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Anyone who's been to Disneyland
or Walt Disney World over the past 45 years has probably suffered through
the Enchanted Tiki Room, "Great Moments with Mr.
Lincoln," or (worst of all) "It’s a Small World." All of these "attractions” feature Disney’s patented and trademarked "Audio-Animatronic" technology.
These Animatronics work through an ingenious combination of air pressure,
water pressure, electronics, and computers that tell these plastic- and
fabric-covered robotic puppets to move through a series of pre-programmed movements with
all the realism and agility of an arthritic turtle.
While some may find these doppelgängers
grotesque, it is reported that many more are delighted by them and their
antics. So, in that light, we note that, on June 23, 1963, the Tiki Room
opened for business in Disneyland's Adventureland. The gimmick is simple: unwitting suckers -- er, "guests" -- desperate for anyplace to sit after hours
of waiting in line in ungodly heat,
wander dazedly into the Tiki Room after hearing the ballyhoo from José Carioca,
the ever-chattering pitch-parrot
who looms outside the hut. (Why a Brazilian parrot should be shilling for a
Hawaiian-themed room is a mystery, but it ultimately makes as much sense as
the Mexican, Irish, French, and German parrots who host the show inside.)
Once seated, the guests are subjected to a spectacle consisting of scores of
birds and tikis singing various ditties, the most notorious of which is
the anthemic "In the Tiki, Tiki,
Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room."
After a suitable period, the bombarded guests are gratefully released back
into the "real" world.
There's something about these attractions that brings out the annoying in the
Disney Imagineers and composers. "Pirates of the
Caribbean" has its marauding buccaneers sing a catchy chantey -- most of which is unintelligible except for its
repeated lines of "Yo ho! Yo ho! A pirate’s life for me!" and
"Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!" And the less said about the
endlessly-rendered title song of "It’s a Small World," the better (try getting that one out of
your head, now that we've mentioned it). We must admit, though, we were
actually fond of the Carousel of Progress’s "There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" -- which may be one of the reasons the attraction
was closed at the original Magic Kingdom in 1973 (though it survives at Walt Disney World).
In recent years, the technology has improved. The original version of the
Tiki Room featured a behind-the-scenes array of computers that filled an entire
room, with vast machines that hummed, clicked, and whirred (one assumes that
a single well-equipped laptop could take the place of all those machines
nowadays). "Great Moments with Mr.
Lincoln" has gone through many iterations at Disneyland, and has been supplanted at Walt Disney
World with the "Hall of Presidents," which allows Americans to see plastic robots that grotesquely impersonate the U.S.'s past and
present chief executives -- and even to hear Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama provide their own voices!
Given Disney's genius for combining earworms and Animatronics makes us grateful that they didn't apply
it to the Presidents. The prospect of hearing Mr. Lincoln serenading Jefferson Davis with a tune called something like "Keep a Civil
Tongue in Your Head" is tempting, but too much to bear.
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