Special Exhibit Articles Reconstructing Disneyland: Adventureland Adventureland certainly sounded like an exciting place to visitors on opening day. But much of the excitement would wait for some years. During Walt's lifetime and the years immediately following his death, Adventureland would be the home to the Swiss Family Treehouse and other attractions. But on opening day, it featured just one ride - the Jungle Cruise. And so it was to remain for over six more years. Harper Goff was one of the primary designers of the Jungle Cruise. "I said to Walt, 'Have you seen the movie, African Queen?" He said, "I kind of like Bogart, but I hate Katherine Hepburn." And he wouldn't go see it. I said, "I'd like to do a tropical river ride, because we can do the foliage and we can have alligators in the water. And they will come up out of the water. And we can have an elephant. We don't have to have him walking, we can just have his trunk go up. And we don't have to have anything walking. We can have natives beating their drums." The task of actually creating a Jungle fell to Disneyland landscaper Bill Evans. He searched around the area for "character" trees that would make the cruise a fun and fascinating ride. One original notion of Evans': He turned trees upside down, with their roots in the air, and then he'd grow vines on the roots. It wasn't an easy task. "For us," Evans once said, "trees are what clay is for the sculptor or the paint palette to the artist. . . We wanted to do everything we could to enhance the illusion, whatever it might be. But we always knew that our work was not the main event. We tried to create designs of growing things to look as if you had sort of stumbled across them and found them there naturally. Any time our landscaping designs call attention to themselves, I feel we've failed in our mission." Originally, Walt was set on using real animals as his Jungle cruise creatures. But this was one case in which cooler heads prevailed and Walt was talked out of his idea. As artist and Disneyland designer Herb Ryman tells the story, "Adventureland was to be filled with live animals, and we gave serious thought to where they would live and how they would be cared for. We thought there would be monkeys, elephants, crocodiles, etc., until the zoo people said 'You'll have a time taking care of them. Besides, if you run people through on boats these animals are going to hide. Someone from one boat will say they saw them and people from another boat will say they never saw anything, and feel cheated. "So it was obvious we would have to simulate animals which disappointed me because I thought it would look phony. But the talents of the men involved made it convincing. It's still one of the most successful attractions at Disneyland and it came about because our ideas grew up." But, even after giving up on his living and breathing creatures, he still wanted to avoid using electricity to run the animals. Said Harper Goff: "He didn't want to have the animals operate by electricity, because he was afraid somebody would stick their hand in the water and get electrocuted. So, we had it first operated hydraulically. But we found it very difficult to keep the pressure constant under the water. We did it that way for about six months. It was originally based on the natural Anaheim water pressure. But the pressure varied according to how many people were using their bath water. So, then we changed to electricity." Come opening day, the Jungle Cruise was ready for visitors - but just barely. The night before the park opened, men were still wading through the Jungle Cruise, hefting a 900-pound mechanical elephant into place. "I was waiting for disaster," recalled Goff. "We had one foul up, when a teenager got out of the boat. So, the guards blew a whistle horn and we had to stop all the boats. We finally got that straightened out. Most of the water stuff was ready on opening day, but it was much simpler than it was to become." Typically, Walt continued to want to improve the attraction. In 1957, he explained, "I want to add more animals. I want to get more animation in the animals. I want to really fix things. My monkeys have gone to pot and I want to get new monkeys. I'm going to take them out Monday because I'd rather not have them in there than to have them looking like that." In 1962 and 1964, the Cruise was expanded somewhat; largely under the direction of master animator and designer Marc Davis. The 1962 rehabilitation included the addition of the bathing pool of Indian elephants. And two more years later, the trapped safari and an African Veldt region were added. One significant effect of these changes was to put less emphasis on reality and more on humor. "When we put in this elephant pool, I went down to see it with Walt," said Marc Davis. "Well, I said, 'you know, Walt, there's going to be too much to see at any one time here.' He said, 'Marc, that's great. That means the next time they come they'll see things they didn't see before.' That became kind of a hallmark. He'd deliberately put more than you could see in (one visit to) an attraction."