Get swept away to a swinging South Seas celebration hosted by a flock of talking birds and their fantastic floral friends. Enchanted Tiki Room is a 15-minute celebration of island romance and wonder performed in a magical theater-in-the-round.
Enjoy delightful songs performed by a chorus led by 4 colorful macaws named Jose, Michael, Pierre and Fritz. Laugh, clap and sing-along as they are joined in song by a total of 225 animated performers - including assorted toucans, parrots, showgirl cockatoos, crooning flowers, drumming Tiki statues and chanting wooden masks.
The Pre-Show - The magic starts even before you enter the Enchanted Tiki Room. The Tiki gods encircling a lush garden spring to life and introduce themselves. While you wait, take the opportunity to purchase a treat from the Tiki Juice Bar. Taste a Pineapple Dole Whip-a classic treat treasured by both Guests and Tiki Birds.
Attraction
The presentation features a "cast" of over 150 talking, singing and dancing birds, flowers, the aforementioned magic fountain, tiki drummers and tiki totem poles that perform the attraction's signature tunes, "The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room" by the Sherman Brothers and "Let's All Sing Like the Birdies Sing". The finale has every Audio-Animatronic figure performing a rousing version of "Hawaiian War Chant". The choice of exit music is somewhat unusual, namely an arrangement of "Heigh-Ho" from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with lyrics thanking guests for watching the show and hurrying them to the exit.
So innovative was the technology by 1963 standards that an Audio-Animatronic talking "barker" bird (Juan, cousin of Jose) once located near the walkway to beckon visitors inside, caused enormous traffic jams of visitors trying to catch a glimpse of it. While waiting outside in a lanai area for the show to start, visitors are serenaded by Hawaiian music which at one time included that of Martin Denny and Bud Tutmarc. Hawaiian gods are represented as well around the perimeter of the lanai and each has a rhyming legend to tell via Audio-Animatronics.
Some include Hina Kuluua, goddess of rain; Rongo, god of agriculture; Maui, who roped the playful sun; and Tangaroa, father of all gods and goddesses. A brief documentary of the history of the pineapple is presented as well. The story, filmed in the early 1960s and updated at the end with a Macromedia Flash presentation of a parade of Dole products, is shown on a screen on the rear of the roof of the Dole snack bar at the entrance to the lanai. Other than the removal of a minor musical number set to the "Barcarolle" from Jacques Offenbach's opera Tales of Hoffmann and the final verse of "The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room", the show has remained otherwise unchanged since its 1963 inception due to a stipulation in the sponsorship contract with Dole that the attraction remain unchanged.
One chorus of "Let's All Sing Like The Birdies Sing" has Jose crooning like Bing Crosby, Fritz scat-singing in a gravelly voice like that of Louis Armstrong and Pierre singing like Maurice Chevalier. The show reopened in March 2005, after a seven-month refurbishment, commissioned by new Disneyland management in a bid to restore the park to its former glory for its 50th birthday. Feathers were regularly falling out of the Audio-Animatronics, the thatched roof of the building was breaking away in broad daylight, and the movements of the Audio-Animatronics were noisy and slow.
After the renovation, the original show and storyline remained but with a digitally remastered audio (remastered by Randy Thornton, who produced A Musical History of Disneyland (2005)), a new sound system both indoors and out, and completely new Audio-Animatronics. These look the same as the previous ones, but have a completely different infrastructure. Updates in technology allowed Walt Disney Imagineering, the descendants of WED Enterprises, to create a show to satisfy 21st century expectations while retaining its classic look and feel.
The original Tiki Room was controlled by a large room full of floor-to-ceiling computers that operated the birds with data on magnetic tapes, which was located underneath the floor of the main show room. Footage of the original control room is available on the 10th anniversary special made in 1965 featuring Walt Disney and "Miss Disneyland 1965" called "The Tencennial Special."
Touring Tips
- Enchanted Tiki Room doesn't so much have a queue as a waiting area. The front courtyard for the building housing the show has seating, access to the Tiki Juice Bar, a video from Dole playing on a screen, and several Polynesian gods that start coming to life a few minutes before show time and explain who they are. This courtyard area was included in the complete refurbishment of Enchanted Tiki Room in early 2005.
- The theater is quite dark, which may frighten some small children. Some children may find some scenes a bit scary or intense - the chanting of the tiki gods can be a little spooky.
- Shows are usually presented twice an hour. The theater is air-conditioned, and it's a great place to cool off on a hot day. The theater is very rarely full.
- They are somewhat hidden, but there are restrooms at this attraction - as you go up the steps towards the door to the theater the restrooms are on either side. There is a much larger restroom facility just outside and right next to the Adventureland Bazaar.
- This show is intended to appeal to guests of all ages, but some children may be startled by the darkness, thunder and lightning, and the drumming and chanting tiki gods.
- Disney characters are sometimes found on the Adventureland bridge right outside the Enchanted Tiki Room. Jasmine and Aladdin can be seen at Aladdin's Oasis, right next to the Tiki Room.
Facts
- The Enchanted Tiki Room opened on June 23, 1963. The Enchanted Tiki Room is the very first show to feature Audio Animatronics technology. Walt Disney's fascination with translating film animation into the real world led to groundbreaking new technology that enabled 3-dimensional animations to be recorded and played back on magnetic tape.
- Walt originally envisioned the attraction as a dinner show. However, he knew the attraction would be so popular that he changed the format to accommodate more Guests when it opened to the captivated public in 1963.
- Though it is difficult to imagine a time before Dole Whip, Dole Pineapple was not always the sponsor for Enchanted Tiki Room. From 1964 to 1973 United Airlines sponsored the attraction.
- Walt Disney had a mechanical bird in a cage in his Burbank office, which inspired him to create the audio-animatronic birds in the Tiki Room.
- Since then, the show has remained essentially unchanged, though enthusiasts constantly worry that the show will be given the "Under New Management" script now at Walt Disney World. Additional rumors surround adding Lilo & Stitch elements.
- In recent years, the attraction became a symbol for people concerned about upkeep in the park, with many elements inside the show no longer working and years passing without exterior upkeep resulting in a shabby look. For the 2005 50th Anniversary celebration Enchanted Tiki Room was given a comprehensive refurbishment.
- The gods in the courtyard are Maiu, Koro, Tongaroa-Ru, Hina Kaluna, Negendei, Rongo, Tongaroa, and Pele.
History
The attraction opened on June 23, 1963 and was the first to feature Audio-Animatronics, a WED Enterprises patented invention. The attraction was sponsored by United Airlines for its first 12 years; in 1976, sponsorship passed over to Hawaii's Dole Food Company, which remains the sponsor to the present day. Dole also provides the unique Dole Whip soft-serve frozen dessert sold at a snack bar near the entrance.
The show was originally going to be a restaurant featuring Audio-Animatronic birds serenading guests as they ate and drank. The "magic fountain" at the room's center was originally planned as a coffee station (there is still a storage compartment within the base of the fountain) and the restaurant would have shared its kitchen with the now-defunct Tahitian Terrace in Adventureland and the Plaza Pavilion restaurant at the corner of Main Street, U.S.A. since all three are actually part of the same building. Since ownership of the attraction was separate from the rest of the park, a nominal admission charge of $0.75 was levied. Since computers have played a central role in the attraction since its inception, Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room was also Disneyland's first fully air-conditioned building.
The attraction opened in an era when all things Polynesian were popular and was an immediate hit. It houses a Hawaiian-themed musical show "hosted" by four lifelike macaws whose plumage matches their implied countries of origin. "Jose" is red, white and green and speaks with a Mexican accent, voiced by Wally Boag; "Michael" is white and green with an Irish brogue, voiced by Fulton Burley; "Pierre" is blue, white and red, and has a French accent courtesy of the voice talents of Ernie Newton while red, black and white "Fritz" has a German accent provided by Thurl Ravenscroft, who also voices Maori god Tangaroa near the attraction's entrance.
The main birds have changed color over the years. In 1965, the four host birds had almost identical plumage of white, green, yellow and blue. The four macaws as well as all the other birds are plumed with real feathers with the exception of chest plumage. The chests are covered in custom-woven cashmere which allows the figures to "breathe" in a lifelike manner. The choice came quite by accident; in a planning meeting, Harriet Burns noticed a cashmere sweater that Walt Disney was wearing which moved at the elbows exactly the way the engineers envisioned.