Sailing Through Sundays on The JC: Setting Sail/The Rainforest

The boat departs and we head towards the tropical rain forest, home to some of the coolest last-minute landscaping ever documented! TECH SKIP: Ummm burn please, no more floating twinkie. But I think I know that Skip…I've heard he's afraid of Hippos and instead of firing two shots at them he throws the whole ammo box at them…poor guy.USC TUBA: It was Kevin's unfortunate habit of “raising the roof” that forced people to tell him he was Asian. AMAZON BELLE: “Raise Your Right Hand and Repeat After Me. I Hope…” The Skipper sets the tone of the cruise. You know within 5 seconds of a Load spiel what you’re in for. If the Skipper is chattering constantly without taking a break on the mic... get off the boat immediately. This is an 18 year old Cast Member with a “Mr. Microphone” toy. But if the Skipper looks at you when giving his spiel, pauses between his sentences, you can hear his voice clearly through the speakers and asks for your participation (as visible in this photograph). You are about to experience what Walt intended…8.5 minutes of pure escapism. When rookies start working the cruise they talk a lot. Why? We were scared to death and talking wouldn’t allow you to see how nervous we really were. The veterans learned that less was more.



TECH SKIP: This scene, while nice, pales in comparison to the winter morning when there is a bit of a mist floating on the water. Also notice the trunk of the “fern tree”; from what I have been told they are original and they are HUGE now. AMAZON BELLE: We enter the Tropical Rain Forest by way of the Irrawaddy River of Burma. Burma is a small country in south/east Asia named after its chief export (pause)…a type of shaving cream.” The original Jungle Cruise started with a natural looking rain forest. I don’t know when they switched to the all plastic rain forest, but I believe they changed it back in 1976 to the all nat-u-ral we see today. Beautiful bromeliads line the trees just beyond the misters. Yes, we are ready now for your non-approved SOP jokes about mist from the trees. Let’s hear it.



Kevin Kidney has done it again with some great contributions; today, he has shared 3 1960’s photos of the ticket booth/windows. Interesting to see Pirates of the Caribbean lumped with the other Adventureland attractions.







Last pic is from a current JC trip; shout out to Skipper Nick—nice job!



Any other skippers that would like to contribute material can email me at dvdpicasso@aol.com.

See more vintage (and current) Jungle Cruise photos on my regular my website.