Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room
| Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room | |
|---|---|
| Park | Magic Kingdom |
| Land / area | Adventureland |
| Type | Audio-Animatronic musical show |
| Opened | October 1, 1971 |
| Designer | WED Enterprises
|
| Status | Operating |
Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room is an Audio-Animatronic musical show in Adventureland at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, Florida. It opened with the park on October 1, 1971, under the name Tropical Serenade, as a near-copy of the Enchanted Tiki Room that had debuted at Disneyland Park in 1963. After a character-led reworking in the late 1990s and a fire in 2011, the Florida show returned to a shortened version of the original presentation and took its present name.
The attraction is housed in the Sunshine Pavilion, a pagoda-roofed building on the edge of Adventureland. Inside, guests sit in the round around a central fountain while birds, flowers and carved figures perform overhead and on every side.
History
The California original was a landmark in its own right: when it opened at Disneyland on June 23, 1963, it was the first attraction anywhere to use Audio-Animatronics, the computer-controlled figure technology developed by WED Enterprises. Walt Disney had at first considered a dinner show with mechanical birds before settling on a standalone attraction, and the result proved popular enough that a Florida version was an obvious choice for the new Magic Kingdom.
Tropical Serenade opened on October 1, 1971, sponsored by the Florida Citrus Growers. The main show duplicated the Disneyland programme, but the pre-show differed: two Audio-Animatronic toucans, Clyde and Claude, appeared beside a waterfall to entertain waiting guests. The citrus sponsorship also shaped the surrounding area, giving the neighbouring Sunshine Tree Terrace its mascot, the Orange Bird. The show ran in this form for more than twenty-five years, with a name change to The Enchanted Tiki Birds in the early 1990s.
On September 1, 1997, the original show closed. It reopened on April 5, 1998, as The Enchanted Tiki Room (Under New Management), in which Iago from Aladdin and Zazu from The Lion King were presented as the room's new owners, interrupting and rewriting the classic numbers. The version divided audiences and ran for thirteen years.
On January 12, 2011, a small fire in the attraction's attic damaged figures and closed the show. Rather than repair the 1998 version, Disney restored the classic format. The attraction reopened on August 15, 2011, as Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room, presenting an edited version of the 1963 show: the lengthy "Offenbach" sequence was omitted, but the structure, songs and hosts of the original returned.
Experience
Four macaws — José, Michael, Pierre and Fritz — act as hosts, each voiced with a different national accent. From their perch above the central fountain they wake the room, and the show builds outward: bird mobile figures descend, orchids and other flowers sing from the walls, and carved tiki figures drum and chant around the room. A simulated rainstorm, complete with thunder and rain at the windows, interrupts the performance before the finale.
The best-known number is "The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room", written by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman. Other songs carried over from the original include "Let's All Sing Like the Birdies Sing" and the Hawaiian standard "Hawaiian War Chant". In total, more than 200 Audio-Animatronic performers — birds, flowers, totems and fountain figures — take part, all synchronised to a central control system that was itself a first of its kind when the show was created for Disneyland.