Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise has sailed in the park’s Adventureland area consistently since 1955 and remains today as one of the remaining attractions of the opening day overseen by Walt Disney itself.
But the culture generally moves faster than the mechanical hippos of decades.
On Monday, Walt Disney Co. announced that it is embarking on what many consider a long-awaited course correction for the Jungle Cruise. Numerous changes are planned to make the attraction more inclusive and less racially insensitive in its representation of other cultures.
The move follows numerous updates from older attractions, such as Splash Mountain and Pirates of the Caribbean, all designed to remove now outdated paintings that can be weird at best and racist at worst. This year, the company revealed that Splash Mountain, originally inspired by the creatures of the racist film “Song of the South”, will receive a makeover with the theme “The Princess and the Frog”, the film that presented Disney’s first black princess.
Jungle Cruise, as one of the attractions of Disneyland’s opening day designed by the park patriarch, will likely be seen with a more protective lens by the company’s vast fan base. However, the journey has also been evolving almost constantly since its inception. His initial influence came from Disney’s own nature documentaries and the 1951 film “The African Queen”, a favorite of former Disney designer Harper Goff.
Its initial conception as “The Rivers of the Jungle of the World” tended to be a little more educational than the most humorous version of today. The attraction’s disgusting tribal representations, largely inspired by images from Papua New Guinea, were added in the years after its inauguration. These Jungle Cruise vignettes essentially represent indigenous peoples as a tourist attraction, aggressors or cannibals.
Concept art for the reinvented Jungle Cruise “stuck safari” scene.
(Walt Disney Imagineering)
“Horribly racist” was the description of one of Disney’s own colleagues in the theme park design community. That’s how several Jungle Cruise scenes were featured in an essay by the themed entertainment design firm Thinkwell Group, which was published shortly after Disney announced the changes to Splash Mountain.
A speared war group was added to the Jungle Cruise in 1957, as was the character “Trader Sam”, a dark-skinned man today dressed in tribal straw clothes. Disney’s tiki bars – one on each coast – are named after the character who traffics in stereotypes. He will exchange you “two of your heads for one of yours”.
“Like Imagineers, it is our responsibility to ensure that the experiences we create and the stories we share reflect the voices and perspectives of the world around us,” said Carmen Smith in a statement provided by Disney. Smith is the executive of creative development and inclusion strategies at Walt Disney Imagineering, the company’s division responsible for theme park experiences.
The conceptual art visualized by Disney showed a reformulation of the “trapped safari” scene, in which adventurers climb up a tree to avoid a rhino’s horn. In his current state at Disneyland, a white traveler is at the top, while native safari guides are in a more dangerous position. The reinvented scene, initially dreamed of by Disney animator and designer Marc Davis, as an advertisement for the tour, features only unhappy participants from a previous Jungle Cruise boat ride.
The changes, Disney said, are being made independently of a Jungle Cruise-inspired film starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. Expect all scenes featuring unpleasant depictions of indigenous characters to be updated, said a Disney spokesman, although details about possible adjustments to the war party scene and at the end of Trader Sam have not yet been shared.
As silly and puny as the Jungle Cruise may be, it has long been criticized for viewing the adventure through an imperialist lens. Non-Americans are described as subservient or wild. While the tour aims to be a collage of Asia, Africa and South America, the human figures of the regions are presented as exotic, violent and stupid, humor that in the 1950s and 1960s was problematic and today smells of racism.
It is also a point of view that clashes with the broader cultural mission of Disney’s theme parks, which over the decades has shifted from simplistic and animated representations of other cultures to a brand with a more global perspective. When Walt Disney World opened Animal Kingdom in 1998, Africa and Asia were shown in a more revered way, which only served to increase Jungle Cruise’s outdated cultural representations.
Disney expects the changes to be completed this year at Disneyland and Florida’s Walt Disney World, where the attraction is currently open. The company adds that deadlines could be affected by the pandemic COVID-19, since Disneyland has been closed for almost a year. Even with Governor Newsom’s request to stay at home this week, Disneyland could remain closed for some time.
When finished, the attraction’s story will be adjusted. Guests will follow the exploits of a cruise trip in the jungle that went wrong and, along the way, glimpse this past expedition. Expect, for example, to see an old Jungle Cruise boat overtaken by monkeys, as the new scenes are designed to add life, activity and new characters to the attraction, while feeding more tacky jokes from tour guides.
“When we think about making changes to a classic attraction, we focus on ways to ‘add’ the experience,” said Chris Beatty, creative executive at Walt Disney Imagineering. “Jungle Cruise captains bring irreverent humor to guests of all ages, and we are excited to contribute to this legacy – along with a new animated figure of the captain – by celebrating his adventures and influence.”
Although the tour featured references to earlier tours that ended badly, Disney is planning to add statuettes that will represent other tourists and, as Beatty noted, a not-so-talented captain. This change will help fulfill Disney’s goal of removing tribal cartoons and, in Disney’s words, “negative representations of native peoples”.
“For the first time, the role of the captain will not only be that of a living, experienced and witty guide, but also represented by a figure within the attraction itself,” said Kevin Lively, history editor at Walt Disney Imagineering.
For those who follow the parks, the changes should not be entirely unexpected, especially with a film starring Johnson and Blunt intended for distribution in cinemas. “The Jungle Cruise,” like many recent films affected by pandemic-related closures, has been postponed from its 2020 release date to next summer.
It is worth noting, however, that in this case, Disney is not waiting to see how the public reacts to the image. Consider this an indication that Disney is aware that cultural reform of the tour is a more urgent need than what marketing calendars can allow. In addition, a Disney spokesman said the new figurines will not represent the characters in the film.
None of the corrected scenes were at the opening of the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland in July 1955, although the attraction seemed very different to today’s audience.
Animals were then scarce – only seven hippos and eight crocodiles were present in the water, according to the park’s opening year documentation – and the vast vegetation had not yet grown to mask nearby buildings. Many of the most beloved scenes on the tour, such as the elaborate elephant pool, were dreamed up by the animator turned Imagineer Davis and added in the 1960s.
Longtime fans of the attraction can expect to see some nods from retired boats in the new scenes, but the goal is a more inclusive ride that reduces foolishness. Lively says: “Ultimately, the jungle has the last laugh.”