim switch from the Right Party to the Left Party after dangling his hand out of a boat to feed the crocodiles?
Nanook, as a kid I would have LOVED to swim through the Jungle Cruise. In fact, I still want to do that.
Melissa, you can often tell a Wisenheimer from their prominent ears, even in old paintings. Sometimes they even write their own blogs.
The kid leaning waaaay over must be John Jacob Wisenheimer Schmidt.
The original Hokey Pokey was written after a tour of the DL Jungle:
You put your right hand in,
You pull your right hand back,
Now you only have a left hand.
Wisenheimer in Denver
I believe it was around the same time as the great Irish potato famine of the mid-1800s when some descendants of the Wisenheim line first emmigrated to the U.S., having been granted 40 acres by president Polk. They dubbed these the "Wise Acres" and built their first Acme Novelty Products plant there, which they later sold to Johnson Smith.
If I'm not mistaken.
You people are funny today! Have you heard about the Holiday overlay the Jungle Cruise is rumored to be getting? "Jingle Cruise," it's called. I say good luck trying to get Trader Sam to wrap his head around the Christmas spirit, but that's just me.
"You know when it gets to be the holiday season in the African Veldt, because the lions get real sandy claws. Thank you! If you've enjoyed the Jingle Cruise, my name is Skipper Melissa. If you haven't, my name is Kris Kringle, and you're all getting the back side of a lump of coal in your stockings."
Looks like "Jingle Cruise" is official for Both Disneyland Park and the Magic Kingdom. Just saw an article on DisneyParks Blog. I like the idea of holiday boat names.
Maybe they'll paint the boats white again and bring back the striped canopies to make them a little more festive than the current "Tomorrowland Brown" versions? Yeah, right. :-(
K. Martinez, ARG, that song!
Wisenheimer in Denver, waa waaaaa….
Tom, Wisenheim sounds Austrian (or something) to me! Love the reference to president Polk, one of the "forgotten Presidents".
PsySocDisney, I can't tell if you're kidding or not, but I am praying that you ARE!
Melissa, if there's anybody who should be a Jungle Cruise skipper, it's you!
K. Martinez, wait, REALLY? I still can't believe it.
TokyoMagic!, while I miss the way the boats used to look, once I'm on board, I don't really think about the fact that they are "Tomorrowland brown"!
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