History:
Of The Jungle Cruise

Although Disneyland opened in July of 1955 with the Jungle Cruise in place, it's history can be traced all the way to 1948 and the release of Walt Disney's Academy Award winning feature Seal Island, the beginning of his highly successful "True Life Adventure" series of films. That series would become the inspiration, during the planning stages of Disneyland, of the Adventureland area of the park.

The Jungle Cruise also traces its roots to another pre-Disneyland film. 1951's The African Queen with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn served as Jungle Cruise designer Harper Goff's basis for the ride through attraction down various jungle rivers of the world. Goff was a Hollywood set designer, and art director for the Disney Classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He also drew all the original site plans for Disneyland, and later was instrumental in the final realization of EPCOT's World showcase as an outdoor area with each nation having it's own pavilion (the original idea was to house several nations in one giant building).

His simple design for the Jungle Cruise has been added to and improved on through several rehabs. Originally, Walt wanted live animals to populate the Jungle Cruise show area until Imagineers convinced him that many of the live animals would sleep during the day (wonder how they keep'em awake in Disney's Animal Kingdom?).

The Walt Disney World version added a trip inside the dark and foreboding ancient temple ruins, and has also undergone several rehabs. The most noticeable occurred in October- November 1991, when the entire queue area and front of "The Jungle Trading Company" was greatly enhanced with new show elements and a new queue soundtrack featuring a comedic narrative and period music. A few former jungle skippers who worked with the rehab crew are listed in the rehab article in Issue two of The New Jungle Skipper Gnus.