The Enchanted Tiki Room is one of the original rides in Disneyland and Disneyworld  that are still in the parks!

It first opened in 1963 and the concept of this ride all started with Walt Disney going on a trip to New Orleans, Louisiana. While on a trip with his wife, Disney saw a mechanical bird in a cage and was so interested to see how it worked. He ended up purchasing it and return home. He showed his imagineers the bird and told them to figure out how it works. Imagineers Marc Davis and Rolly Crump

took on the challenge! Not only did they figure out the inner workings of the toy bird but made bigger versions of the birds along with flowers and tikis as well!

For the first 12 years of this ride it was sponsored by American Airlines and then in 1976 the Hawaiian brand: Dole Food Company took over the sponsorship and they are still the sponsors for the ride today.

In 1986 Dole Food Company created a desert that is a Disney food cult classic call the Dole Whip!

Walt Disney originally wanted the Enchanted Tiki Room to be a restaurant. It was going to be a Polynesian theme restaurant and the mechanical birds were going to sing when customers finish their meals.  However they quickly shot down that idea because the thought customers would not finish their meals on time in order for the next group of customers to come through due to the enchantment of the singing mechanical birds.

Another factor that the restaurant idea was veto is that this ride was the first Disney attraction offer air conditioning inside so customers might also linger inside to savory the air conditioning attraction!

Not much has changed to this ride from the time it open to the present day. The main birds feature in the show had a change of color in their feathers.

Also from 1998 until 2011 the show changed to “Enchanted Tiki Room: Under New Management at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

Starring Iago from Aladdin and Zazu from the Lion King. However in early 2011 a small attic fire happened inside of the the main room.  It caused the Iago mechanical bird  to be really burnt and beyond repair.

So they decided to go back to the original format after that fire and I am not going to lie I personally preferred the original song than the other one.

An interesting fact about the attraction:

There is a total of 225 singing flowers, tiki gods and birds in the attraction!

 

Until Next time!