Enchanted Tiki Room Brochure, 1963
Oh boy, vintage Disneyland ephemera! My favorite. Today I am featuring a wonderful 1963 brochure printed for the "World Premier Engagement" of Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room (which debuted on June 23rd of '63). These are rare-ish, but usually fetch high prices on the collector's market, often over $200. The cover graphics show talking tikis, a hint to what guests would see inside the attraction.
Unfolding the brochure once, we see an add for "Papotin's Revue", a "unique musical fantasy starring the incomparable puppet-master, André Tahon”. It was an "E" coupon attraction! For a puppet show! I gather that Papotin's Revue was only at the park (in the Fantasyland Theater) for a few months.
Unfolding it further, you can now see both sides of this item. We'll take a closer look!
It's fun to think of how amazing the Tiki Room show must have been to audiences in 1963, when "Audio Animatronics" was something new. I'm so glad that we can still enjoy it, 63 years later!
They pulled out all the stops for this paper item, with full-color on this page - it's probably not the first use of full color in a Disneyland brochure, but it has to be one of the first. See! Hear! Enjoy!
While the "Papotin's Revue" version of this brochure is the most commonly seen ("common" being a relative term), you'll sometimes find one (if you are lucky) with this ad for the 4th Annual Dixieland at Disneyland event, which included Al Hirt and His Band, The Dukes of Dixieland, Kid Ory and the Young Men From New Orleans, and MORE! I'd say the Papotin version is the one you'll find 90% of the time.
And, just as rare, or perhaps rarer, is a version of the brochure with a blank back. A mutual friend and I agree that they should have printed something there. And yet, here it is, with nothing at all. Collect all three and be the hero of your neighborhood (like me)!
10 comments:
Major-
"It's fun to think of how amazing the Tiki Room show must have been to audiences in 1963, when "Audio Animatronics" was something new".
I was there then, and thought just that.
"You have to see it to believe it..." I saw it and I still don't believe it-!
Thanks, Major.
The talking/chanting tikis are the best part of the show! The taliking/singing birds and flowers... I can take 'em or leave 'em. But the thunderstorm and the chanting tikis make it memorable and worthwhile.
I wonder what is meant by "world premiere engagement"? That makes it sound like the attraction is only going to be at Disneyland for a month or so, and then move on to another location, Vegas maybe.
I like the cover illustration. Somehow, seeing only part of the tikis makes it more enticing. Hmm, "André Tahon" sounds suspiciously like "André Toulon", the puppet maker in the "Puppet Master" movies. I'm guessing the filmmakers did that deliberately.
I love the artistic style of the Dixieland at Disneyland illustration. So "Disney", so sixties.
I ooh-ed and ahh-ed over the complexity and detail of the back cover for several minutes!
One of the nicer pieces of paper ephemera you've shown us, Major. Thanks. JB/Lothar gives his stamp of approval for today's scans. Homeless orphans, rejoice! :-b
This is such a beautifully done brochure! Major, maybe that blank page was for kids to draw their own birds. I think you should do that now. It could only increase it's value!
I know we will never get another incredible non-IP attraction likes this again. But I think if the current designers did come up with something similar, they would probably insist on the birds sneezing, spitting, burping up chili dog breath, and maybe even relieving themselves on the guests, below. They've already done the first three actions in "newer" Disney attractions, so the next step in their minds might be the fourth action. Or maybe they would just have José explain how envious he was of his brother, because he got a job working as a "carrier pigeon", delivering the mail. :-/
Thank you for sharing this beautiful brochure with us, Major!
Nice find, Major. Rare-ish or not, it’s a nice bit of ephemera. I like the 3 totems, each with their bit of dialog.
The Tiki Room is probably my third favorite attraction, especially with AC and a place to sir. When we first took our kids to the Tiki Room, our seats were right next to one of the poles. Our little son was scared out of his wits when it started talking.
I’m pretty sure I would prefer “Dixieland at Disneyland” to the puppet show. And I do remember the long, long lines waiting to see the new show. I’m sure I didn’t go to school yet at that time. Another vivid memory unmoored in time.
JG
PS: Major, the conductor head box I mentioned yesterday is that ornate box element at the top of the rain water downspout that has the other gutter dumping into it. These are often used to collect and direct roof drainage from multiple sources into a single pipe or downspout. The real New Orleans is awash in these details and NOS faithfully reproduces them.
Tiki room is another one of my favorites. That's several in a row now. I guess maybe all the attractions are my favorite to a degree.
I have never heard of Papotin, who's puppet was obviously the inspiration for Wicked.
As a kid I used to take and keep flyers like that but somehow I have very few left 'cause I didn't have a bottomless box like you have.
Thanks Major
Zach
And the name you were looking for yesterday for "... the rotating latches that hold shutters open..." I believe is called a shutter dog.
Nanook, so cool that you saw it then!!
JB, I’m surprised that you don’t care for the singing flowers and birds, it’s all part of the mix. And in a way, the birds are really the stars of the show! I guess “world premier engagement” was just a fancy way to say that the attraction was new and open to the public? I think the cover is based on Marc Davis drawings, it is very graphically bold and attractive. I’ve never seen “Puppet Master”, but the name “André Toulon” does seem too close to André Tahon to be a coincidence. That Dixieland at Disneyland illustration was used on at least two other Disneyland paper items, and yes, it is delightfully “of its time”. Don’t worry about those homeless children, they are now employed in a nice factory.
TokyoMagic!, ha, now that you say that, I can imagine a small set of four cheap crayons being given out to kids to make their own masterpieces. For a while (and maybe still), Disney animated films relied on farts and burps to make small children (and simple-minded adults) laugh, it got old in a hurry. I know that the Tiki Room in Florida had a redo with an “under new management” theme, with Iago and Zazu from “Aladdin” and “The Lion King”. I heard the audio, it was dreadful.
JG, I lucked out on all three examples of this flyer, I would not pay $200, and was fortunate to find mine for much much less, and they are in good condition, which is important to collectors (at least to me, anyway). I didn’t experience the Tiki Room until relatively recently (feeling like I knew the show from the soundtrack), and I loved it, partly for the time-capsule element. Those 60s choral harmonies! I also love the clicking and clacking of the various tikis, birds, and flowers. Thank you for telling me what a conductor head box is! I figured it must be something like that, so it’s nice to know I was on the right track.
Nanook, “Shutter Dog” is also the name of my heavy metal band.
zach, I think Daveland has a photo or two of the Papotin show, I can’t say that it looked like something I would enjoy, but maybe it was magical when you were there in person. I didn’t start saving my own Disneyland items until I was at least a teenager, and still have a few, but I am mostly avid for the stuff that is from my childhood, or that pre-dates me!
The extra deluxe gate flyer was probably produced because guests were going to have to purchase an exclusive ticket to see it as it was NOT included in Disneyland ticket books in the attraction’s first few years. Like the Mark Twain and DLRR , the Tiki Room was Walt Disney’s personal property and not a Disneyland property. Eventually Walt “sold” it to Disneyland.
I think the disclaimer of “limited exclusive Disneyland’s engagement “ was just showmanship … coming from former Disney studio people. I’m sure at some point there was consideration to change out the first show … but it doesn’t look like that was ever developed . The enchanted tiki room “legends of tiki isle “ that was developed as a New York Worlds Fair attraction for Coca Cola was going to be a similar show as tiki room but with a very different theater interior … and was going to be built for the fair - not transferred to New York . Originally Florida’s Tropical Serenade was going to be the Tiki Isle show …. But as costs increased developing other all new shows for Florida like Country Bear Jubilee (jamboree) One Nation ( Hall of Presidents) and The Mickey Mouse Revue , imagineers decided to just replicate the main tiki room from Disneyland and just give it a new name and a new preshow . It’s funny that Florida attractions that were essentially Disneyland duplicated were given all new names but then the Disneyland name below it : “ TROPICAL SERENADE ( enchanted tiki birds) , 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA ( submarine voyage) …. Eventually the secondary titles were removed from signage . And others were developed with all
New names and at the last minute opened with the traditional Disneyland name like “ WORLD CARNIVALE “ ( its a small world ) and “MANDATORY AMWAY MEETING” ( the pirates of the Caribbean).
^ Hahaha!
JB: congrats - I was wondering if anyone would catch that !
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