Jungle Cruise Evolution: The Indy Years

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Howdy folks Watch your step as you enter the boat.
If you're entering from theback, come up to the front.
If you're in the front, justfollow the simple instructions
of your simple-minded loader.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Now please listen to the boat loaders.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
They used to work in a sardine factory until they got
canned they didn't mine toomuch, though they worked for
scale Well anyhow, be sure tokeep your hands and feet inside
the boat at all times and watchyour children, because this
here's the wildest boat in thejungle.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
Hello and welcome to the Lowdown on the Plus Up, a
podcast where we look ateveryone's favorite theme park
attractions, lands, textures andnovelties.
We talk in over about andthrough our week's topic and
then, with literally no concernfor practicality, safety or
economic viability, we come upwith ways to make them better.
My name is Kelly McCubbin,columnist for the theme park

(01:10):
website Boardwalk Times, andwith me, as always, is Peter
Overstreet University, professorof Animation and Film History
in Northern California.
Hey, pete yeah.
What are we talking about?
Today.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Well, today we're going to go back into the jungle
, my friends, because we'regoing to revisit one of our
previous episodes where wecovered the Jungle Cruise.
But we did something veryspecific with that episode in
which we said we're only goingto talk about the Jungle Cruise
before the opening of IndianaJones and the Temple of the
Forbidden Eye, that's right.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
So Pete and I are going to be your host for this
adventure and we are ready toget this cruise underwater.
Oh yeah, underway, underway.
Hey, before we start this, Iread something today that was a
little bit sad, but I think weshould pay a little respect.
To little bit sad, but I thinkwe should pay a little respect

(02:07):
to the great Porch Potato Frank,the guy who has sat on the
bench on Main Street, usa atDisneyland pretty much every day
for the last 20 years passedaway just shy of his 80th
birthday.
Oh, that's too bad.
He was a good guy.
I waved at him once or twice.
I know a lot of people thattalked to him.
He always gave people fistbumps and he was always sitting

(02:29):
out there with his Dodger jacketand his porch potato button.
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
And he used to tell people thatevery day was his best day.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Oh, that's really cool.
Our condolences to his lovedones, friends and family.
Yeah, but another unofficialDisney legend.

Speaker 4 (02:46):
Unofficial Disney legend yeah, rip Porch Potato
Frank.
So the Jungle Cruise one of ourfavorites Jungle Cruise, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Kelly and I hunt it down.
You know, it's like Pirates ofthe Caribbean and Haunted
Mansion and all of these otherrides that have become legendary
, not because that they arebased off of any particular
property or dot dot dot.
At least they weren't when theyfirst opened.

Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yeah, to an extent Walt was interested in promoting
his true life adventure films,right.
But it became pretty clearfairly early on that there
wasn't going to be much that wasvery realistic about the Jungle
Cruise.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
No, no, no.
And as we talked about duringthe previous episode where we
talked about pre-Indiana Jonesride Jungle Cruise in its
earliest conceptions, anotherinspiration was the African
Queen.
That's right, and you can seethose elements in there.
But I think Disney Walt himselfhad sanitized it so much that

(03:53):
it didn't really resemble theAfrican queen.

Speaker 4 (03:56):
Yeah, and we're going to see an interesting sort of
time swing happen here, becausethe Jungle Cruise starts off not
really fixed in any particulartime and then kind of becomes
fixed in the time of the AfricanQueen, which is about 1914.
When that takes place Roughlyyes, yeah, and then Indiana

(04:20):
Jones pulls it like a black holeforward through time until it
settles where it is right now,which is 1938.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yep 1938.
So we're not going to cover thewhole premise of Tony Baxter
coming up with the Indiana Jonesride itself.
It definitely influences whatwe're talking about today and at
some point I'm sure we'll goand we will do the Indy ride,
absolutely yeah, we'll have agreat time doing it, we will
look forward to it.
But we don't want to get boggeddown with that, because there's

(04:50):
enough to talk about with thisattraction.

Speaker 4 (04:53):
As a quick aside yeah , is the Indy ride Tony Baxter's
best ride.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, in my opinion it actually is.
I think so too.
I think he got to do everythinghe wanted to do in it, and I
once had the honor of havinglunch with him and a mutual
friend of ours, tim O'Day, andsitting down with him at an ice
cream parlor of all places, butasking him what his favorite

(05:24):
designs were, and he said, man,I really wish I could have had
the Indiana Jones that we firstcame up with, right?
And so this is why I mentionedthis is because in the initial,
they were talking about doingthe Indiana Jones ride in the
early late 70s.
Yes, like pretty much as soonas Raiders came out, that was it
.
Like let's start talking aboutthis what year is Raiders?

Speaker 4 (05:45):
Is it like 79, 80?

Speaker 2 (05:46):
I said 70s, that's a misnomer, I meant 80s.

Speaker 4 (05:49):
Yeah.
Early 80s, though Early 80sthough Raiders.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
As soon as that came out, they said this is a ride,
yeah.
Which it certainly is.
Yeah, and they would make alist of all the things that
people would say, and the thingsthat were repeated were action,
adventure, snakes and a giantrolling boulder, and they said

(06:13):
that's what we're putting in theride.

Speaker 4 (06:15):
And you know, kind of pursuant to this conversation,
the significant thing about theJungle Cruise as far as the Indy
ride is that the Jungle Cruise,much in the same way that the
People Mover used to go throughAmerica Sings, and it would go
through bits of Space Mountainand stuff like that, or the

(06:39):
Disneyland Railroad would gothrough Splash Mountain or
Tiana's Body of Adventure Now,and the Jungle Cruise would have
transported through the Indyride.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, there's some fabulous piece of concept art
that shows this, basically awhole Indiana Jones world, yes,
in which there were like threeor four different attractions
all connected with this oneunderground system and there are
lava flows going over a junglecruise boat and the train is
going through some of the partsand there's a rollercoaster and

(07:10):
a mine cart from Temple of Doom.

Speaker 4 (07:12):
Yeah, the rollercoaster ended up actually
being built in Paris.
Yes, and what's useful?
I mean?
Obviously it didn't happen.
That would have causedAdventureland to become Indiana
Jones Land.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
It was going to be so expensive, it would have been
its own theme park entirely.

Speaker 4 (07:28):
Yeah, yeah, it would have been cool, but I'm glad
Adventureland is Adventurelandand not Indiana Jones Land, as
much as I love that ride.
But what is significant is theyas part of this.
When was it?
It was like 1993.
They had done kind of all theprehab for how the Jungle Cruise

(07:52):
was going to fit in next toIndy.
This caused them to actuallymove the boathouse back to where
it was originally.
Yep, so you know, about 16 feetto the right Again, wrapping
around the Dominguez poem whichwe talked about in our last
episode.
Yeah, still there.
Saw it last time we were thereand we get to welcome back our

(08:13):
friend Bill Evans.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Bill Evans, bill Evans.
Okay, how does Bill Evans fitinto this, kelly?

Speaker 4 (08:20):
So Bill Evans had obviously planted all of these
plants for the Jungle Cruise.
Though here's the thing I justfound out just today when I was
over at the Walt Disney FamilyMuseum recently the nice man,
john, who runs the bookstorethere he was like Kelly, do you
have this book?
And it was the new Don HahnChris Merritt 70th Anniversary

(08:42):
Book of Disneyland.
And I was like I don't needanother history of Disneyland.
He was like no, no, no, you do,and I trust him.
So I got it and it does havesome amazing things.
One of the things I just sawtoday was pictures that Harper
Goff had taken of the excavatedJungle Cruise track, with his

(09:05):
handwritten notes to Walt on it.
Oh, wow.
And one of the things he saidwas that he had turned the
walnut trees upside down to makethe roots look like strange
exotic plants.
Harper could have been lying,he could have, but I'd say maybe
there was a little more giveand take between Bill Evans and

(09:26):
Harper Goff than we previouslythought.
Anyway, that was interesting.
So Bill Evans is called back inin 93 because now they have to
put something between theopening, the entrance to the
Jungle Cruise, and the Swissfamily treehouse, which was
still the Swiss family treehousethat was about to become the
Tarzan Treehouse, which wasstill the Swiss Family Treehouse
.
Then it was about to become theTarzan Treehouse, but not yet.

(09:48):
There's 50 feet there, oh yeah,so there's not much room at all
, and at the time it was alltrees.
So who do they call to figureout what to do?
Well, the guy that put thetrees there they call Bill Evans
.
Right, he came back in, helooked at all of the trees, he
went through and tagged thetrees Huh, and they took out in

(10:13):
that area 500 trees.
Whoa, yeah, it's crazy, right,like I don't even know.
I mean, some of them must havebeen saplings or something that
type of square footage.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
I think some of them must have been saplings or
something.
How do you expect that withinthat type of square?

Speaker 4 (10:25):
footage.
I think part of it's becausethe Indy entrance goes so far in
.
Oh, okay, so you've got theentrance between the two things.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
The width is one thing, it's the depth.

Speaker 4 (10:34):
Right.
So the depth, it just keepsgoing and keeps going.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yeah, but you have to understand a lot of those trees
.
When you look at the JungleCruise in the 50s and 60s, when
it first opens, yeah, it's morelike the Veldt the Veldt Cruise.

Speaker 3 (10:46):
Yes, it really is.
It's like the trees haven'tgrown up yet.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
You know, like they have to put in fake trees just
so the giraffes have somethingto hide behind.
Right, you know, but now you go.
It's an honest-to-Godrainforest because it's so huge.

Speaker 4 (10:57):
Well, this is an interesting thing that happened.
So, you know, in ourTomorrowland episode from Live
at the Hojo, I mentionedsomething about, you know, the
monorail being one of the mostmagical things at Disneyland,
because it went from being aride to an actual functional
piece of transportation, whichis true.

(11:19):
Bill Evans' jungle Because, in2010, environmental scientists
and government regulatorsdeclared that the jungle around
the Jungle Cruise was no longera fake jungle.
It was a self-sustaining realjungle.
What I didn't know, this it isofficially a jungle in Anaheim.

(11:43):
Wow, and the way that they makethe decision.
You know there's a lot ofpeople involved when they decide
this, but ultimately they'relike if we stopped doing
anything, would it keep going?
And they're like, yes, it will.
It will survive on its ownwithout us at this point.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
So at some, point Disneyland will close.
We all know this.
Yeah, nothing lasts forever andat some point Disneyland will
close we all know this.
Yeah, nothing lasts forever andat some point Disneyland will
close and then that jungle isgoing to take over.
Yeah, that's kind of a coolthought.
Where it's like Orange County,the OC jungle is going to take
over completely.

Speaker 4 (12:20):
It's just going to keep growing and keep growing.
It's like okay, that's awesome.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah.
You know, there's like afiberglass temple in the middle
of it.
You know, like thousands ofyears from now, like wait.
We went into the jungles tofind what 21st?
Century.
People were like back then andwe found this temple and
apparently they didn't likepeople with eyeballs.
We couldn't make heads or tailsout of it Because the temple
was forbidden eyes.

(12:45):
I don't understand why theydislike that.
That is my accent for howpeople will talk in the future.

Speaker 4 (12:50):
Yeah, in the future I always think they're going to
talk kind of like Cary Grant,that kind of mid-Atlantic thing.

Speaker 5 (12:59):
Well, Clark Gable, don't go away.
Folks, this ought to get good.
It's me again.

Speaker 4 (13:13):
But yeah, so Bill Evans brought in, tagged
somewhere akin to 500 treeswhich were pulled out and either
replanted somewhere or storedalive, just mostly to save them
and to figure out what to do toclear out that space.
So you know, bill Evans justkeeps on ticking, mostly to save
them and to figure out what todo to clear out that space.
So you know, bill Evans justkeeps on ticking, I do want to
put a pause real quick.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, because I have a little thing to share.
We are friends with many, manypeople within the Disney fanatic
world.
Yeah, and there is somebody whoI've done many shows with
really sweet guy, but he'sprobably one of the most
visually seen in more recentyears, especially on social

(13:50):
media.
His name is Bill Burns.
This is the gentleman whocosplays as Walt Disney Right,
most famously showing up infront of Great Moments with Mr
Lincoln and having Mickey Mousehave a flip out about it.
Yeah, and it was veryheartwarming, heart touching.
Well, I don't know what theevent was, but he was at
Disneyland once again as Waltand they were having a tour, a

(14:15):
special tour, slash seminar withBob Gurr.
Yeah, and Bob was being wheeledthrough.
I mean, he's in his 90s, so toget through Disneyland he's
being wheeled through in awheelchair to save his stamina
and so forth.
And Bill Burns, as Walt, comesup to him and shakes his hand
and Bob Gurr gets this veryfunny look on his face.

(14:36):
He says I miss you.
Yeah, and it's like, oh man,that's a testament to how the
real Disney magic worksImmersion and memory, because
Bob Gurr and Bill Evans and allthese other people that

(14:56):
contributed to things like theJungle Cruise, that have created
this world, sometimes forgetthat other people can do that
too, and it's a thank.
Do that too, yeah, and it's athank you that brings them back.
So, even though you know Billis not the animatronic although
I know a lot of you are actuallyout there right now lobbying to
have Bill actually work as theanimatronic in Rainbows with Mr

(15:19):
Disney, which, by the way, wepredicted on this very show.
That's right, I'm just sayingLike two years ago or something
we called that two years agowhich?
By the way we predicted on thisvery show.
That's right, I'm just sayingLike two years ago or something.
We called that two years agoand we actually said I think we
should just have Bill Burns doit.

Speaker 4 (15:33):
So we got Bob.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
Gurr getting fooled going hey it's.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
Walt.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Disney.
Well, you know.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
I'm pretty sure Gurr knew the difference between the
illusion and reality.
But I think I sure hope so I dotoo.
But he was obviously touched.
I saw that clip, yeah, and it'sreal interesting too, because
when you listen to Mr Gurr talk—yeah, which we have, yeah, and
I got to chat with him for justa brief minute he tends to kind

(16:02):
of hold his feelings for Walt atarm's length.
Minute.
He tends to kind of hold hisfeelings for Walt at arm's
length.
You feel like there's somethinggoing on there that maybe he's
not saying or it's hard to say.
He certainly talked about oftenabout, like, leaving Disney and
how happy he was to work atother places.
But you see moments like thatand you're like, yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
I think.
Well, it definitely hits on thenostalgia part where he misses
the Walt that he first startedworking for, Right.
You know, like that's, andthat's something that is pretty
interesting, that people who arepurveyors of nostalgia yeah,
you know.

Speaker 4 (16:36):
Well, and then you know, after Walt, he worked for
a couple of different people andhe would always sort of rate
them by how much they werewilling to go.
Here's the thing I want.
Just go do it.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 (16:49):
Which you know you certainly first experienced with
Walt.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
So back to Jungle, Cruise Jungle.
Cruise.
Yeah, there was this pursuitand agreement with Lucasfilm.
Yeah, to have Star Tours openup, mm-hmm.
And then, once Star Tours wasopen, they said, well, what else
have you got?
Well, we got Howard the Duck.
No, let's not do that.
Well, we got, we have.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
Indiana Jones Willow.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Willow, no, no.

Speaker 4 (17:18):
As much as.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
I love Warwick Davis, sure, but we have Indiana Jones
, and at the time Indy was hot,hot, hot.
I mean it had literally set thestandard for so many action
films from that point on.
Yeah for sure.
A lot of copycats and a lot ofit's like Indiana Jones dot dot
dot, but in Brooklyn, right,yeah.

(17:39):
Or in Astoria, washington,whatever Goonies, it was kind of
marketed as another IndianaJones, only with kids, and it
has short round in it.
So how could you get wrong?
How could?
You go wrong with it.
Good old Ki'e Kwan, it's stillpretty fun.
Oh, I love Goonies, but thetrick with the Jungle Cruise now
is that it's in the way, yeah,yeah, and, like you said, you've

(18:01):
got that passageway, so it's inthe way.

Speaker 4 (18:03):
Yeah, it's in the way .

Speaker 2 (18:04):
So they embraced it rather than getting rid of it,
and there was actual fear.
Yeah, which?
Is brilliant yeah.
There was actual fear.
I remember this.
There was actual fear from thefans that they were going to get
rid of the Jungle Cruise RightJust to accommodate Indiana
Jones, because it's so big.
There's no way we won't be ableto accommodate an Indiana Jones
.
Well, they found a way, butwe'll cover that in an Indiana

(18:26):
Jones episode.
Yes, let's get to the JungleCruise Right, and one of the
best things that they did is asmuch as I love the look of the
old Jungle Cruise boathouse, thelanding.

Speaker 4 (18:37):
Yeah, boy, that new one is great.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
There are places.
There's always this greatconversation.
Kelly and I have had thisconversation.
I'm sure Many of you listeningwho are Disney fans and fanatics
and Disney adults out there whohave had this conversation.
If you could live all the timein one place in Disneyland,
where would you live and somepeople go?
I'd live in Cinderella's Palace, or I would live in Mr Toad's.

(19:02):
I'd live in Toad Hall or I'dlive in Mr Toad's.
I'd live in Toad Hall, or I'dlive in the Haunted Mansion.
My answer, believe it or not,is actually I want to live in
the Jungle Cruise landing house.
I want to live there.
I literally want to wake upwith open walls around me.
I'm in a canvas hammock andI've got a hornbill right over

(19:23):
me, taking a poop on my shoesand waking me up.
And I hear today on the JungleCruise there'll be more water on
the Irrawaddy River.

Speaker 4 (19:33):
And you wake up in the morning, lean out the window
and go, you young lad, get me abingo barbecue skewer Right.
Yeah, is it Christmas yet?

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yeah, what day is it?
It's Jungle Cruise Day.
Wait, did you just see that?
Ostrich?
What?
The biggest one, as big as me.
But if it was a real place,that's where I would be totally
content to live out the rest ofmy life just being a skipper.
Yeah, but living in thatoutpost because it was so
well-developed.

(20:04):
It really was All the detailwhich, over time since 95, has
been slowly but surely beenwhittled away.

Speaker 4 (20:13):
Yeah, it's still pretty nice though it is, it's
wonderful.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
It's still one of my favorite places, like I actually
enjoy standing in line at theJungle Cruise yeah, just to kind
of go.
I'm here.
Yes, I'm surrounded by 900other people who just want to
get on the ride.
Yeah, but I'm actuallyperfectly content to go, and now
I'm standing here.

Speaker 4 (20:34):
Yeah, and check out this cool pinned scorpion on the
wall.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
Oh look, here's the medical officer's area yeah, oh,
look here's the radio hutch.
Yeah, oh, area.
Yeah, oh, look here's the radiohutch.
Yeah, oh, look here's the chessset with bullets.
You know it's like, yeah.
Now here's the interestingthing.
Yeah, the fact that it's set in1938 is because it's linked to
the Indiana Jones ride.
Yes, that's when that ride issupposed to take place is in

(20:58):
1938, and this caused a littlebit of trouble.
Or maybe not necessarily theImagineers, because they've got
all the resources that theyneeded, because they poured
everything into Indy.

Speaker 4 (21:10):
Oh yeah, I remember that year.
So at the same time Knott'sBerry Farm was opening their
Mystery Lodge attraction, whichis an attraction I really like,
but it's been closed for a whilefor some reason.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Which, if you have not had a chance yet, go back to
our previous episode on mysteryshacks.
Yes, little show plug.

Speaker 4 (21:32):
But I remember someone saying like the mystery
lodge cost a million dollars,indiana Jones cost a hundred
million dollars, and you knowtoday.
So this was, you know, early90s money.
So today would be significantlymore.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, big time.
So what they did?
There's something that I findabsolutely fascinating.
Kelly and I have both had thepleasure of being at Disneyland
pretty close to when both ofthese attractions opened.
Yeah, so, especially for theIndiana Jones, yes, I was there
the day they were doing previewsfor famous people.

Speaker 4 (22:12):
You know, and I didn't know I had actually.
So here's my embarrassing nerdcredentials.
I was down in the area becauseI had gone to a Doctor who
convention and you know I wantedyeah no lie, kelly and I are
massive Doctor who nerds.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yes, and I don't just mean the new show, I mean we
are old school Doctor who nerds.

Speaker 4 (22:31):
Oh yeah, I wanted to meet the fifth Doctor and Tegan,
who were both there.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
As I'm talking to Kelly right now.
Kelly literally has a dioramaof little Doctor who figurines
on his shelf here.
They're all black and white.
Yeah, it's pretty great.

Speaker 4 (22:44):
I have two separate TARDISes with different crews
around them.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, so now that you know there's his credentials,
so he really was there.

Speaker 4 (22:52):
Yes, I really was.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
You can look up the date on this convention.

Speaker 4 (22:55):
And so I went and went to Disneyland, because I
was down there anyway and I waslike I'll take a day, and back
then it was a lot cheaper.
And I went in and there wassomething going on and that was
the day that Ron Dominguez gothis window on Main Street.
Nice Same day, so I stumbledinto that which took.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Kelly and I forever to find.
By the way, kelly's like we'regoing to go find Ron Dominguez.
Yeah, one hour later it took along time.
I mean we found the magicalbrick wall.
We found the half red and whitelight bulb.
All these are things that Kellywas telling me about.
I had no clue.
I was on the Kelly tour.
It was really great.

(23:37):
And we finally found theDominguez window.
It was kind of anticlimacticbecause we were like when we saw
everything else.
It was great.
Climactic because we were likewhen we saw everything else.
It was great, great, let's goget some lunch.

Speaker 4 (23:47):
It was actually a really great window.
And I get there and there'skind of all of this new stuff
set up and Indiana Jones is notofficially open yet, though we
had heard that there might havebeen some soft openings, but it
was all roped off.
And I'm standing there and I'mlike, oh, look, there's George
Lucas, like going into theIndiana Jones ride, Right, you

(24:10):
know, there's this person.
And at one point someone tapsme on the shoulder and it's like
, excuse me.
And I look back and it's it'sRoy Disney jr.
And I'm like, and I'm like, getout of his way because that's
what you do.
And I'm like this is amazing.
We didn't get to go on the ridethat day.
It was all for famous people.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah, don't let all those people on board, because
I'm showing all the fancy peoplewhat Indiana Jones is all about
Also it's breaking down every15 minutes.

Speaker 4 (24:39):
Yeah, yeah, but anyway.
So Jungle Cruise.
So yeah, they've moved theboathouse a little.
They've done this beautifuldesign on the boathouse.
They have not yet redesignedthe boats, but they're going to
in a couple of years.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yes, yeah, so it's a weird transition, because the
boathouse got fixed up firstbecause they needed something
for people to do at Disneyland,while these giant walls are
built all the way around thetreehouse.
Yep, the treehouse was shutdown for a while to construct
Indy because it was thatcomplicated, yeah, and so it was
actually kind of unattractive.
They also didn't want people togo up in the treehouse to look

(25:19):
down on the construction.
Yeah, that was the other partof that.

Speaker 4 (25:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
They also shut a lot of.
They painted over a lot of thewindows on the side of the
building from the Disney Gallerywhich was at the time.
It's now the Uber CelebrityMagic.
Suite or something like that,but this was Disney's second
apartment that was supposed tobe above Pirates of the
Caribbean.

Speaker 4 (25:39):
Right, I miss the Disney Gallery being above
Pirates of the Caribbean.
I do too.
I used to really like that.
There was something classyabout that, yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
I don't know why.
I think it was the circularstaircase and you got this
beautiful view of Tom SawyerIsland.

Speaker 4 (25:50):
And it was very peaceful up there and, yeah, I
really liked it up there it feltexclusive without being
exclusive.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
By the way, I just looked this up In 1995, strap in
folks.
Okay, I'm not doing this tomake you feel angry or anything
like that, but in 1995, it costyou $31 to get into Disneyland
for a one-day pass.
Wow, $31.
And it had increased from$16.50 in 1985.

(26:20):
It cost you $16.50 to get to.

Speaker 4 (26:22):
Disneyland in 1985.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Wow.
So anyway, in 1995, the IndianaJones attraction opens, as you
know, and the Jungle Cruise hadthis crossover where it had the
white and black and colorstriped boats Right and color
striped boats Right, and thenwhen the Indy ride comes over,
there was a concerted effort ofsaying the boats are looking a

(26:49):
little too clean compared to therest of jungle, of this whole
Adventureland area.
Right, it needs to tie into theIndy world First off Indiana
Jones when it opened up.
Yeah, and again, we're going togo further into this in much
more detail, but it's obvious tosay that, because of the
popularity of the property andthe hype surrounding the opening

(27:09):
of this, ride lines wereridiculous.
Yes, they were.
It was impossible to get ontothat ride.
Yeah, you could ride it once ifyou were lucky in a day, right
and again, with all theinteractivity that the
Imagineers had put into thatline.
You know the don't pull therope, don't move the bamboo, all

(27:30):
that kind of stuff that was inthere, and again we'll talk
about this another time.
They decided in theentertainment department well,
we can do that too, and itcaused a huge schism among cast
members and executives alikethrough the jungle cruise, a

(27:51):
drama that is actually more akinto Evermore.
See, all of our Swifties aregoing to come on back.
If I say Evermore a couple moretimes, I'll put it in the show
title.
Okay, great, we even talk aboutEvermore.
So what happens is I forget thename of the fellow who was
running the entertainmentdepartment at the time.

(28:12):
He was responsible forrevitalizing the spiel.

Speaker 4 (28:16):
Well, and I know, at that point, when they reopened
for Indy, they were forbiddenfrom making any jokes that
referenced anything that wasmodern.
They were not entirely forcedto tighten it down to a script,
but they were told you cannotsay anything.
That's out of the period.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yeah, the only joke they were still allowed to make
from what I had gathered, havingremembered hearing this was
referencing you know, don'tleave your children behind,
don't leave your belongingsbehind, don't leave your
children.
If we do, we're going to nailtheir little feet down.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
Yeah, it's a small world.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
That's the only joke that was any sort of reference
to a modern thing.
Right right.
So they had built thisbeautiful, immersive environment
and the entertainmentdepartment said, well, let's use
that immersive environment.
And the entertainmentdepartment said, well, let's use
that.
The lines are going to beridiculous anyway because people
are going to say, because oftheir fast passes, well, we have
until now then to ride Indy,let's go on the jungle cruise,

(29:14):
let's give them something to do.
Well, they got flooded withpeople and he thought it was
going to flow like it normallyflows.
Yeah, going to flow like itnormally flows.
A good, solid flow is anywherefrom 15 to 45 minutes on a
really bad day, yeah, but like15, 20 minutes because that
thing's a people eater.
Yeah, he changed all thatBecause, whoever this person was

(29:37):
, I remember reading this.
I think it was in a book calledMouse Tales.
It was like an unofficial guideto behind the scenes kerfuffles
of Disneyland.
It talks about the deaths atDisneyland.
It talks about all this stuff.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
Yeah, I have that book.
Okay, it's somewhere in thisbook.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
I believe this is where I read this.
The story goes is that thisexecutive said first off, we're
going to fire all the originalskippers.

Speaker 4 (29:59):
Oh, bad idea.
That is a tight community andyou don't screw with them.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
And we're going to get a whole new set of them and
they're all going to be—we'regoing to audition them they're
going to be actors.
We're going to get all theseimprov actors that are starving
for work.
We're going to put them on theJungle Cruise because they know
how to improv.
It would be perfect, you know.
And we're going to give them abudget to go off to costume

(30:26):
departments, antique stores andput together little details on
their costume that fit in therealm of 1938 and make them
individual characters.
So suddenly we get theequivalent of Wally Bogue's
Pecos Bill.
Only now you've got WhiskeyPete and Irrawaddy Wally and all
these other characters suddenlyshowing up at the Jungle Cruise
Depot.
Yeah, and all of thoseenvironments the radio room, the

(30:49):
medicine room, the part that'sunderneath the stairs where
there's gas cans all over theplace, but there's that
chessboard.
Yeah, were populated with theseactors.
Wow, that would also double asskippers.
So, like you've got time in theenvironment and then you have
time on the boat, and theytrained.
They trained on improv, theycame up with all of the new
spiel that was going to go onthe Jungle Cruise and it was a

(31:12):
hit.
Yeah, with audiences.
Yeah, it was not a hit with therest of the cast members of
Disneyland?
Yeah, because all of thoseother skippers either left or
got siphoned off to other partsof the park, a lot of them
winding up on the fairy taleland boats.

(31:32):
Yes, Storybook Land, StorybookLand yeah, or they became
Haunted Mansion butlers, or theybecame yeah that'd be my guess
right Canoe operators around, orthey were piloting the Mark
Twain, whatever, or they becameTiki Room operators.
Yeah, they were furious.
Yeah, and they would watch fromafar going what are these guys
doing?
It doesn't have the same flavor, it doesn't feel right.

(31:54):
Yeah, and the new guys werelike it totally feels like we're
in the world.
Man, we're making thisimmersive.
It's totally cool, Uh-huh.
We're making this immersive.
It's totally cool and I rememberthis.
I remember standing in line andinteracting with all the
characters.
I got to play chess on thatchess board and help them make a
move.
Wow, I got to interact.
Somebody did a spiel with ohyou need this type of medicine

(32:19):
in your ear much akin toShrunken Ned over in Trader
Sam's.
All of this stuff was going onwith these characters in the
depot and so by the time I gotonto the boat, I feel like I've
pretty much been at like aJungle Cruise equivalent of a
Renaissance fair.
I mean, this sounds actuallypretty great.
It is fantastic, it waswonderful.
The problem was and one of many, but the one that killed it

(32:41):
First off, the executive branchof Disneyland actually had to
intercede because there was somuch talking behind the scenes
between the old skippers and thenew skippers yeah, that they
were like just shut up, Juststop.
Yeah, Just stop.
They would have secret meetingsof the old skippers.
Oh, no, To talk about oh, theseguys, we're going to take it
back, man, we're going to takeit back.

(33:01):
You know like it really causedsome serious interdepartmental
drama.
Yeah, and what really killed itwas one day was Tony Baxter
going to Disneyland and seeingthis line out in front of the
Nickelodeon on Main Street, yeah, and saying, oh wow, what's
this line for?
Is there something like acelebrity or a special event?

(33:23):
No, this is for the JungleCruise.
Oh what, it would take twohours to get through the line at
the Jungle Cruise because theseactors slowed it down so much.
Oh wow, they became the show somuch that the line had nowhere
to go and it took forever to gofrom spot to spot to spot.
Yeah, because they're not allcoordinated, so it's not like

(33:45):
they're all doing their spielsimultaneously and then moving
the crowd.
Right, the crowd would back upuntil that spiel would be done.
But, like anybody knows who'sin any sort of like traffic jam
ie the 101 or the 405, knowsthat when one car stops, the one
behind it stops.
And even though the first onekeeps going, the other one is
still stopped.

(34:05):
Yeah, so that caused such atraffic jam.
They said forget it.
No, the whole point of this wasto get rid of the like.
The lines were longer for theJungle Cruise than they were for
Indy, so they got rid of it.
Yeah, it didn't last very long.
So I got to see that when bothwere open.
Wow, I did not get to rideIndiana Jones because the line

(34:26):
was so ridiculous.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (34:28):
I mean it'd be like four to six hours.
Yeah, it was that bad.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yeah, and it took me two hours to get to the Jungle
Cruise, but it was one of themost memorable Jungle Cruises
ever.
Yeah, the sad part of it is youcan actually see some of that
spiel and some of that attitudethat's going on with the Jungle
Cruise in the Michael Eisnerversion of Wonderful World of
Disney on ABC, where they'reannouncing the opening of

(34:53):
Indiana Jones but they also sayyou know, that's right, Mickey,
we're here at the.
You know, that's my MichaelEisner.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
Yeah, yeah, actually no.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
Wait, here's my perfect Michael Eisner.
You ready?
All right, you know, that's myMichael Eisner.
Yeah, yeah, actually, no, wait,here's my perfect.
Michael Eisner.
You ready?
All right, you know this is myMichael Eisner, so, okay, all
right.
Yeah, so we're here at Disney.
You know, disneyland, themagical world of Disney, and I'm
here with Goofy, isn't thatright?
That's right, michael, we'rehere in Disneyland.
It's Tony Danza.
Hey, how you doing it is, it'sTony Danza getting on the hey

(35:24):
how you doing Michael.
Yeah, I was going to go get onthe Jungle Cruise.
And he gets on the JungleCruise and his skipper is
Charles Fleischer, the voice ofRoger Rabbit.
And they did this.
I thought this would have beengreat if they actually did this
on the ride.
Yeah, they loaded the boat upwith stunt people, uh-huh, and
so every time they would comeupon something that was anywhere

(35:46):
remotely dangerous, somethingwould happen, and Tony winds up
being the only one left on theboat, because everybody gets
shot with poison darts or getsattacked by a giant snake or
gets thrown off the water byhippos, yeah, but you can kind
of get a little bit of the hintof the interactivity, it.
But you can kind of get a littlebit of the hint of the

(36:06):
interactivity.
It's just a little hint of whatwas left of that brief era of
the Jungle Cruise interactiveversion.
But they got rid of almost allthose actors because most were
like I'm a great actor, I had toaudition for this.
They felt insulted that.
You know, like I'm just goingto be a skipper, I have to do
all this.
I can't improv anymore, I'm outof here.
Well, guess what?
All the old skippers are likewow, we're back, baby.

(36:27):
So the old skippers came back,yeah, and it became what it is
now.
That's so fascinating.
I wish I could have seen thatthat was a very short period of
time.
It did not last long.

Speaker 4 (36:37):
But it was.
I'm kind of of two mindsbecause I'm like the idea is
fascinating.
It sounds really reallyinteresting.
Also, I kind of trust theskippers that have been doing it
for years and if they were likethis is not right, I kind of
trust them.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
Well, the personalities also slow down the
tours, because some of themwould say, hey, you got to have
some sort of personality quirk,yeah.
So like, obviously we can'thave Indiana Jones steering the
boat and you can't be IndianaJones, but you could be Whiskey
Wally, and Whiskey Wally is likea mechanic.
And so what if your boat brokedown right in the middle of the
hippo pool?
Yeah, and then it's that again,it's like traffic Every little

(37:20):
couple of seconds that you'rethrowing it off rather than
keeping it flowing Right.
It's that delicate balance ofbeing a skipper, of keeping it
flowing and yet giving them goodshow, yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
And when you're adding like yeah, I'm from
Brooklyn and I got my 1938, youknow Yankees cap on here and I'm
telling you the run of theseboats across the jungle.
It's really hard on an engineover here.
So let me tell you you got toreally avoid them hippos over
there, because they remind me ofmy ex-wife.
Let me tell you something.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
You're like shut up and just say they're wiggling
their ears and shoot the pistol.
Okay, it's going already.
Now as much of a hit as it was,I thought it was great.
My visit was in June of 1995.
Okay, and I remember itdistinctly because, like I

(38:11):
walked out of there with so—Ispent almost the entire day just
in Adventureland.
Yeah, really, mostly spent myentire day in Adventureland from
dawn till dusk to absorb thisnew world of indie and adventure
and jungles and these people inthe depot and it's my favorite.
Wow, this is so cool.

(38:32):
And I walked out with like bagsof Randotti.
It was one of the few yearswhere Randottis were still being
sold, so I got a few Randottiskulls and rubber snakes and
Indiana Jones hat and I had thepaper decoder and all that kind
of stuff.

Speaker 4 (38:48):
Yeah, I found my decoder, book and things not
that long ago downstairs that Igot that first year over time is
what we view as skippers.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yeah, Before then isn't exactly the same as we
have today.

Speaker 4 (39:18):
The Lowdown on the Plus Up is a BoardWalk Times
podcast.
At BoardWalkTimesnet you'llfind some of the most
well-considered and insightfulwriting about the Walt Disney
Company, disney history and theuniverse of theme parks,
available anywhere.
Come join us atBoardWalkTimesnet.

(39:51):
Yeah, I mean, they certainlyhad room to make jokes, and they
did make jokes, but every oncein a while the brass would come
in and tighten them down.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
Right, but they didn't have quite the zing that
the Skippers have now, nor dothey have the mystique.

Speaker 4 (40:09):
Well, I think we're at a place now where you're
getting stand-up comics asSkippers.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
Oh yeah, and future executives of Pixar.
Yes, that's right.
That's right.
John Lasseter, for all of hisuncomfortableness, was a skipper
.
There's a lot of people thatactually got their turn.
I mean, for goodness sakes, itis such a thing to kind of grow
up in the ranks of actuallyhaving the expectation of oh
yeah, I got my start as askipper.
That Weird.

(40:37):
Al.
Yankovic actually wrote a songcalled Skipper Dan.

Speaker 4 (40:41):
That's right, I saw him perform that live, yep.
I saw him perform that live,yep.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
I'm a tour guide on the Jungle Cruise ride.
Yep, I love that song.
I do too.
It's great.
It's a little mean, yeah.
But at the same time it's meanbecause it's true.
Yeah, no, they're all kind oflike actors who are trying to
make a living, but I'm going todo it because I'm going to make

(41:06):
a living.
Yeah, you know, yeah.
But they also have to bear thebrunt of changing attitudes.
Yeah, cultural attitudes.
I mean the way that things havechanged on the ride over time.
Great changes, but they have todeal with those changes.

Speaker 4 (41:14):
Yeah, and we'll get to that because there's some
fairly modern changes that werepretty big, that I actually like
.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
So let's talk about the ride itself.
We talked a lot about skippersand the Indy connection, but
let's talk about the ride itself.

Speaker 4 (41:29):
So I thought it'd be kind of interesting because when
we did the previous episode wewent through kind of what all of
the rivers that they were goingon were.
That changed with Indy?
But I'll tell you what.
I'll read the old one and comeback to it.
Oh, wow, so the version of theJungle Cruise that was like

(41:52):
post-1964, so that's post-MarkDavis, updating it with all the
jokes, right, and sort of movingcharacters around and adding
some more sophisticatedanimatronics and stuff.
Sure, so what you had was youlaunched from a boathouse, you
had the Mekong River with thetemple ruins.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (42:10):
It was the Bengal tiger, the Indian elephant
bathing pool.
Then you had the Congo Basin,which was the base camp with the
gorillas.
Then you had the Nile, theAfrican Veldt, the Lost Safari,
the Hippo Pool, the HeadhunterTerritory, schweitzer Falls and
the Kilimanjaro Rapids.
Then you had the Amazon River,giant Snake, trader, sam, nice.

(42:32):
That's pretty much the wholeride.
After Indy what you had was theLost Delta, but it was really
an ad for Indy because you werepassing the Temple of the Friven
Nye right then.
So the Irrawaddy River, ofcourse, the Cambodian ruins, the
Indian elephant bathing poolSome of this is exactly the same
, some of it's different.

(42:53):
The abandoned camp with thegorillas They've moved some of
the gorillas around the Nile,the African Veldt, the Lost
Safari that's one of the bigthings that's changed more
recently.
The Hippos, the HeadhunterTerritory, Backside of Water.
Between that early one, 1964,and Indy, they had added Piranha

(43:14):
to the Kilimanjaro Rapids.
I love the Piranha yeah, they'reso goofy, I kind of like it,
though.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
It's just Piranha and it gets kids.
Oh, it, does Kids love thepiranha?
I mean, come on.

Speaker 4 (43:26):
And you know, the Kilimanjaro Rapids were dumb.
They just didn't seem likerapids at all.
It's like, oh, there's a coupleof rocks over there, so now
it's the dumb rapids and acouple of fish on a wheel.
It's an improvement.
Yeah, the Amazon River, thegiant snake again, and then
Trader Sam is gone and it'sTrader Sam's gift shop.

(43:50):
So that's kind of thedifference between the two.
It changed a bit.
Most of the changes had to dowith sort of promoting that
you're sailing past the Templeof the Forbidden Eye, right, and
I actually kind of like that.
I like that.
It's like we're all in thissort of unified adventure area.

(44:11):
I am always hesitant to narrowdown the narrative of theme park
attractions too much, but Ithink they were okay there.
Where I start to get sketchy isthe next thing I want to talk
about.
It is the Society of Explorersand Adventurers.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Kongaloosh.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Kongaloosh yes, let's discuss this.
We can't go into too muchdetail because where it develops
, yes.
However, we do have to touch onit?

Speaker 4 (44:44):
we do.
We do have to touch on it, um,because in many ways a
off-the-cuff joke forms a veryfirm like basis of this entire
narrative, which is the jokeabout schweitzer falls right and
dr albert falls right um, andI'm sure at some point we'll do
a whole episode about the SEA,because—.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
I think we should.
It is, I think we should dothat fairly soon.

Speaker 4 (45:09):
It's complex.
It is interesting.
This is just my opinion.
I question nailing down thisnarrative as much as they have.
I mean it's interesting thatthey've spread it across
different continents.
Oh yeah, it's not just anAdventureland thing, it's
Frontierland, like Big ThunderMountain's involved in it.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
The Mystic Manor in Shanghai is involved.
Mystic Manor's deeply involvedin it.
The Adventurers Club now RIP.

Speaker 4 (45:39):
Yeah, my dearly beloved Adventurers Club, which
is interestingly the thingyou're talking about happening
at the Jungle Cruise.
That's what the AdventurersClub was.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
That was kind of the beginningsof it all.
Okay, little name droppy, butat the Dickens Christmas Fair,
when I was running my littleJules Verne attraction, a bunch
of Imagineers.

Speaker 4 (46:03):
And it wasn't a small attraction.
It was about little Jules Verne.
It was like Jules Verne as ababy.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Yeah, it was really cute too.
It was like a little Nautiluspram.
He didn't even speak French, hewould just go.
Anyway, sorry, I'm three, butit wouldn't be a show without a
baby impersonation.

Speaker 4 (46:27):
Really, is that a rule?

Speaker 2 (46:28):
now the prospector showed up early on in here.
He hadn't had him this season,so he might have shown up at
some point.
Anyway, and in came severalImagineers who had been a part
of designing and I don't know ifone of them was Joe Rohde, but
it sure looked like him andthere was a couple of other

(46:50):
people who were very definitelyinvolved in FAIR, who were
Imagineers, who were Imagineers.
And one of them looked at it andsaid this reminds me of the
Adventurers Club in Florida.
And I said what's that?
And he got this really shocked.
Look on his face like you don'tknow.
And I go, no, he goes.
Wow, it was like this has thatsame flavor and that's real.
I had no clue.

(47:11):
I mean we had.
We had a swearing in ceremonyyeah, at least fog would say.
Everybody raised right hand andrepeat after me and from that
point on everybody would do I,your name and all you know state
your name, and all the stupidjokes had no clue that that had
been going on zero.
And then it turns out Disneyhad already done it with the

(47:39):
Adventurers Club and I felt kindof like and the more I found
out the more I'm like, let's getL'Echon Fantastique involved.
Like, can Disney buy intoL'Echon Fantastique and make
this the French branch of theAdventurers Society Never came
about, but there was a briefmoment where I went hey, wait a
minute, you know.
So that flavor.

Speaker 4 (47:51):
I only got one vacation when it was open, but I
, when I was there, I loved theadventurers club so much it is.
It just it did everything Iwanted it to do.
It was, it was interactive, itwas hilarious, it was weird.
Um, you know, me and my friendthat were there we got invited

(48:11):
into the parlor for a specialshow where many of the
characters went on stage and didrecitations and there was a
ghost piano player that wasaccompanying them.
Oh yeah, so good, and it wasjust everything about.
It was an absolute delight.
And who?

Speaker 2 (48:27):
could forget Slappy.
Who could forget Slappy?

Speaker 4 (48:31):
As a weird aside.
So Disney has been very oddabout how they treat the
Adventurers Club Becauseobviously it got shut down I
think a little bit before all ofPleasure Island got shut down,
but not too far before and youknow they had a very devoted
following, including the peoplethat work there.
It had a very devoted following, including the people that
worked there.
So they tried to occasionallyhold get-togethers or kind of

(48:57):
like little recreations wherethey do skits and stuff and fans
could come and Disney reallyclamped down on it.
They didn't like it for somereason.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
I don't know why.
Well, I mean, sometimes in theparlor some of the singers would
do songs like Mailman, yeah,which look it up, it's, you know
, especially sung by the Fox.
Yeah, it's unbelievably filthy,but it's like that was being
sung, you know.
And then you have like Slappy,yeah, who is this foul mouth
little like ventriloquist dummywho is the ventriloquist dummy

(49:27):
of a ventriloquist dummy?
Yeah, that's one of my favoritethings ever.
The Colonel had his ownventriloquist dummy and he would
come out and sing like thetoast song and stuff.
Right, I like toast, you know.

Speaker 4 (49:38):
And it's like, oh, my God, well, and and and
interesting as, as a quick aside, Disney does seem to have
really loosened up their grip onthis, because when I was at the
Disney World Marathon twoJanuaries ago, they actually had
Adventurers Club.
You know, because you run alongand there's character stops.

(50:00):
They had an Adventurers Clubcharacter stop.
There were two of the peoplefrom the club with like an
upside down Jeep.
Oh nice, and I ran along and Isaw them and I just yelled out
Kungaloosh, and one of themlooked at me and went it's a
member, heck, yeah, heck, yeah.
So they still understand.

(50:22):
And the Adventurers Club?
This is why I brought it up inthe first place.
The Adventurers Club gotretconned into the SEA.
Yeah, conned into the SEA, yeah, so the SEA didn't really exist
when that was going on, but notthat long later, after an
attraction called FortressExplorations at Tokyo DisneySea
opened up, that's when theystarted building that narrative,

(50:45):
right, and eventually theystarted using the names of some
of the characters from theAdventurers Club as part of the
narrative, so it kind of gotretconned in Wow.
And it wasn't until, though,when they had renovated the
Jungle Cruise at Disney Worldand built the restaurant, the

(51:06):
Skipper's Canteen, right whenthey actually fully put Albert
Falls firmly in that narrative.
I got to eat at the SkipperCanteen last time I was out
there.
It's a lot of fun because it'sbasically, skippers are now your

(51:27):
waiters, right, and it's areally lovely place.
Food's pretty good too.
But that was the point wherethey decided, oh, albert Falls
is a real person.
He has a daughter, victoriaFalls, who took over the company
.
After he died, right AlbertFalls started the Jungle
Navigation Company, which is nowa part of both parks.

(51:48):
He supposedly had built theskipper canteen so that he could
use a secret room in the backto have meetings of the SEA.
Interestingly enough, there'sanother reference to the
Adventurers Club at theDisneyland Jungle Cruise.
There's two pieces of cargothat are where the old FastPass

(52:12):
machine, the old physicalFastPass machine, are and the
cargo is labeled, and it'slabeled the names of two of the
characters from the AdventurersClub.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
There's more than that.
Go for it.
If you look, if you're in lineand if the line is long enough
to circle all the way around onthe top bank, the top deck
around on the top bank, the topdeck there is first off, there
is a glass elephant that isinside of a crate that you can
see from the outer area.
That glass elephant used to liveinside the ice cream parlor in

(52:43):
Main Street.
Oh huh, Interesting.
They took it out and theyneeded a place to put it.
So they popped it out, put itinside of a crate as if it was
like an Indian artifact, andjust moved it Because people
love the glass.
It's fiberglass, it's resin,yeah, but it was the glass
elephant.
You know it was something kindof cool about this, but it was
decorated with it's an Indianelephant and it has all of the

(53:05):
little horn, you know, the tuskcaps and the howdah on the back.
The golden howdah built on theback, yeah, caps.
And the howdah on the back, thegolden howdah built on the back
, yeah.
And they said put that in acrate.
If you look at those crates,they're all labeled the same way
as the cargo that's in theFastpass, so it's still
connected.
Oh, interesting.
So it's really interesting howthey built that in.

Speaker 4 (53:26):
And a lot of the sort of artifacts that the
adventurers purportedly broughtback to the Adventurers Club.
When the club was closed downthey were shipped out to
different places.
A bunch of it was sent out toMystic Point in Hong Kong,
disneyland, and especially thesmall restaurant next to Mystic

(53:47):
Manor which is sort of looselytheir haunted mansion kind of
it's a great ride.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Yeah, super of loosely their haunted mansion,
kind of it's a great ride.
It's a great ride, but it isbecause the society where it was
installed ain't that cool onghosts.
Yeah, they had to keep it kindof more about magic than
supernatural scary stuff butsuper neat.

Speaker 4 (54:06):
And there's a restaurant next door called the
Explorers Club.
A lot of the Adventurers Clubstuff went there.
Yeah, called the Explorers Club, a lot of the Adventurers Club
stuff went there.
And if you go to the BengalBarbecue at Disneyland, just
across the street from theJungle Cruise, you can go in and
there's pictures of some of theother members of the SEA.

(54:26):
Yeah, and Albert, the Monkeyfrom Mystic Manor, is in a
picture with Bogart and Hepburnsitting on the African queen.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
That's a nice touch.
Yeah, so there's another memberof the society that I think
needs to be mentioned, becausethis character became installed
before Indy even opened.
He was a transitional character.
Okay, that was kind of layingthe groundwork for this bigger
world wrapped around the JungleCruise.
Yeah, his name is Albert AWOL,albert AWOL, albert AWOL, I'm

(55:00):
familiar with him.
He's the voice of the jungle.
This is if you were standing inline and you hear, you know, my
spurs go jingle, jangle, jingle.
Yeah, you listen to the oldradio and you hear a couple of
radio announcements From 1991 on.
Those radio announcements wouldbe interrupted by various

(55:21):
reports and audio gags, allhosted by Albert AWOL, and so he
would do all the jokes like youknow, we have found a wallet,
you know, full of $500.
Please come over to the radiostation and we will.
We have found a wallet, youknow, full of $500.
Please come over to the radiostation and we will give you
back your wallet.
You know that kind of stuff.
But he, it became a way likethey would make jokes like hi,

(55:43):
this is Albert A Wall here atthe Jungle Cruise.
And we noticed that some of youhave actually been noticing
that the line isn't moving wellenough?
Who here thinks that the lineisn't moving well enough?
Who here thinks that the lineisn't moving well enough?
Okay, for the rest of you,please take a step to the right
and let the others go past.
People actually did that.

(56:05):
Oh wow, it caused some problems, so they had to get that out of
the soundtrack?

Speaker 4 (56:09):
Yeah take it out.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
You know, because they thought it was a real dude
talking to them.
But Albert A Walls, becausethey thought it was a real dude
talking to him.
But Albert AWOL is the voice.
Welcome aboard the JungleCruise.
And here we are, we'relistening, there's reports of
crocodiles out on the Nile andthat's the voice.
That's Albert AWOL.
He started appearing at theJungle Cruise outpost in 1991.
Okay, and has been kind of afixture ever since.

Speaker 4 (56:31):
Is Albert Ewald.
That's the name of thecharacter.
That's the name of thecharacter, Okay.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
He eventually was replaced just with Jungle Radio.
Apparently, albert Ewaldoriginally was a pre-recorded
character that had all thesebits as if he lived in that
upper tower in the front of theJungle Cruise which is above the
rest of the line.
So he's up there looking downon all the.
So he's basically kind of likethe conning tower operator.

(56:58):
Right, that's Albert A Wall.
So he was the guy who wasresponsible of dispatching all
of the boats, getting them outthere, making announcements,
that kind of stuff, and then inthe meantime, like Bill Murray
in Meatballs, he would mess withpeople with his radio.
Yeah, right, and that wasAlbert Ewald.
But eventually he was replacedjust with straight-up radio,
with a couple of those gags putin, yeah, and the personality

(57:19):
just kind of went further andfurther away.
Mm-hmm, there are variouspersonalities that they comment
upon.
There's references to Bob Maddy, yeah, winston Hibbler, a True
Life Adventure Films person, andof course Harper Goff.
The music and the pace is a lotslower.

(57:40):
They actually added him.
There was a little bit of anoverlap of Albert A Walt into
the Temple of the Forbidden Eyeline, oh yeah, but just by the
truck and the generator.
You wouldn't hear the rest ofit.
You know the further along.
Oh, okay, because it was toomuch Jungle Cruise and not
enough Indy, so, but there wasenough spillover.
That's nice, though.
Yeah, there's a nice connectionthere.
It was an overlap, so theywould make references to the

(58:02):
Temple of the Forbidden Eye.
Yeah, if you look on YouTube,you can actually still find
recordings of the Albert AW, buthe's very definitely worth a
listen to.
Do we know who the actor is?
There have been various actorsplaying him.
Let me see who is the discjockey, if it's listed.

(58:24):
Yeah, the name of the radiostation that Albert A Wall
broadcast on was the DBC, theDisneyland Broadcast Company.
Oh right, yeah, but he was verymuch like a Depression-era
radio personnel.
It doesn't say who played him,but I'll bet you anything if we
looked up who it was, we'll haveto do it as a supplemental.
Yeah, I think it's the same guywho plays the genie in

(58:45):
Aladdin's Other Lamp.
Oh, that would make sense.
So it's the same era.

Speaker 4 (58:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:51):
No doubt he had a part in Tailspin, or at least
Darkwing Duck in the back Right,you know one of those voice
actors of the 90s Right.
Everybody was chipping in atDisneyland at that point yeah,
I'm not complaining, it's justthe state of affairs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, in2001, they did some things, like

(59:11):
they disarmed the pilots.
So now they put the gun in thefront of the boat and it's on a
chain attached to the boat forobvious reasons.
Because of Columbine, they wereno longer firing at the animals
.
They shoot it up in the air toscare them away rather than
shooting the animals themselves.

Speaker 4 (59:32):
There was a period where they weren't allowed to
fire at all and that seemed tocause some chaos, yep, partially
because they could no longersignal the dock that anything
was wrong.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
Yeah, they were reinstated in 2004.
So for three years, the poorskippers at the dock are like
when are they getting back?
I don't know.
When do we launch?
I don't know.
I remember one skipper.
I remember writing about thattime.
One of the skippers was likeeverybody scream at the top of
your lungs Ah Great, it was atthe hippo pool.
Yeah, that'll get them going,you know.

Speaker 4 (01:00:00):
I also have in 1999, the boats were replaced.
Yes, they were replaced withboats that were four feet longer
and again, bill Evans showed upand talked them into getting
rid of the awning.
Huh, because he said he waslike, look at this point, these
plants that we planted what like38 years before or something

(01:00:25):
he's like some of these are 70feet tall.
Let people see them.
Yeah, it looks like a realjungle now.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Yep, Yep.
I mean I always thought it'd beneat to actually put like a
netting, so there's still anawning, so like on really hot
summer days they could roll outa canvas on top of the netting,
but the rest of the time it'sjust snapped up and out of the
way for that exact reason.
So you're like we're in thereal jungle here.
So roughly around 2009, 2010,.

(01:00:52):
Roughly around 2009, 2010, theydecided to plan on something in
the Jungle Cruise specificallyand Adventureland specifically,
because they were alreadystarting to think about what a
new land would feel like atDisneyland.
That new land was, of course,star Wars yeah, galaxy's.

Speaker 4 (01:01:13):
Edge, galaxy's Edge.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Galaxy's Edge and they were trying to figure out
how do we make it interactive,how do we play around with this?
Yeah, and if you guys tune intoour Evermore episode on
interactive stuff and theIntergalactic Star Cruiser, you
will actually hear a lot moreabout this.
But this is that time period inwhich they were playing around
with interactive games.

(01:01:35):
Yeah, and the Jungle Cruiseplayed very heavily into this,
where you would do variousactivities with various skippers
all over Adventureland.
Yeah, there were little spotsall over the place and you had
different jungle activities,like imitate your favorite
jungle animal and then take thisover here and do that.
Take your favorite jungleanimal and then take this over
here and do that.
Right, and people thought it wasgreat because they accumulated

(01:01:58):
as prizes.
They would accumulate theselittle tiki's, yeah, these
little totems on differentthings that were based off of
different decorative elements,mostly very reminiscent of the
works of Roley Crump Mm-hmm,mm-hmm.
And then, of course, in 2013, Ithink it was Mm-hmm Let me
check my dates because I knowall of you Jungle Cruise people
are going to correct me 2013,they introduced Jingle Cruise,

(01:02:20):
yes, in which they do a holidayoverlay for the Jungle Cruise,
with snowmen and hats on theanimals.

Speaker 4 (01:02:31):
And it's really awful , but I like it.
Just a shout out to our friendsover at the Backside of Water
podcast.
They're nice people.
Yes, they are and they did.
It was a couple of years ago.
They did a musical episodewhere they were trapped in the
jingle crypt and it's reallygreat.

(01:02:55):
That's so awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Yeah, I mean they did it in 2013.
They had their own, like thewhole tour had its own
holiday-themed script.
They brought it back in 2014,and then it continued.
I'm not sure when they stoppeddoing it.
I don't know if they still doit or not.
The jingle crypts yeah, I thinkthey do, do they?
I'm not sure when they stoppeddoing it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:13):
I don't know if they still do it or not.
The Jingle Cruise yeah, I thinkthey do.
Do they.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
I'm not sure they do it every year I remember fairly
recently, actually, this waswhen he was 17, something like
that, a little bit before that.
Yeah, they had to shut down theJungle Cruise for renovations,
so the elephants neededre-skinning and repairs.
You know, I got to see themairlift one of the elephants out
with a helicopter.
That's awesome, it was cool.
It was like, wow, I beat unseeneverything.

(01:03:36):
Yeah, no, there it is, becauseI've seen an elephant fly there.
it is as uncomfortable as thatsong makes me feel.
Yeah, but still, it was reallycool.
But they did somethingbrilliant.
They shut down the ride andeverybody who came over to see
it got an apology from theskippers standing out front.

(01:03:59):
Really, here's how they handledit.
They put the usual giantplywood walls.
You know, coming next season atDisneyland, yeah, ladies and
gentlemen, boys and girls.
They put that out in front andthey would have a couple
skippers there with a big map ofthe Jungle Cruise and they
would act out the Jungle Cruise,oh my God.

(01:04:21):
In front of you.
They would have a couple littleprops and things like that and
joke with you.
This was their way of sayingsorry, it'll be renovated.
They would answer the questionsorry, it's going to be coming
back, but while you're here, andthey would gather a crowd and
be like all right, you're all onthe cruise with us.
You know, here's the backsideof water and you'd drink a water
.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
It was great.

Speaker 4 (01:04:42):
Oh that's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
I thought that was brilliant and it really got
laughs and that's the thing thatcarries over between the two
versions.
Yeah, the earliest versions,you know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
Earl Ravenscroft.
Over there you'll see ginger,be careful.

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
Ginger snaps, you know yeah, you go from that to
today's Jungle Cruise.
Yeah, the humor and the playfulattitude of all of that has
been a lot of fun.

Speaker 4 (01:05:11):
Yeah, and so you know , we have an attraction that
from the beginning was supposedto be some sort of kind of
naturalistic salute to the truelife adventures and then became
this slightly more comic kind ofplay on the African queen, a
little bit, with just some sortof comic, you know, darkest

(01:05:32):
Africa tropes, right, and thengot, you know, dragged into 1938
.
And elements of all of thoseare still there.
Oh yeah, you know it was nevercompletely redone.
There's bits of all of thoseand the one through line is the
Skippers.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
Absolutely yeah, and it becomes its own worst enemy
in some ways, because a coupleyears ago, right in the middle
of the pandemic, they beganproduction on the Jungle Cruise
movie, yeah, starring Dwayne theRock Johnson, and I had high
hopes for this because I went.
Okay, if it's like BrendanFraser's Mummy, where it's

(01:06:13):
tongue-in-cheek and action, it'skind of fun and there is some
of that there.

Speaker 4 (01:06:19):
Yeah, it's not because we saw it together.
Our families went and saw it atthe drive-in.
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
I wish it was a float-in.
That would have been a lot moreappropriate for us, but it was
at the drive-in yep, and thereis a lot about it that I enjoy.
Yes, but it tried so hard to bePirates of the Caribbean, yes,
that it lost the point of whatmakes the Jungle Cruise good.
Right, we don't need, you know,undead conquistadors, we don't

(01:06:46):
even need the Tree of Hope.
Yeah, we just need to see anidiot skipper and someone who's
on a very serious journey, wherethe skipper, you know, like the
river goes left, the river goesright.
Which one are you going to take?
We're going to take the seriousone with the goofy skipper.
So the goofy skipper's attitudeactually helps them get through
the more serious river.

(01:07:06):
Yes, but the fact that theyactually my favorite part of the
whole movie is when you'refirst watching Dwayne Johnson
doing his own jungle cruises.
Yeah, and everything ispasteboard.
Yes, he's got actors dressed upas headhunters yeah, it's great
.
And his backside of water isliterally just a tube hanging
over the boat, it's so good.
Yeah, that I laughed out loud atthat moment and unfortunately

(01:07:30):
that's the best part of thewhole movie.
Yeah, and they were talkingabout doing a full overlay to
make it match the movie, becausethey were so convinced that
this was going to be it.
This was going to changeeverything and they said, never
mind.
Yeah, the movie didn't take offat all, but they did take that
budget and they put it into thecurrent version, kind of
updating some of the gags, Likethe lost safari and Sam, and

(01:07:55):
turning it into his little depotwith the monkeys going all over
it.

Speaker 4 (01:07:58):
Yeah, and I think this is a nice update.
I think what they did waspretty classy.
They took out some of the moretroubling things, you know, just
some of the more culturallyinappropriate things.
Now, uh, they just kind ofexcise them without sacrificing

(01:08:18):
the jokes.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
Oh yeah, well, the loss of Fari.
They just changed.
They just changed genders andcultures and it was like that's
great, that worked out Just asfunny hunters.
I really here's, here's.
This is close to a plus up.
Here's, this is close to a plusup the headhunters.
What I really wanted to do wasto have them be Jungle Cruise
recruiters, oh that'd be great.

Speaker 4 (01:08:37):
So here comes a bunch of headhunters, hey you want to
work for us?

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
hey, you want to work for us, so that way.
Want to be a skipper?
No, no, no, no, we've gotplenty of skippers, don't worry,
they go.
Oh yeah, same animatronics butlike oh no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no no, no, no no no where we'veseen them just sort of update

(01:09:12):
some cultural insensitivities tosomething a little I don't know
if more appropriate is theright word, but a little less
shocking.

Speaker 4 (01:09:21):
And I think with the Jungle Cruise they kind of did
it right.
And with Pirates of theCaribbean I do think that there
were some things that needed tobe fixed.
With Pirates of the Caribbeanand for those of you who are
going to kind of come after megoing, this is an original Walt

(01:09:42):
attraction.
Walt himself was concernedabout some of the things in
Pirates of the Caribbean andsaid so several times Like I'm
not sure we may have gone toofar with this them.
To update it was notinappropriate, no, that said, in
this case it screwed up some ofthe jokes.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
I agree, yeah, I agree, which I think actually we
are to a point unless you havesome more tidbits to share, I
don't think so reached a pointnow where this is the point of
our show, in which we discusswithout any consideration to
money or safety or feasibility,our plus-ups.
Yeah, and I went last time.

(01:10:22):
Oh, no, punk.
So it's your turn to start offour plus-ups.

Speaker 4 (01:10:31):
Okay, I think that Tony Baxter's idea was a pretty
good one and that if the Jungle.
Cruise could run into a littlebit of Indiana Jones.

(01:10:52):
That that would be super cool.
So and I recognize this wouldtake a whole bunch of excavation
and moving things and doingthings that are probably
impossible at this point, but itwould make the Jungle Cruise
longer, which is great.
It had to be shortened a littlebit for Indy.
Yes, Not to the same level thatthe rivers of America were
shortened for Galaxy's Edge byany means, but it was shortened

(01:11:13):
a bit.
Extend it, Let it run throughsome area, even if it just kind
of goes through parts of thequeue or something I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
You're just saying that because you want to be able
to share your knowledge aboutthe water system of Disneyland.
Hey, did you know?
Water system of Disneyland?
Hey, did you know?
No, but so it'd be okay.
I'm looking over there behindme and Kelly's wife is giving me
the eyeball.
Stop, I don't see nothing.

Speaker 4 (01:11:46):
The weird thing is that the water does flow that
way but it hits the junglecruise and kind of turns back
towards the rivers of America.
So you've got a little bit ofan issue there extending the
water farther, because you'rekind of extending it farther
upstream towards Indy.
But I think you could do it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
With your plus-up.
That would be actually kind ofcool is to actually I know where
we could extend it into is toactually make the river kind of
weave in and out a little bit ofthe temple at the exit portion.
So while you're exiting youstill have to go over hills and
scaffolds, maybe have like alittle bit of a rope bridge to
go over, so like the boatactually goes underneath the

(01:12:30):
rope bridge.
As you're leaving Indy andyou've got this boat under—I
mean, yes, again spitting, butthat's why we don't put nets on
top of the boat.
Yeah, we didn't say anythingabout this being feasible or
safe, but it would still be cool.

Speaker 4 (01:12:46):
It would still be cool, but then— and I'd just
love to see some moreintegration between the
different attractions.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
Well, and what you do is you change some of the
temple.
Instead of make it a Bengaltemple, the elephant god or
whatever, you make it the templeof the forbidden nose.

Speaker 4 (01:13:06):
And so you go into the nostril through the— yeah,
you go into the nostril of Maralooking for the forbidden
emerald.

Speaker 5 (01:13:14):
My friends, my friends, welcome aboard the
Jungle Cruise.
We're going to be looking forthe forbidden emerald inside of
the nose of Mara, so hold ontight, be sure to pick the right
one.
Though there are millions ofemeralds, you have to pick the
right one inside the nose ofMara.
Kleenexes will be available atthe exit by the elephant pool.

(01:13:35):
You could wash your hands there.

Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
Just ask, big Bertha.

Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
Kelly's almost peeing himself laughing.

Speaker 4 (01:13:49):
So wait, I'm going to add one more thing to my plus
up.
Also, let's put a tiki bird onthe boat, so that while you're
going around the Jungle Cruise,the skipper can do his spiel,
but there's also, like, say, aRosita or something, sitting on
the boat, a sidekick, yeah, thatcan occasionally make comments.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
Yeah, there could be hornbills.
We could have talking hornbillson this thing.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
Oh, that'd be awesome .

Speaker 2 (01:14:11):
You know like we haven't heard that joke before.
Yeah, like the Greek core,they're the Statler and Walder
for the Jungle Cruise boats.
Yes.
Like, each one gets its ownsmart ass bird.

Speaker 4 (01:14:25):
Actually, that would be great.
That's a better plus up than myfirst part.

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
I kind of like that one.
That is actually a good one andit's doable.
It is doable.
Yeah, make it more interactive.
You know as much as we railedagainst the possibilities of
interactivity.
And again, this is like one ofmy favorite locations at
Disneyland.
Yeah.
Like, the Haunted Mansion isgreat, but it's great as a ride,

(01:14:48):
it's not really a location.
Yeah, as much as a lot of you,I'm sure, will argue against me,
I mean, believe me, I've beendoing haunted houses for 40
years for a reason.
It's because of the mansion.
But the Jungle Cruise, to me, isa world that I want to play in,
so my plus-up would actuallyhave guest skippers, and I don't

(01:15:10):
mean that they do the spiel.
I mean like let somebody steerthe boat, that would be
something.
But having that Greek chorus isactually pretty close to the
plus up that I was thinking.
Yeah, but it would be morealong the lines where, like,
what's his name?
Albert AWOL would actuallystill pop up now and then on the
tour, but in, like the LostSafari area where, like the

(01:15:34):
gorillas have taken over thecamp and you hear Albert AWOL
like you better look out forthose monkeys, guys.
You know, it's a little bitlike where's the rebel spy?

Speaker 4 (01:15:44):
Yes exactly Like there's one of you on board the
ship that is going to cause sometrouble, you know I think it
would be brilliant and fairlysimple to actually have the
Albert A Wall voice pop up onthe radio routes where we
actually dig out a new river.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
Yeah, and it splits, and what happens is that the

(01:16:23):
skipper doesn't know which onethey're going to get.
Neither does the audience.
Yeah, so it could be the leftone, or the right one.

Speaker 5 (01:16:31):
Yeah, and one goes into the nostril of the
forbidden nose.

Speaker 2 (01:16:34):
But you know it could be a lot of fun to actually
have just a small veer off toone side with even more gags,
more strangeness.
Yeah, and this one is like therivers of the Amazon or the
rivers in Hawaii, somethingdifferent, yeah, just to add a

(01:16:55):
little bit more, a little bit ofvariety, a little bit more
variety, and you're not quitesure.
So, rather than getting theentire same tour, like, oh,
we're on tour A, I love tour A.
I'm a tour B person, you know.
I love it when we don't go downthe Nile, the Nile's kind of
boring.
I love it when we don't go downthe Nile, the Nile's kind of
boring.
Let's go down this one, right,you know that kind of thing.
I thought, yeah, that'd be fun,yeah, that'd be really neat,

(01:17:16):
yeah, so something like thatwould be kind of fun.
I mean, it's not as involvedand it's not actually as
exciting as your plus-ups, butit definitely is something that
I would like to see.

Speaker 4 (01:17:27):
Yeah, more Jungle Cruise.
More is better.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
When it comes to.

Speaker 4 (01:17:32):
Jungle Cruise.
I'm right there with you.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
I mean, I actually love the Jungle Cruise in Disney
World.
We haven't even talked aboutthat one.
I know that one has a temple.

Speaker 4 (01:17:40):
Yeah, the Cambodian Ruins Temple, yeah, the.

Speaker 2 (01:17:43):
Cambodian Ruins Temple and the one in Hong Kong.
It actually has a volcano thatgoes off.
I mean, that really feels likeadventure, whereas Disneyland's
purity of we're going to go fora goofy Gilligan's Island type
cruise on this jungle ride.
Yeah, it's like okay, that'skind of cool.

Speaker 4 (01:18:01):
It's fun.
It's super quaint, it's fun.
It does very much hinge onwhether your skipper's good or
not.

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
Yeah, and you know what that does.
And this is a credit to theskippers and also to the
designers, everybody who putanything into it, into the
Jungle Cruise.
It's one of my favorite ridesand one of my favorite worlds at
Disneyland because, yes, eventhough the animals are
animatronic, it is one of themost believable.
Yeah, it's almost morebelievable than, say, you know,

(01:18:32):
going along the rivers ofAmerica with the Mark Twain.
Yeah, because even if youdidn't say you're in different
rivers, like, oh, we're goingdown the Nile, yeah, or we're
going down this, or you couldhave called it the Swiss family
jungle cruise and I would havebeen fine with it, sure, but in
the Swiss family Robinson,they've got ostriches and Indian
elephants on the same island,and you're like, what, who cares

(01:18:53):
?
Yeah, it's a jungle, it's apastiche of, it's the Anaheim
jungle.
Right, you can name the riverswhatever you want.
We're now going down the.
We're following the Gulf Stream.
Right, we're going down EvansFalls Rapids.

Speaker 4 (01:19:08):
And now, of course, since it's an actual jungle,
it's become a tautology.
It honestly is a jungle.
Whatever you say it is, thenit's true, because you're saying
this is what I call this.
Well, this is actually a jungle.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
Yeah, and bring the piranha back.

Speaker 4 (01:19:25):
That's right.
They haven't been working muchlately have they.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
No, what would be great is if the piranha actually
gets you just after TraderSam's.
You know, what would be greatis if the piranha actually gets
you just after Trader Sam's andjust have one of them with a
little sign going forget me.

Speaker 4 (01:19:39):
Miss me.
Oh, one other thing before weclose up.
Yeah, when you hit the newTrader Sam's thing which I think
is funny, with all the chimpsplaying around with this stuff
and taking your picture, yeah,does it seem like a missed
opportunity that it doesn'tactually just take your picture?

Speaker 2 (01:19:58):
Right, like if you and have a little kiosk Like
this is a great plus-up actually.
Yeah.
And it's a simple one thatDisneyland could do, because
they could sell this.
I mean, they've already gotpeople out there taking your
photographs in front of thecastle anyway, right?
So what if you have it, so it'sautomated, so like on Splash
Mountain or Space Mountain youget the scream photograph, but

(01:20:22):
it's the same thing.
Only you're on the Jungle Cruise.
You're like ah yeah, strike apose everybody.
The monkeys Wave at the monkeys.
Ah, give us a good kungaloosh.
Ah, yeah, give us a goodKungaloosh.
Yeah, you know.
And then when you get off,there's a kiosk with your number
, yeah, and you can scan it witha QR code or whatever, or you
buy it right there and there andyou get a little frame around
it.
I think that'd be great.

(01:20:43):
Yeah, I'm all for it.

Speaker 4 (01:20:45):
I am too.

Speaker 2 (01:20:46):
All right.
Well, kungaloosh everybody,thank you very much for
listening to us.
That ends this episode.
The next time we get together,we'll talk about something else,
Something different, who knows?
Hopefully something different.
Yeah, because I get so tired ofhearing about the Jungle Cruise
and how great it is, I'llJungle Cruise all the time.
So, anyhow, I'm Albert AWOL andI'm Victoria Falls, and you've

(01:21:08):
been listening to the Lowdown onthe Plus Zone been listening to
the Lowdown on the Plus Up.

Speaker 4 (01:21:17):
We hope you've enjoyed this episode of the
Lowdown on the Plus Up.
If you have, please tell yourfriends where you found us, and
if you haven't, we can pretendthis never happened and need not
speak of it again.
For a lot more thoughts ontheme parks and related stuff,
check out my writing forBoardwalk Times at
boardwalktimesnet.
Feel free to reach out to Peteand I at Lowdown on the Plus Up

(01:21:39):
on Blue Sky, Mastodon, instagramand all the other socials, or
you can send us a messagedirectly at comments at
lowdown-plus-upcom.
We really want to hear abouthow you'd plus these attractions
up and read some of your ideason the show.
Our theme music is GoblinTinker, soldier Spy by Kevin

(01:22:01):
MacLeod at incompetechcom.
We'll have a new episode outreal soon.
Why?
Because we like you.

Speaker 6 (01:22:27):
This is the Global Broadcasting Service, serving
remote outposts since 1928.
The weather here this morningis hot and humid.
A typhoon warning has beenissued for coastal areas near
the South China Sea and a stormwatch has been posted along the
coast of eastern Africa.
Tropical Imports announces thatthe Special Jungle Cruise
Dispatch has arrived, bringingwith it a generous supply of

(01:22:49):
extra-fine mosquito netting,guaranteed impervious to
mosquito and tsetse fly.
Remember, when it comes tosleeping sickness, prevention is
the only cure.

Speaker 7 (01:23:25):
That's mosquito netting at Trader Sam's.
And now let's get back to ourmusical program.
You must remember this a kissis still a kiss, a sigh is just
a sigh.
The fundamental things apply astime goes by.

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