Adventureland

Adventureland is the themed land devoted to remote jungles, lost temples and pirate seas in Disney's "castle parks". Guests pass from the order of Main Street, U.S.A. into dense planting, tiki carvings and colonial outposts evoking Asia, Africa, the South Pacific and the Caribbean. Adventureland was one of the original lands of Disneyland in 1955, and versions opened with the Magic Kingdom in 1971, Tokyo Disneyland in 1983, Disneyland Paris in 1992 and Hong Kong Disneyland in 2005. Shanghai Disneyland has no Adventureland under that name; its reimagining is Adventure Isle. The two American versions have their own articles at Adventureland (Disneyland) and Adventureland (Magic Kingdom).

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Concept and design

Walt Disney drew the land from his True-Life Adventures nature films, and in Disneyland's dedication he promised a recreation of the remote jungles of Asia and Africa. In practice the land offers a 1950s, tiki-inflected view of exotic adventure: a river expedition as the anchor, a treehouse or temple to explore, and trade goods, torches and drums doing much of the storytelling. Its signature attraction, the Jungle Cruise, was designed principally by Harper Goff, who took inspiration from the True-Life Adventures and from the 1951 film The African Queen, and expanded a single African river into a journey through South America and Asia as well. Bill Evans's planting — including orange trees replanted upside down so their roots suggested jungle growth — gave a brand-new park a mature jungle within a few seasons.

Disneyland

At Disneyland, Adventureland opened on July 17, 1955 with the Jungle Cruise as effectively its sole attraction; the Swiss Family Treehouse followed in 1962, and Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room in 1963. Marc Davis refreshed the cruise in the 1960s with comic scenes including the elephant bathing pool and the trapped safari. The land's other giant arrived next door in spirit: Pirates of the Caribbean opened in neighbouring New Orleans Square in 1967. Adventureland itself was substantially reworked in the mid-1990s, rethemed as a 1930s trading post to support Indiana Jones Adventure, which opened in 1995; the cruise channel was shortened to make room for its queue. The treehouse has since been reimagined as the Adventureland Treehouse.

Magic Kingdom

Florida's Adventureland opened on October 1, 1971 with the Jungle Cruise, the Swiss Family Treehouse and the Tropical Serenade, the Florida version of the Tiki Room. It was built on a grander scale than California's, with room to grow — and it grew quickly. Guest demand for Pirates of the Caribbean, which had not originally been planned for Florida, led Disney to extend the land westwards and build Caribbean Plaza around it; the ride opened there on December 15, 1973. The Spanish-colonial plaza also connected Adventureland to Frontierland for the first time. Later additions, including The Magic Carpets of Aladdin, added a Middle Eastern corner to the land's southern end.

Other parks

Tokyo's Adventureland mixes the American models and adds a New Orleans-style section that grows out of World Bazaar. Its unique feature is the Western River Railroad, Tokyo's park railroad, which — unlike the other Disney railroads — has a single station, in Adventureland, and loops only around Adventureland, Critter Country and Westernland rather than circling the park. Paris's Adventureland leans towards Arabian and North African storytelling: guests enter through the Adventureland Bazaar, an oriental city in the world of Aladdin containing Le Passage Enchanté d'Aladdin, before reaching a large Caribbean section built around Pirates of the Caribbean and Adventure Isle; notably, Paris has no Jungle Cruise. Hong Kong built the largest of the classic versions, its Jungle River Cruise flowing around an island holding Tarzan's Treehouse and ending in a fire-and-water finale, with the Festival of the Lion King staged in the land's Theatre in the Wild. Shanghai's Adventure Isle, opened in 2016, is a reimagining rather than a copy: a newly invented lost world around Roaring Mountain, home to Roaring Rapids, the Camp Discovery rope courses and Soaring Over the Horizon, with the pirate material hived off into its own land, Treasure Cove.

See also

• Adventureland (Disneyland)
• Adventureland (Magic Kingdom)
• Jungle Cruise
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room
• Festival of the Lion King