This podcast is sponsored by AAA, the American Automobile Association. AAA members get discounts on tickets, resort accommodations and more at Walt Disney World and other Orlando attractions. If you book a qualifying Walt Disney World Resort vacation package at select AAA offices, you'll receive a free subscription to www.toriumplans.com, as well as dedicated trip planning resources just for AAA clients. Go to www.triplea.com or ask your local AAA travel agent for more details on this offer. Hi, welcome to another edition of the Unofficial Guides Disney Dish with Jim Hill Podcast. I'm Len Testa, co-author of the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World. I'm here today in the Magic Kingdom again with Sam Genaway, author of the new book Walt and the Promise of Progress City. How's it going Sam? Oh it's going great, do I have to stop dancing now because I'm doing like the little street party thing. It's finally Cyrus is infectious isn't it? Oh my God, I'm just I'm hopping and bopping. Let's go into Exotica, movie Exotica. So in the last episode we had left off at the end of Main Street entering Adventureland. We are now literally taking our first step onto the Adventureland Bridge. Sam Adventureland is my favorite land in the entire park. It is rather sweet but I've noticed the humidity has increased quite a bit as we're going over the bridge. Well it's like that in Africa. Yeah that's true and really the idea this is really really movie land. I mean this is there's really nothing that represent any real place that's in Adventureland. It really is the Exotica locations that you imagine when you're going into the movies. And it's really really quite effective. The area like most of the lands on the west side of the park tend to be corridors. And they have different things on each side. So in here when you're looking at the right you've got all these different buildings that represent a wide variety of styles. No particular country, no particular anything really. Then when you look to the left you've got just a jungle that seems deep and rich and goes on endlessly. And it's a wonderful contrast. Buildings versus all the green on the other side. Yeah so that's really a great observation. I hadn't noticed it before. When you're walking from Main Street to Adventureland. Let's say you guys are headed towards Swiss Family Trias. On the left is nothing but plants. And sort of natural seating area. So you guys remember if you're listening there are seats that are made essentially out of rock formations or lava that are carved out of lava. And there's nothing but like a two or three store canopy of foliage on the left. Yeah I mean you literally can't see past it. And Disney's used a bunch of plants. It's not just oak trees or whatever. They've got palm, they've got bamboo, they've got all sorts of different plants. Bill Evans who is the landscape architect of the design boats. Disneyland and Walt Disney World was just brilliant with the use of plant materials. And before these parks opened they had a whole little nursery out back for years growing plants. And he loved Florida because everything grew and it grew like. Like weeds. You know another thing I'll point out while we're kind of right now we're walking towards the forest out towards the jungle. You look up at the buildings and you'll see all the balconies. Yeah. And you'll notice there's like chairs. They all sort of and if you look at them really close there's other details. They all once again sort of suggest that there was a person that was just up there and you just missed them. They must have just gone into their house or their building. That's right. So we're over by the sense of life that way. It's true. We're over by the smoking section directly across from the local aisle. It's all right. I mean people here it's fine. And to our right where the character greeting area is where the second story balcony. And you can see the fence or the railing of the balcony extends across almost every building. So it's a brown railing over as you begin eventually. And then it right over low high, low high. It switches over to a white railing. And then it stays white and you transition sort of a Caribbean theme over here. That's, I wouldn't say that's Caribbean. That's more Spanish. Yeah because it's got the tile roofs. It's got that kind of block tile roofs and stuff. And then it transitions. But there is no really one specific area. When they ended up adding the Aladdin spinner they kind of decided to make that area a little bit more cohesive. And keep in mind when the park first opened this was a cul-de-sac. It only went one direction and one direction out. It wasn't until they opened Pirates of the Caribbean. So it could get rather congested in here back then. But I'm really amazed that they're actually switching color palettes here in the space of 100 feet. It's going from sort of yellows and tans. It's sort of a desert theme to Caribbean colors. And Aloha is the, Aloha is Hawaiian, right? That's right. And so you've got a, you've got a, you've got a, you've got a, you three different cultures essentially. It's a span of 100 feet and yet, and yet it works. I mean it doesn't look, it doesn't look out of place. Yeah and it's, the idea is that they wanted to kind of take your collective memory of all of the exotic kind of films that you ever watched. And sort of spark those memories and they try to incorporate like you would in those days. Like look at this planner. I think this is great. You know, remember in Swiss family Robinson that the ship got wrecked and they were able to cannibalize the ship and they were able to make the Swiss family tree house. Right, so we're looking at a planter that's a direct, that's at the entrance of Swiss family tree house right now. So that idea on the Swiss family tree house is very prominent, but they extended all the way out here into the sidewalk. So, you know, you look at the planners and eyes, but you notice it's parts of the ship and you're sitting basically leaning on parts of the ship. So the place where your back would go on these seats looks like timbers taken are chunks of the ship taken and placed on top of rocks to form the ship. And it's really interesting because one of the planners, the back of the seat, contains part of the window from the ship that you would actually lean against. It's really interesting. And the connections, the things that Disney is showing as holding the wood to the rock is the large metal plates that apparently were on the ship. One of the other things I really love about Disney and it's a design principle I think that Christopher Alexander espouses is. Whenever you leave a building in Adventureland, and we're over here just coming up on the bathrooms, whenever you leave a building in Adventureland, you don't go directly from inside to outside. There's always some sort of covered patio or porch or something like that. Why is that important? Well, the ideas you need to have some sort of a transition. If you go from one space to another without some sort of transition like that cross is all we were talking about before, a cinematic technique, it's too jarring. One of the basic principles of Disney theme park design, as is expowed by Imagineer John Hinch, is this idea of the architecture of reassurance. That when you come to the space, everything lines up. There are no visual contradictions. Everything seems to look like it all belongs with everything else. When you do that, what you end up doing is you give people the reassurance that everything looks right. Everything is functioning correctly. You tend to relax. You tend to have, as he says, the permission to talk to strangers. And it's very, very, very effective. My big argument for the theme park is you don't come here for fantasy. You may say that. Or to escape. What you're really doing is you're coming here to be reassured that the world can function and everything is clean and everybody's nice and all that kind of stuff. And I think it's because of this high level of design towards the architecture of reassurance that when even something really little isn't right, we all go ballistic and go, "Oh my God, it's the end of the earth" and stuff. We have such high expectations because we come here purposely to know this works. All the light bulbs are working. Everybody's nice that if something hits the ground, a little guy or woman and white is going to sweep it up within three seconds from us. And that doesn't happen in the real world now, does it? That's a shame. The other interesting thing I like is as we transition, as we go deeper into Adventureland is this. So the rooftop immediately after Aloha Isle is sort of a pyramid shaped and triangle shaped two-story building. And you use this metal as a roof material too. Metal. And then there's another building you guys know where the restrooms are that connect Adventureland to Frontierland. They're great restrooms. It's sort of a corridor with restrooms along it. I like the tile. The tile is great. But it's a triangle and it's a triangle that's cut out at the bottom. And that mimics what you'll see later on with the Tiki. With the ancient Tiki room roof, but the bathroom roof is metal, but it's the same shape. And this one is in straw. Also, it's also the first place where you see the arches that will eventually transition into the Magic Carpets of the Light. And you were talking about the idea of a higher degree of life that there is a sense. So look up above the Island Supply Company to close the store, right? Yeah. And you'll notice that there are spools of thread. I've never noticed that. And that there's a rug, so people are working on rugs. Yeah, so the implication is up there that there's a loom and people are making rugs and when they're done with them, they just sort of hang them out. And I guess they'll march them downstairs and you can buy the rugs downstairs. That's fantastic. I've never noticed that effect before. Also, the color palette matches the... It must be fiberglass spools, though, and I think about it. It's got to be, or the mods every night would have it. The mods would have a field day with it. So we're walking up now towards Magic Carpets of Aladdin. We've got the Zanzibar Trading Company, importers of exotic gifts from the four corners of the globe on our right, directly ahead of us as Magic Carpets of Aladdin. We're going to go to the left a little bit down towards... Let's go visit Jungle Cruise. Oh, yes, that's very good. I like that. I really, really like that cue a lot. It's got a lot of... It's one of those cues. Don't worry if the line's really long. First of all, the audio loop is really quite funny. And there is just so much eye candy. There are so many little things that are in there that will entertain you while you're doing this long walk. Another thing that you're going to notice, too, is you're going to see elevation grade change, which you don't necessarily see in this part all that often. So we're going higher, and then we're transporting down lower, so there's a definite separation of areas. There's where the flying carpets are. That's a distinct area. You come down here. Now, all of a sudden, you really are in the jungle. I mean, you stop here for a second and look around. We keep going down. We keep going down here where the Ned's boat. Is that what these are? Shrunken Ned's Junior Jungle Boat Adventures. If you're ever in Disneyland, definitely it's worth the 50 cents to talk to Shrunken Ned, the head doctor. He gives you little cards of advice, and they're really quite funny. But we're now in the Jungle Cruise. So theoretically, we're sort of on the outskirts of civilization. Right. Well, because of the grade depression and all the use of the plants, no longer do you see the rest of Adventureland, really. And the only parts that you see, you're going to see the things that are all organic materials. So like the tiki huts, that's true, the palm trees that are there. That's right. So that's interesting. When you enter the, we're standing sort of by Shrunken Ned's, and we can see the Jungle Cruise to itself is to our left right now. So we're looking out towards where Magic Carpet Civilade would be. And the interesting thing is, you can't actually see it because you're down about seven feet. And Disney's put a whole green area around it. You've got the tiki's themselves, which are wood. Right. You guys know the tiki's that shoot water out on the side of Magic Carpet Civilade? I think they're called the Leaky Tiki's. The Leaky Tiki's, that's awesome. You know, see, there isn't a whole lot that you can actually see in terms of man-made things in this particular part of the queue. That's great. Yeah, so that combined with the giant forest and the huge giant Swiss family, Robinson Tree, you start to feel you're on the edge of the civilization. And in the Jungle Cruise building, it's kind of pretty funky. I mean, you know, it's not like they took the time and trouble to line up the steel roof very accurately now, did they? That's right. Oh, that's great. So you could tell that the Jungle Cruise is supposed to be a patchwork operation because if you look at the sheets of tin that are on the roof, it looks like they were, they initially had laid them all straight in the way that a roof tile should be laid. But then I guess as Leakes developed over time, the company decided to just throw the sheets of tin over at odd angles. So it looks like really somebody just flung some middle carpet up there to pass through, because it's really great. So that's what we've got in here. And I like this area. I think it's very nice. And it's another area, really, you know, when you get to Ned's boat. I mean, what's it like, 55 minute wait. So there's obviously a lot of people in the park at the moment. It's quite quiet here. And you're kind of once again out of the hustle and bustle. And that's another -- You're also out of the sun, too, in the shade. And there's a lot of that. There's a lot of little spaces and places that you can go to sort of get away from people. The sidewalks here were, I think, originally designed to have a capacity of as many as 35,000 people in the sidewalks compared to like Disneyland, which is less than about 17,000 people. Wow. So that's why this is sort of the super-sized park. They knew they were going to have millions and millions of people. They knew this was going to be successful. They wanted you to feel more comfortable, so they put these sort of little outposts so you can kind of gather your thoughts before moving on. That's great. So we're walking up the stairs from the jungle crews. We're walking towards the new Sunshine Tree Terrace, which recently reopened. So Magic Carpets is on our right. We've got the Enchanted Tiki Room itself on our left. I love the Enchanted -- I love the show building. The show itself. The show actually is better now. But the show is great. But the thing that I love about the -- And I will never admit that I said I all go unfold. I said I all go on fire. Oopsie. The thing that I love is the show building of Enchanted Tiki Room. And specifically, I like a couple of things. No more I like the scope and the scale of it. Yeah. But number two, I like how there's the interplay of water and fire in the queue itself. Yeah. It's really pretty. Very nice. And while we're standing here, if you look up, you're going to see what look like. Water buffalo, Asian water buffalo at the top. We'll get back in another episode about what kind of another visual trick that's pretty quite cool. But while we're here, just note that there's water buffalo that are up there. That's right. So at the very top of the Enchanted Tiki building, there are four water buffalo. Each facing one of the four directions of the compass, so north, south, east, west. So we're walking back behind this now. So Sunshine Tree Terrace, again, visually fits in. It's the counter service that every land needs. Right. And then if we continue on around Magic Carpets of Aladdin, we've got character greeting areas. Jasmine is there. And then we've got shopping. So the land, I mean, although initially into small, it's got everything, you know, everything that Disney theme park typically has. Yeah. It's got shopping. It's got dining. It's got a new attraction. I guess it doesn't really have a sit down restaurant, though. It doesn't. I wish it did. Yeah. It would be great. It does have an egg roll cart, which, you know. Okay. It's not the same way now. So let's walk over towards Pyresley Caribbean. The thing that I like about this is we have two very distinct transitions between this part of Adventureland over by Enchanted Tiki Room and going to Pyresley Caribbean and from Pyresley Caribbean on into Frontierland. So it's three distinct areas, two very different transitions. Right. And yet it works really, really well. Again, Adventureland is one of my favorite lands in the entire park. And then that's another cinematic technique. The idea in a movie you have sequences that follow one another. So scene A, scene B, scene C, that's what tells the story. Here you're trying to create a series of sequential spaces that have very distinct attitudes so that you can make very clear transitions. So yeah. So we're standing at the moment. This used to be this used to be the end. I mean, this used to be just a dead end. You'd have to turn around. You've got to go back out to the hub. Right. So the it's funny because the on the transition, the ground actually changes from gray concrete to sort of one foot concrete tiles to red concrete. Right. Right. And then what you're now doing is as we cross over here, we're going to go into the Caribbean and we're going to go into, and quite honestly, it's a very specific tower that they modeled for the Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord only knows, I don't remember which one it is. But this was the case that we've now entered, we've now entered the Caribbean and what I'm walking on, quite honestly, would be the sewer because it's a town, right? Right. And it's a fort and there's a sewer. That's what you would normally have down running down the middle of the street. So the gray little tiles sort of imply that that's where the sewer is at. All right, great. So our listeners, the next time you guys go into Adventureland, if there's not stroller parking to your left as you walk towards Pirates of the Caribbean, you'll note that there's a gray stripe walking down the middle, right down the middle of Adventureland and that gray stripe is populated with, I guess, four by four tiles and that represents the sewage system of the Pirates of the Caribbean's time. So the fort would obviously have bathrooms and stuff and they'd need to get rid of their sewage. And what they would do is essentially dump it down the middle of the street, sometimes. And so this line represents sewage. That's right. And then when I was standing in front of the fort of Pirates of the Caribbean, you've got the clock tower there and using that forced perspective, the fort looks like it's kind of really big and way over there. Way back, yeah. But with the guns out and the flags and all that kind of stuff, once again, it's sort of like you just must have missed the soldiers. They must not be there. And this is another place. I think it's another little secret spot, you know, keep looking where the cast members come in and out. Yeah. But there's little benches that are shaded and they're way away from the hustle and bustle. It's another one of those little resting spots that they've tried to build into each of the lands wherever they could. Oh, that's great. So we're in front of a Pirates of the Caribbean right now, Pirates is to our left. We've got the fountain of fortune to our right. We've got the Tortuga tavern a little bit farther beyond that. All of the buildings in this area have that sort of arched Spanish tile. Right, right. Everything in here is kind of a Spanish colonial, our mission style architecture and that's really important to remember because as we kind of transition in our next episode, you're going to once again see where this sort of thing comes into play using an architectural style, architectural language that was common to more than one culture and common to more than one set of time. One of the one of the things that I have in the book is the description of what are known as the elements of setting. There's these five elements of setting that talk about time, place, day, what the weather is and they hope to define why things are the way they are in a particular space. And that's what supports the story, gets rid of the visual contradictions and gives you that reassurance that you're in the right place. Huh. So there's a good for consistency right to make sure that people don't do it. Now I got to show you this one, I love this one because we've been talking about this sort of, there's a sense of life in the top of the buildings, right? Yeah. And it looks pretty passive most of the time in Adventureland, it's kind of pretty calm. Well, again, you've got sort of the two story building motif that surrounds you going into going into Adventureland. Well, until we get to the Tortuga Tavern, right? So it's Tortuga Tavern. It's supposed to be where all the pirates hang out. So look, so look up above and you'll notice that they had a fight. The chairs all broken, the tables are all as skewed, the barrels roll down. So we just missed the fight with the different pirates. Oh, that's great. So as you guys look, it's the second story of the Tortuga Tavern. It's all beat up. Like there's a, well, the pirate hat is still hanging on the hook. That's right. The tables are busted. Yeah, that's great. That's really, really nice. That's great. Tortuga Tavern is actually working today. That's great. We should go there for lunch. All right. So we're at the very end of Adventureland here, transitioning into Frontierland. I think this is a good place to stop this particular episode. We'll pick it up again with the transition to Frontierland. Sam, any last closing thoughts? No, I actually agree with you. I really like Adventureland. I like the contrast between the foresty areas and everything else. I think the area works really well. It's much, much larger than Disneyland. Those who've been to Disneyland, Adventureland is physically the smallest land in the park and it can become sort of a nightmare of traffic. They've obviously absolved all those problems here. It's quite, quite broad. All right, so on the next episode, we'll do the transition from Adventureland to Frontierland. Sam, Sam is the author of Walt and the Promise of Progress City. It's available on Amazon and ebook and Dead Tree formats. Sam, thanks for joining us again. My pleasure.
