Tahitian Terrace, August 1970
My friend Mr. X gave me a small batch of Instamatic-style slide transparencies a while ago, and among them was this group of four great photos from the beloved (and much-missed) Tahitian Terrace.
Well, well, well! Now this is more like it. I'm sure the food at the Terrace was delicious, and the sounds of the ukulele and steel guitar were pleasant and relaxing, but it was the beautiful dancers that many guests remember. And we can see why!
Aloha! Looks like another dancer is waving goodbye, but don't worry, there will be more to come. On a side note, there is a red spotlight up in the trees - or is it a heat lamp for those chilly days and evenings? The tree (Disneyodendron) is a 35-foot tall, man-made wonder, completely believable in every way.
I would have had a hard time paying attention to my food with so many lovely ladies onstage, though that boy in the foreground is perhaps a little bit young to fully appreciate them.
And here's one last look, I can almost see the hypnotic movement of that grass skirt! I believe that the Jungle Cruise river was just beyond that wall of greenery, with boats passing by every minute or so.
21 comments:
In that first pic, the boy in the foreground is asking his mom, "How do they keep those sarongs up, with all of that hip shaking?" His mom is replying, "Don't talk with your mouth full of food!"
Thank you, Major and Mr. "X"!
- Tokyo Morbid!
I'm trying to figure out what's on the plate of the lady closest to us (I think everyone in their party has the same thing). Looks like BBQ chicken and maybe fried rice.
Oh, were there hula dancers in these pics, too? ;-b
Thanks Mr. X and Major for showing us more rarely seen views of the park.
- Juicy Brains (Since everyone seems to be changing their nom de Halloween on an almost daily basis now.)
August of 1970, and nary a Yippee in sight. In fact, the only long hair is on the dancers, and whooo doggies, that hair is long.
In the second photo, I am digging the Hawaiian print dresses worn by the women at the extreme left. The woman in green even has a lei to match her dress. Her husband has a flyer in his shirt pocket that matches the shade of hot pink on the dancers’ outfits in the first photo. With the available lighting and the limitations of automatic aperture technology of the time, I wonder if his home movies came out properly exposed. Of course, considering the subject matter, I’m sure they recorded more, ahem, exposure than usual.
Despite the exotic theming and subject matter, those tables look surprisingly utilitarian. Are they just bare steel? They look like they would be at home in a morgue.
Thanks, Major. I can always expect good photos when you solve for X.
- The Guy That’s Married to the Bride of Chucky
Why am I remembering a "curtain" made of a waterfall and a rock formation proscenium? Did this come later? I am thinking what I saw was a wee bit grander than this, but that tree was still there in all it's glory. There is a story about Walt wanting it raised after he sat it the back row and said the tree would block the show for some people. This was after it was built, so that must have went over well. This was a very special place for dinner that we would never go as kids, so I waited until adulthood. As a kid I do remember walking through Adventureland at night and you could hear the show, and off of the smells of whatever they were cooking along with the wet smell of the Jungle Cruise. The lighting in Adventureland at night was very moody and mysterious. It was fun to go through all the bins of rubber snakes and shruken heads. I never saw the backstage area of this part of the park- I don't know where the girls got into their grass skirts and whatnot- there had to be a dressing room somewhere back there. The back of Main Street let you out around Coke Corner so I guess I should have explored further. I hope the ladies weren't changing around the "second bush on the left"!
Few people realize that the "Disneyodendron" was a carnivorous plant. The red lights grew on the lowermost branches to lull unsuspecting guests into a state of complacency. The Hula dancers (whose symbiotic relationship with the plant has never been fully explored nor explained) completed the job. Notice that entire family to the far left in the second picture are completely gone in the last shots. Audrey II has nothing on this tree!
Speaking of that second picture, it looks like you can just make out a Jungle Cruise boat through the leaves.
Mr. X has come though again!
Thanks, Major!
RIPLiKant 247853.258
These pictures are lovely and so are the girls!
To all the lady Jr. Gorillas: There were male fire dancers in these shows, too!
I ate at the Tahitian Terrace during this era and LOVED it!
Thank you, Mr. X and Major!
Lou & Sue & Boo!
I’m beginning to understand why we never saw the Tahitian Terrace.
This would be even more verboten than the saloon show. It looks wonderful.
I could have gone on a high school trip, but it was expensive and my friends weren’t interested. I suspected at the time that I had the wrong friends, and this confirms it.
I still want a rubber snake from one of the bins.
Major, many thanks to mr. X, and to you, of course, for preserving these historic pics.
Jay Ghoul
Cool pics from the Marvelous Mr. X.
The lovely dancers and lush tropical setting are great but what really caught my eye was the extra cool 60s white Vox Phantom bass in the first photo (visible between the dancers). Oh how I wanted one of those.
Thanks Mr. X and Major
Grant... whose tomb am I buried in?
(Thanks Sue)
@ Bu-
HERE's your waterfall curtain and proscenium.
Hey folks, thanks for all your great comments! I'm about to head out until the early afternoon, but I will definitely check back in when I'm back.
Thanks Nanook for the link to the photo! What a marvelous place the Tahitian Terrace was...and that was a photo taken during the day! Just goes to prove...they do indeed, ruin everything. I do remember the fire dancers too Sue! ...leaping and yelling and spitting fire...jumping over bamboo sticks...very aggressive guys frightening the wee ones! Nothing like a wee bit of arson and shouting to complete your visit to the Happiest Place on Earth. The food there was a bit underwhelming, and yes.. the tables utilitarian...but I suppose it was all about the girls. I think if my dad had known about the girls we would have been to more than a few shows instead of hanging out at the Monorail bar over at the hotel. In my perfect world, the Tahitian Terrace comes back with a vengeance!...amp up the experience...have island entertainers do 15 minutes sets of their "thing" in rotation so there is always a "show" going on...tablecloths, cocktails, and amazing food. I'm thinking more Don the Beachcomber than anything remotely Disney branded- no mice please! They would charge a fortune anyway, so just give everyone a little bit of Polynesian Club 33...and charge a fortune for it...why not? It doesn't seem there is price resistance in any scenario based on horror stories I hear about....price of admission...price of ANYTHING... like VIP tours going for $800 an hour. "eeeek!" In my day it was $25 and then JUMPED to $40 which was a huge ordeal and caused a huge disturbance in the atmosphere....and it generally wasn't available to mere mortals, certainly it was never advertised...and for those asking...yes, they did a credit check on you..... $40 in 1980 is about $130 today. Magic does cost money!
TGTMTTBO Chucky, I was admiring those tropical-print dresses, too! I almost made myself one like that once, when Hawaiian shirt cotton was on clearance at Jo-Ann Fabrics, but I ended up just making skirts that would work better with a plain top for the office. At first I thought the lei on the lady in the foreground was a really fancy ruffled trim on her brown dress!
-Mel-hiss-a
And speaking of Adventureland, I read recently that they’ve stopped serving the signature Citrus Swirl (frozen orange juice concentrate swirled with vanilla soft serve) at the Sunshine Tree Terrace at the Magic Kingdom and are substituting orange Dole Whip. What a shame for the 50th anniversary! Probably supply issues or something.
Of course everybody here has seen "Disneyland After Dark", which includes a chunk of the show and hilarious reaction shots.
TokyoMagic!, I guess I am being tortured with another ILL quote. It took me two times to figure it out.
JB, I never even looked at the food on the plates! ;-) These were all a bit dark, but still welcome because the Terrace is rarely photographed.
Chuck, oh there’s Yippies there all right. They’re EVERYWHERE. I’ve seen a photo of people wearing those leis, and you can see a Disneyland tag on them; and yet I have never seen one for sale on eBay or anywhere else. You’d think that they gave out thousands upon thousands of them, some must have survived! Now I need to ID that pink flyer in the man’s pocket, but I’ll have to do it later, I’m about to head out for a few hours. Might not be able to ID it until tonight. “Exposure”, hey, I get it! Those tables are pretty industrial, maybe they liked being able to hose them off every night.
Bu, yes, I’ve shared at least one photo of a dancer emerging from the waterfall “curtain”, so your memory is correct. Maybe your memory is doing what mine does, it makes everything a little more fantastic than it actually was! Your description of Adventureland at night sounds very evocative, it makes me wish I could hop back in time just to experience it. Rubber snakes, shrunken heads, and skulls were all made to appeal to your typical boy, and I was right there with you. Even now I love that stuff. Maybe some knowledgeable person can let us know where the cuties changed?
Stu29573, I would be drawn to that red lamp, under the assumption that there would be warm food on a plate resting beneath it. My guard would be down, and WHAM! I’m a crunch, chewy snack for the tree. I wonder if that was some of the “hard facts” that Walt referred to in his opening day speech?
Lou and Sue, ha ha, who wants to see photos of those guys?? ;-) I don’t have many photos from the Tahitian Terrace, but the ones I do have ALL feature the pretty women. I’m OK with it.
JG, yes, if the Golden Horseshoe, which by all accounts was “a little bit naughty”, was too much for your mom, then the Tahitian Terrace might as well have been Sodom and Gomorrah. Ha ha, depending on your age, many school kids would have been too embarrassed to go to the TT show. Glad you liked these.
Grant, spoken like a true musician! I don’t play the guitar, but I like looking at nice vintage examples. I even like to watch videos of people who repair them. I’m impressed that you can ID that guitar from the indistinct image that we have here!
Nanook, yes, a great postcard image. I once saw an interesting thing on Facebook that pointed out that the “dancers” were actually Tahitian Terrace waitresses, the customers were various supervisors, and so on.
Bu, I guess that the reality is that it would just be too expensive to run a place like the Tahitian Terrace these days, but that doesn’t mean that those of us who never saw it don’t wish we could have been there. It looks so great. There’s a video of the fire dancers (from one of the “Wonderful World of Color” shows), with an annoying safety warning superimposed on top of it. Think of the children! I’ve talked to people who said the food was great, but everything is relative I guess. VIP tours, $800 an hour. OUTRAGEOUS. I can’t imagine I would ever feel like I got my money’s worth, and am sure that I would be subjected to the same tired old apocryphal stories that I’ve heard 100 times.
Melissa, once in a while the shirts and dresses from the Tahitian Terrace show up in auctions, and they go for a ton of dough. Kevin and Jody supervised accurate repros (maybe for the 50th?), and even THOSE go for a fortune.
Mel-hiss-a, I HOPE it’s just “supply issues”, and not the result of a dumb money-saving decision by some USC business school grad. (No offense, USC folks, my dad went there!).
DBenson, YES, that’s the one I was trying to think of when replying to Bu.
Wonderful pictures of a bygone era at the Park. Once I piloted the boat past Trader Sam, and should the show would be on...you'd hear the music...hear the drums...and at night perhaps see the fire dancers performing. As BU described in great detail, the sights, sounds and smells of Adventureland...especially at night...were absolutely magical. Much of the land was lit by open flame gas torches. The dancers would traverse rocks discreetly placed along the river...shielded by foliage allowing them to seemingly pop out of the background and onto the stage. Those rocks were the same 'pathway' used by us skippers at the dock to bring boats out of storage behind Coke Corner...which was also the site of the changing room for the performers. We would delight putting the spotlight on the dancers as they made their way along the rocks...and many played along as we would say a funny line or two...or for that matter ask them out on a date over the PA!! ;). Beautiful girls. On the other hand, we were specifically warned not to shine the light in their eyes. This could temporarily blind them...so we were carefully on our own when we did so.
Thanks Mr. X!! KS
Major, that was NOT an I.L.L. line! I had used it two days ago when you posted JG's scans of the DL pictorial souvenir, so I just decided to repeat myself!
Sue, how did the male fire dancers keep from setting their loincloths on fire, while twirling their big fire sticks?
Tokyo Disneyland still has their "Polynesian Terrace" restaurant. They have two completely different shows, one for lunchtime and another for dinner. They do the same with their "Diamond Horseshoe" shows in Frontierland. You have to get your reservations for all of these shows, fairly early in the day because they book up. I need to dig out the pictures I took of the shows over there and post them. Here is a pic of the exterior/entrance, if anyone is interested:
Polynesian Terrace at Tokyo Disneyland
Apocryphal…YES! I had to look the word up, and I do have my fair share of apocryphal stories…and now that I look at Nanook photo closely…I think there is a SWEEPER in that photo! Lol…it all makes sense since the performers might have been a nighttime thing only and the girls hadn’t clocked in yet. KS thanks for reminding me of the rock steps…somehow I’m thinking JC guys got thrown in river there…(?) some kind of hazing thing (?) That was out of my territory so I didn’t go near it. Perhaps that is another apocryphal story that my memory has preserved.
KS, you sure have a lot of wonderful memories, I hope you know how lucky you are! I love most of the lands at night, but Frontierland and Adventureland both had their own special ambiance. Not sure what it’s like now, although Frontierland gets so crowded thanks to “Fantasmic!” that it’s a place to be avoided if you don’t want to see that water show. I’ll bet those girls were some of the most popular at Disneyland - what guy could resist them?!
TokyoMagic!, I figured that if you used that line more than once, I must be missing a reference that everyone else was in on. Thanks for the info about the shows in Tokyo, and for that beautiful photo (is that one of yours?).
Bu, I saved that guide that told “who’s who” in that postcard photo, but I don’t have access to it right now, Maybe I’ll share it at another date, though I don’t know who to credit (I might be able to guess though). Hazing, oh man. I’m sure it’s a tradition, but yikes. I guess there’s worse things than getting wet. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true though.
Nanook, that's a great picture - thanks for linking it here!
TM! I don't know how they did it, but they were good!
I think I mentioned this before, but the one and only time I was in Hawaii, while eating at an outside restaurant, for a split second I thought I was at the Tahitian Terrace. I found myself, while in Hawaii, subconsciously comparing everything to the Tahitian Terrace and the [original] Polynesian Resort (WDW) - instead of it being the other way around.
My husband has one of those rubber snakes AND rubber gorillas, from those Disneyland bins, in his 'workshop.'
Great stories and laughs - thanks, all!
Lou & Sue & Boo!
Major, yes, I shot that photo on my very first visit to Tokyo Disneyland. I was still using film at that time. I didn't see the shows at the Polynesian Terrace or the Diamond Horseshoe, during that first visit. By the time I went to see those shows a year or two later, I was using a digital camera. I need to dig those pics out and take a look at them, again!
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