Jungle Cruise: What's The Point?

[Ansem]

You know, as a child, I didn't care too much for this ride...but now that I'm older I can truly appreciate the sarcastic dry witt that Jungle Cruise has to offer. True, the animatronics alone don't make for a great ride, but it's being able to laugh at something that's so bad it sounds like a joke you'd find on the back of a fruit roll-up box that makes the experience work. It's an enjoyable, floating theatre, with your guide playing the lead, as you relax your feet from that aching trek across Magic Kingdom. :king:

 

[goofyvickie]

choice

Last time I checked, nobody was forcing anyone into the line, the 45 minute line, with a Fast Pass. Love the freedom of choice.

Everytime I am on the ride, the boat is packed with JC cult members that have the dialog memorized. This makes this ride fun. The skipper's admit jokes are dated, and it is fun to see what twists they come up with from the orginal script, just to throw the groupies off.

Remember the hippos are only dangerous when they are wiggling their ears....why they are all wiggling their ears....

Keep the classics please.

 

[DSNYKID]

Do you realize the lines for Jungle Cruise can be over an hour long for stand by. There must be some magic left in this old attraction.

It would be great to add the Disneyland Indiana Jones ride to Adventureland. I had heard somewhere...(maybe here) there was talk about bringing it to MGM!

 

[stankly182]

Personally I think the dumb humor in JC is great. I just got back from WDW and after a long hot day in MK surrounded by rude people and screaming kids, that kind of humor is refreshing:lol: We had a great skipper who was hilarious, and he really made our ride entertaining.

 

[swimmom]

As mentioned before, it's a classic. We don't ride the JC every trip as a matter of fact our last two trips we didn't because the wait was 45 minutes to an hour. Next year we will be at WDW with my MIL for her first time, and JC will be on our list no matter how long the wait is.

 

[disneydata]

edit

 

[WDWRLD]

Yet the JC is not the most advanced ride on the property it is a favorite of many who travel to the vacation kingdom. Its been there for darn near ever and has some very humorous skippers. Look into the history of the ride and the planning of the story and you too will get more out of the rides. Those are some of the earliest designs for AAs and their simple design is still great today. The ride was to have real animals in the early planning stages but was changed to give the guests a better chance to see the "animals" in action rather than sleeping all day. There must be some reason for the long lines and the fast pass machines there.

 

[WDWRLD]

If you get the right skipper when she says rhino its sounds like wine-o. Every time the boat cracks up laughing.

 

[ScrapIron]

So basically, yes. Walt did want the ride to be cheesy and obviously fake. That's where its charm lies. That's why people love it so much. There's a famous picture of Walt laughing when he first heard the "Backside of water" joke that is often inserted in any pictoral history of the ride.

I'm not too big a fan of it, but I know that it wasn't meant to be taken literal. Nothing in MK is to be taken literal. You can tell that from the name of the place Magic Kingdom. It's a land of Fantasy.

"In the early days, the JC was very serious," recalled (former CM) Gary Fravel. "The object of it was to take guests into the jungle. There was nothing light-hearted about it. It was a three-dimensional True Life Adventure."
(More Mouse Tales, page 56)

I just saw the DL travelling exhibit that opened at the Oakland Museum last weekend. Early footage of the JC confirms the above.

Hey, not to offend any Americans, but some of the skippers are so monotonous and robotic they might as well be Audio animatronics!

"...in the early 70's, one skipper brought a pair of electric socks....Wide-eyed guests, noticing his plug, would ask, "Are you animatronic?"
(More Mouse Tales, page 62)

My 2 most often made reccomendations to fans of Disney parks and the history are the Mouse Tales books and The E Ticket Magazine. There are really great stories about the JC, such as last day pranks by CMs including:

Standing next to a zebra holding a popcorn box to its mouth.
Bathing with the elephants.
A naked guy on a Zebra.

BTW, the original Mouse Tales does mention Steve Martin working in the magic shop, but nowhere else. The only mention of Robin Williams is as a guest when Fantasyland in DL was rented for Elizabeth Taylor's 60th birthday party in 1992.

I'm not a huge fan of this attraction. I noticed last summer that the one in WDW seems a lot more static than in DL. My first trip to WDW, I was most impressed by the engineering of the queue. I recall telling a person on the other side of the handrail next to me "it just took us 45 minutes to get from where you are to where we are." You think you're just going around a column, then whooooaaaa! The skipper is the key, of course, and I've had a great one-exactly once. I would welcome letting the Imagineers loose on this much real estate IF given the proper time, budget and resources to do it properly.

Maybe they could have Stitch on a bass boat trying to catch Nemo in order to have a fish fry with Ariel. Of course, I only make this last statement because reading it will make at least one person's head explode, and that amuses me

Cheers.

 

[Ariellen]

"In the early days, the JC was very serious," recalled (former CM) Gary Fravel. "The object of it was to take guests into the jungle. There was nothing light-hearted about it. It was a three-dimensional True Life Adventure."
(More Mouse Tales, page 56)

I just saw the DL travelling exhibit that opened at the Oakland Museum last weekend. Early footage of the JC confirms the above.

Yup...Walt thought that Disneyland needed a bit more humor, so he went to Marc Davis (Nine Old Men animator/Imagineer/Disney Legend) and asked him to go around Disneyland and see where they could add humor to the parks. Davis liked humor a lot (he's responsible for several of the gags in Pirates and Haunted Mansion) and provided some of the ideas for making Jungle Cruise more humorous.

I love Jungle Cruise; it's relaxing and just plain silly, with lots of charm.

 

[illuminations25]

Not wanting to offend any Jungle Cruise fans, but now that Walt Disney World has the Kilimanjaro Safaris, what's the point? Why would anyone want to go on a fake safari, when there's a real one just a few miles away?

Well you obviously haven't met my friend Annette she's a real catch, she visits my house on the opposite side of the docks. Oh and who can forget about Old Smiley he's great and his girlfriend is nice too, except you have to watch out for her because Ginger, well, she snaps. Where else on Disney property can you come out a head at the end of the ride, 2 of the Chief's heads for one of yours.

It's a classic we still need the Jungle Cruise!

 

[Sledge]

What's the point of EEA if we have Dinosaur now? The dinosaur part is the only part people care about anyways. :lookaroun

 

[kcnole]

What I find most humorous to me is comparing my memories of this ride as a child to my memories today. When I was a child I didn't pay attention to the narration I was intrigued by the animals. I remembered the ride as being as big as Kilimanjaro safaris really is, and the animals looking real, and being scared by the natives.

I was a little surprised when I got there years later to find that it really was just a small, campy, humorous ride. I could care less about the animals at this time, now it was about the humorous side of it. So it's really two rides. For children it's about the animatronics and the ride, for the adults it's about the humor.

 

[wedway71]

I love the attraction!

In 1971 when the park opened there was no Animal Kingdom so the planners at that point couldnt even fathom a Michael Eisner wanting to get into a animal theme park experience.Yes the show is outdated but its a Disney Classic and will always be.Pretty much everyone in here loves Disney and we all go a lot of times so its not all new and exciting to some but keep in mind the millions of kids that might have never been to WDW before so this is a new adventure and little ones think the characters are real.

 

[DisneyFan_uk]

Ok this may seem slightly stupid but I can't be the only one who wants to ask this.

When the JC boat goes behind the waterfall the CM says something about the backside of water and everyone laughs, while I sit there confused :veryconfu

Can someone explain the joke to me please?

 

[Ariellen]

Ok this may seem slightly stupid but I can't be the only one who wants to ask this.

When the JC boat goes behind the waterfall the CM says something about the backside of water and everyone laughs, while I sit there confused :veryconfu

Can someone explain the joke to me please?

Sure.

Here in the USA, "backside" is a word often used to refer to a person's... butt/bum/posterior/derriere/etc. So the riders are getting a slightly scandalous view of water!

...though to be honest, it took me a while to get the double meaning there, but I always laughed because the back side of the waterfall looked the same as the front so I was amused that the skipper would think it was such a big deal about it. :lol:

 

[Dayma]

Although I feel the ride is showing some age I still LOVE it.

I do think that they could introduce some new story lines into the ride to help.

 

[ScrapIron]

Yup...Walt thought that Disneyland needed a bit more humor, so he went to Marc Davis (Nine Old Men animator/Imagineer/Disney Legend) and asked him to go around Disneyland and see where they could add humor to the parks. Davis liked humor a lot (he's responsible for several of the gags in Pirates and Haunted Mansion) and provided some of the ideas for making Jungle Cruise more humorous.

And that was definitely a good move. Fortunately, it happened before there was a world full of online forums of people decrying how they would be desecrating a classic. If you want to see how sad and tired a ride can become when allowed to stay static, just go check out the Calico Mine Train in Knott's Berry Farm (considered the gold standard by the imagineers prior to POTC).

"I'm not interested in what you did yesterday, because I'm not going to be there. I know I can do that. It's the next thing that I'm interested in" (Walt Disney)

Cheers.

 

[HoW]

What I find most humorous to me is comparing my memories of this ride as a child to my memories today. When I was a child I didn't pay attention to the narration I was intrigued by the animals. I remembered the ride as being as big as Kilimanjaro safaris really is, and the animals looking real, and being scared by the natives.

I was a little surprised when I got there years later to find that it really was just a small, campy, humorous ride. I could care less about the animals at this time, now it was about the humorous side of it. So it's really two rides. For children it's about the animatronics and the ride, for the adults it's about the humor.

I ahve had that exact same experience. I used to love the animals, then I became a teenager didn't really care about how funny the Skippers thought they were, and abandonned JC for a few years. Last year my girlfriend really wanted to go, and I fell in love with it all over again. The humor is just left of center and right up my alley, and it makes you feel young to just laugh at the absurdity of it all!

 

[illuminations25]

Sure.

Here in the USA, "backside" is a word often used to refer to a person's... butt/bum/posterior/derriere/etc. So the riders are getting a slightly scandalous view of water!

...though to be honest, it took me a while to get the double meaning there, but I always laughed because the back side of the waterfall looked the same as the front so I was amused that the skipper would think it was such a big deal about it. :lol:

That is one interpretation of that part and I've also heard the Skippers use something along the lines of:

"Folks coming up is one of the most fascinating views in all of the world. Many folks have hit their heads on their sinks at home back in civilization to see this. Wait, for it, here it comes, get those cameras ready.... It's the backside of water! Yeah, I know when you think about it, it really looks the same as the front, and guess what, I get to see it every 10 minutes!"