Sunday, August 23, 2009

Sailing Through Sundays on The Jungle Cruise: The Elephant Wading Pool

As the legend goes, Walt overhead a mother telling her child that there was no need to ride the Jungle Cruise again as they had already seen it before. Thus the concept of “plussing the show” was supposedly born. One of the first “pluses” fr the JC was the Indian Elephant Pool. Kevin Kidney has dug into his archives and supplied a few photos of the original Marc Davis sketches/maquettes:







From what I have read, the original attraction was a little more serious; much of the humor that is part of it today can be credited to Davis’ humorous scenes that were added over the years. Thanks again to Kevin for being so generous in sharing his photos!

Apologies for some of the blurry/dark photos, but figured they were worth posting due to their historic value. One of my earliest shots is from August, 1962, and the jungle looks positively barren:



2 from April 1963:





And last but not least for today, this dark shot from August 1963:



Here are some more photos of the Indian Elephant Wading pool; compare/contrast these “Then & Now” shots (“Then”) is from a vintage Panavue slide):





3 more current views:







See more Disneyland Jungle Cruise photos at main website.
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4 comments:

  1. Major Pepperidge6:49 AM

    Those maquettes are awesome, I wonder how big they are? I remember a Howard Lowery auction years ago where he sold some Haunted Mansion maquettes, I sure wish I could have bought those!

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  2. Katella Gate8:47 AM

    Thanks to K.K. for generously sharing (still) more archive stuff!

    Re. the original "serious" tone of the 1st Generation J.C., I've always imagined the narration to be similar to the one Thurl Ravenscroft gives on the "B" Side of the "Tiki Room" soundtrack album. Anybody know for sure? Any old scripts survive?

    BTW, I've always really liked Camarata's underscore for the Ravenscroft narration. I suppose it was specially composed for the record. Anybody know?

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  3. Kevin Kidney11:21 AM

    Great post, Dave.

    The maquette images here are two different views of the same sculpture. The Elephant is approx 7-1/2" tall and I'm pretty sure was by Blaine Gibson. Most of you will remember seeing it on display at Disneyland for many years. It was in a case neat the "Walt Disney: Naturalist" presentation at Main Street's Walt Disney Story.

    (Oh, and Katella Gate, I believe the Camarata's JC score was originally the Adventureland suite from "Walt Disney Takes You To Disneyland" LP (1956)

    http://vintagedisneylandtickets.blogspot.com/2008/04/walt-disney-takes-you-to-disneyland.html

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  4. The Viewliner Limited11:25 AM

    Very cool post Dave. Nothing like inside Disneyland information. Thanks to Kevin also. Appreciated.

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