Details
Here are two photos that are all about details. The Devil's in them, I've heard.
First up is this sign (from a scan dated April 1970) from Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room. Sponsored by United Air Lines! The sign appears to be painted on rough hide of some sort (probably water buffalo), crudely held together with leather stitching and decorative (?) sticks.
The world is a carousel of color! Wonderful, wonderful color. Like this brilliant pink bouquet of roses and... er... some other kind of flowers, as seen in the Flower Market. They look pretty real to me!
21 comments:
Tiki Room sign: And the paint was made from berry juice, jungle plants, and dried blood (the water buffalo again). It looks like there is a stylized fish at the top of the sign. Were there any fish in the show? Maybe they were spitting water into the air like the fish at the Snow White Grotto. I sure hope there are fish in the Tiki Show, otherwise it's false advertising... Tiki's don't really chant, birds and flowers don't really sing... it's all a lie!... Say it ain't so!
Flowers: Besides a lot more roses, I think the red spikey plants are gladioluseseses. And the legs with shoes on them are ladieseses. The one thing that makes the flowers not look real is their perfection; the blooms all look the same, and flawless. As does the foliage. But it still looks nice!
These are good photos, Major. Maybe we should have more "detail" pictures.
@ JB-
'Uti' is the goddess of fishing, and her likeness was once located on the canopy above the entrance to the Enchanted Tiki Room @ DL - among other locations - including both locations of Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Bar, and at the Polynesian Resort at WDW. So, the fish image would hardly be considered "false advertising" - just not a 'featured player'.
JB, sorry to break the news to you, but there were no singing fish in the Enchanted Tiki Room. However, if you waited three decades, and traveled to Epcot, you could see an animatronic fish dressed like Cher, lower from the ceiling on a trapeze, while singing a variation of "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)." Seriously. It was hideous. Seriously.
I love these close-up shots, showing details. Thanks, Major!
TOKYO: don’t forget FOOD ROCKS “Tina Tuna”! ….., all class .
Mike, oh yeah....Tina Tuna. But she was doing a Cher impersonation with the voice, right? Sadly, the beginning of the end, for EPCOT.
THE FONTS!!!! THE FONTS!!!
On the sign, I mean. They're just too cool for words, which is ironic because they are words.
The flowers are nice, but they tasted terrible. Don't ask how I know...
That Enchanted Tiki Room sign is really a masterwork. To paint on that rough surface and make those fonts look "clean" I'm sure was not easy. The United logo is just as nostalgic as the 1960's Disneyland logos. Paired together: just racks up the price of anything connected to them! United: talk about TRE. I could go on, but I'll be kind. I think it was better when the logo was different :) The flowers are always pretty, and so very very very photographed. I think they are missing out on free marketing now. Imagine the blow up on the Instagram/Twitter/TicToc...etc etc etc. Short and sweet this morning! Thanks Major!
JB, the fish and the Fish Goddess were initially part of the Tiki entourage but were eliminated early on due to the unpopularity of the Tuna Whip snack, and constant backstage bickering with the other Fish Goddess, the Chicken of the Sea Mermaid. Conversion to pineapple was suggested and attendance soared.
The spiky flowers are gladiolus, (gladiolii?), so-called after the Roman short sword, gladius. The others appear to be roses. I miss the Flower Mart. Losing it was the beginning of the Diminishment that continues today. Some Park features’ purpose was to enhance the theming, not just generate sales or showcase IP, and the Mart was a great example. Main Street is lessened by its loss.
Agreed about United Air. I refuse to fly that airline unless it’s the only carrier to the destination. Not sure what happened to them, but I had a string of awful flights with them in the 00’s and that was enough for me.
And the graphic design and execution here are marvelous, alas no pylons are involved.
Thanks Major!
JG
Have to agree with everyone else, the style, font, and design of the Tiki Room sign is just perfect! And you have to give it up to someone "wasting" a photo on sponsored attraction signage. They knew a good thing when they saw it!
The fish is there because United was the o-fish-al sponsor. (I'll show myself out.)
I love a good sign picture. My travel photos are always full of them.
There seems to be a consensus - we all like the fish sign. It’s to be expected from a bunch of fin-atics.
Hold the door, Melissa - I’m right behind you!
JB, of course there are singing fish in the Tiki Room, in fact I see singing fish everywhere I go. Sometimes they are so loud that I can’t hear the person directly across from me as they speak. But the singing is so beautiful! Also, fish can’t really spit water into the air as in the Snow White Grotto, that’s an urban myth started by the Illuminati. Who put the glad in the gladiolus? These pictures almost qualified as snoozers, which I’m sure you will believe.
Nanook, ah yes, poor Uti, she returned to her island and is hopefully eating a nice grilled sand dab right now. Delish! I did not know that Uti’s likeness was ever at WDW.
TokyoMagic!, I remember reading about the “Under New Management” version of the Enchanted Tiki Room. Nothing against Cher (or Gilbert Gottfried), but YIKES it sounded horrible. “We’re hip to the fact that this attraction is corny and bad!” was the general vibe.
Mike Cozart, “Tina Tuna”, I have to admit that I like it.
TokyoMagic!, we all know that there are a lot of Cher impersonators out there. Even Tina Tuna.
Stu29573, you make a good point, the graphic design on that shield/sign is pretty sweet. And I’ve seen some Disneyland signs that are truly hideous, which is always a bit heartbreaking.
Bu, I was thinking the same thing, how did they get the lettering to look so crisp on that textured surface? I don’t even know what the United Airlines logo looks like today, presumably it has changed in the last 50 years. You aren’t kidding, the Flower Market flowers were the subject of MANY photos. Too many?
JB, you can still get a tuna whip over at the Tropical Hideaway. You just have to ask. Be sure to have Deb make a video of you asking! I recommend a tuna/pineapple swirl, for that true tropical experience. I can’t say that I personally miss the Flower Market, because I barely remember it, other than the fact that my grandma liked it. I was too impatient and wanted to get to the rides, and those flowers were ruining my good time! I remember when United Airlines was the one that you wanted to ride, but man, has its reputation gone down. They apparently do not care.
Brad Abbot, it’s true, kind of amazing that a guest allocated a precious film frame to that sign. And yet they did not take a single photo inside the attraction!
Melissa, OOF.
Chuck, I hope you and Melissa have sweaters, I don’t want either of you to catch a cold.
I was bummed I never got to fly on Eastern before they closed down. If You Had Wings was always at the end of a two-day road trip.
Melissa, I always wanted to fly Western Airlines because I liked their commercials, with the cartoon parrot... "Western Airlines... the oooooonly way to fly!"..
The United Airlines logo was from the airline’s “rebranding” and updating in 1967. The font is BOOKMANS SWASH and was very popular in the late 60’s into the 1980’s. Disney uses the font in the “THE” of the Haunted Mansion logo. It was an offering through photo-lettering services of the time so many design and advertising companies paid to license the font. WED graphics used Central Graphics Photo Lettering and Franklin Photo Lettering both of Los Angeles ( defunct now) in their graphic catalogs you will find almost all the fonts ( called letter guides back then ) used in posters , signs and printed material from Disneyland , Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland . WED also had a system to produce their own lettering types ( guides) called the WED TYPSITOR. And was used at both parks to create menu board sign films for screenprinting and quick need miscellaneous signs at the parks.
The Tiki Shield sign was fiberglass casted off a mold pattern Disney used to make signs that were to resemble animal skins etc. …. The Indian Village , Pecos Bill Cafe and Jungle Cruise signs used this same technique. The “tiki” lettering was hand painted after a paper guide with the lettering with small perforated holes were hit with a chalk powder cresting an outline guide for the sign painter.
Mike, thanks for the sign and typeface information, very interesting.
I remember taking print projects to one typesetter or another depending on their typeface catalog.
One of the old-timer annoyances about the new amazing digital world; I was taught back then that a "typeface" was the "umbrella" name for the family of "fonts", of which then the different point sizes and styles (bold, italic, black, etc.) were individually called fonts. Now, anything related to a typeface seems to be a "font" and the typeface and letter guide terms have fallen into disuse. I'm sure you have noticed this too.
I'm kind of sad to learn that the tiki sign was fiberglass casting. I felt some personal kinship to that old sign when Major described it as "rough hide crudely held together with leather stitching..." How I feel looking in the mirror.
JG
United isn't really United, anymore (And Chile isn't chilly, as a rule!). Continental Airlines bought United about 10 years ago, and decided to keep only the "United" name, for some reason. But United was not the surviving company of the buyout.
And to close the circle of airlines, Continental was largely the inheritor of Eastern's northeast to Florida and Caribbean routes.
Melissa, I flew Eastern once, as unaccompanied minors with my brother from NJ to FL to stay with our grandparents for a summer while our parents renovated the house. I wish I still had the wings pinback, activity book, toy Tri-star plane, etc. they gave us for the flight. We did visit WDW on that trip, so "If You Had Wings" is cemented in my memory from that summer.
Mike Cozart, “Bookman Swash” is definitely one of those classic fonts that we used in my typography class (sadly I’ve forgotten 90% of what I learned in that one). One of my first jobs involved doing pasteup, this was pre-computer (people had computers, but it wasn’t super common yet). So we sent out our text to a typographer, and had to wait a day to get it back. Run it through the hot wax machine (I can still smell it!), cut it up, etc. Who remembers ruby lith? Or Lettraset rubdown letters and patterns? Thank you for the info about the shield, amazing that it is cast fiberglass, though that makes sense, it would be so much more durable than hide. Those guys knew what they were doing!
JG, I think your definitions of “typeface” and “font” are correct, or at least they sound right to me! ;-) The fact that the Imagineers (or sign makers at any rate) made that sign look like real hide makes me appreciate it even more!
TokyoMagic!, somehow I’m not surprised that another company bought United. That explains a lot.
Dean Finder, whoa, as a kid I would sometimes see an “unaccompanied minor”, being taken care of by a pretty stewardess (they weren’t “flight attendants” yet), and being very jealous! And yet the thought of traveling without my parents was pretty scary. You must have been a cool kid!
I love the Tiki Room sign, and all the info shared here about it. Fiberglass, huh?! It's made out of the same stuff as easy-installation shower stalls. Who would've thunk. And there aren't any misspellings.
Always love seeing the flowers on Main Street. Main Street doesn't look as nice without them.
Thank you for these beauties, today, Major.
“Bookman Swash” sounds like a swaggering librarian. Is somebody who steals from a library a “swashbookler?”
I remember Ruby Lith. She sat next to me in 7th grade Math.
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