Jungle Cruise, formally named Jungle River Cruise, and currently named Jungle Cruise: Wildlife Expeditions, is a riverboat amusement ride located in the Adventureland themed section at various Disney theme parks worldwide. The attraction is a simulated riverboat cruise that travels along a waterway using a concealed guidance system through areas with Asian, African, and South American themes. Park guests board replica steam launches from a 1930s British explorers' lodge, and Audio-Animatronic exotic animals are displayed throughout the ride. A live Disney cast member acts as a tour guide and boat skipper that loosely follows a rehearsed script, providing passengers with a comedic narrative.
The first installation of the ride was featured at Disneyland for its grand opening in 1955. A variety of changes were made over the years, including enhanced audio effects, updates to the storyline, and the removal of culturally-insensitive material. The installation at Hong Kong Disneyland features a significantly different storyline from the other parks and provides guests with three different language options, each with its own line queue. Following years of planning and delays, a film adaptation of the ride was released in the United States on July 30, 2021.
Inspiration and design The project was planned by Disney to incorporate a jungle-themed ride into the list of attractions featured at Disneyland's grand opening in 1955. Sources of inspiration include a 1955 documentary called The African Lion from the True Life Adventures film series, as well as the 1951 adventure film The African Queen. Disney Imagineer Harper Goff referenced The African Queen frequently in his ideas and drew inspiration from the steamer depicted in the film for the ride vehicle design.
Bill Evans was the Imagineer responsible for landscaping Disneyland and most of Walt Disney World. During the development of Jungle Cruise, he was given the somewhat complicated task of creating a realistic jungle on a limited budget. In addition to importing actual tropical plants, he incorporated "character plants" which have an exotic appearance despite not being exotic. He had used a well-known trick of uprooting local orange trees and replanting them upside-down, growing vines on the exposed roots.
The ride's water clarity, known as turbidity, is controlled in a manner that obscures the boat's guidance system and other undesirable items like perches and mechanized platforms of the bathing Audio-Animatronic elephants and hippos. The waterway was originally dyed brown but was later changed to other colors: first to a green hue and later to a bluish-green. When water returns to the attraction, it travels through a diameter underground pipe before it can be used again. The waterway depth is approximately and circulates southward from the northern end of Frontierland's Rivers of America to Fantasyland. The path of the ride takes riders past Frontierland's entrance and into Adventureland, where it drifts alongside the Tiki Room, before re-entering Jungle Cruise near the ride's exit. The waterway was later shortened and re-routed in 1994.
Although Goff and Evans can be credited with the creation and initial design of the ride, animator Marc Davis – recognized for his work on venerable attractions such as The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean – added his own style in later versions. The "Indian Elephant Bathing Pool" and "Rhinoceros Chasing Explorers up a Pole" were among his contributions.
Disneyland The attraction was in the opening day roster of the park, and has remained open and largely unchanged in theme and story since then. The original plan was to use real animals, but these plans were abandoned once Disney realized that the animals would likely sleep during the day. Aside from alterations and maintenance changes, four completely new show scenes have been added to date. In 1994, the river channel was rerouted to make way for the queue buildings and entrance courtyard of the Indiana Jones Adventure.
While the ride's comedic spiel is filled with intentionally bad puns by the skipper, the original intent of the ride was to provide a realistic, believable voyage through the world's jungles, wanting to be informational and educational. The original spiel was similar to the narration of a nature documentary. According to Behind the Attraction, it's theorized that when Walt Disney overheard a guest wanting to skip the ride because they had already rid it before, Disney talked to Marc Davis asking what could be improved to the ride. Davis responded, saying that the ride needed humor, later saying that Disneyland needed to be a place "where people would come in and look at something and actually laugh out loud. There wasn't really anything of that nature there". Davis created the concept art for the modern gags within the ride, helping to overhaul the ride to its current state.Behind the Attraction (July 21, 2021). "Jungle Cruise". 22:35-26:12 Disney+
Attraction summary The queue and station are themed as the headquarters and boathouse of the Jungle Navigation Company, a river trading company located in a British colony (as shown by the Union Jack flying above the boathouse) circa 1938. The queuing area is cluttered with appropriate props, such as pinned insects, an old radio on top of a bookshelf, an old typewriter, and a chessboard with miniature animals and decorated shotgun shells replacing the pieces. The extended queue winds upstairs and then downstairs again. Big band music from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s plays overhead, punctuated by jungle-themed news bulletins, helping to reinforce the setting and threading together the show scenes and boat.
Once aboard the boats, guests are introduced to their skipper and they head into the jungle, allegedly never to return. The first rivers simulated are the Irrawaddy and Mekong rivers, representing tropical Southeast Asia. The boats sail through a dense rainforest inhabited by large butterflies and a pair of toucans, before passing by the Temple of the Forbidden Eye and a shrine of a cobra beholding a crystal ball. Passengers then glide precariously under the first of a pair of stone arches severely damaged by an earthquake centuries ago. These are part of the ruins of an ancient Cambodian city where a crumbling temple is one of the few things which have managed to avoid tumbling into the river. Here, passengers see an Indochinese tiger, giant spiders, king cobras and mugger crocodiles. Passing a statue of a bowing elephant, the boats pass under the second arch and enter the Sacred Indian Elephant Bathing Pool. Here, a large herd of Indian elephants frolic and squirt water at the passing vessels.
The theme moves to the rivers of Africa: here riders see a family of baboons and a safari camp that has been overrun by gorillas. The boats narrowly avoid the dramatic waterfall, Schweitzer Falls (which riders are told is named after Dr. Albert Falls), and turn down Africa's Nile River where they pass between two African bush elephants, and large termite mounds. A tableau of the African Veldt follows, showing giraffes, wildebeest, zebras, vultures and gazelles; then a pride of lions feasting on a zebra beneath a rocky outcropping. Beyond the lion's den, an angry black rhinoceros has chased a safari party up a tree, much to the amusement of spotted hyenas. The skipper then pilots the boat into the Congo River spotting the wreckage of a boat that has sunk while also disturbing a pod of hippos that signal their intent to attack the boat. The skipper will then grab a prop gun and shoot it into the air, scaring away the hippos. It is currently unknown what makes the loud gunshot type sound but it is known it is not a live or dead round since laws prevent it.
Drums and chanting are heard as the boats enter through the Congo and end up in a place called "Head-Hunter Country". Guests can spot another boat being taken over by chimpanzees as they raid the boat of its supplies and accessories. The boats then pass by more chimpanzees who have raided the box of butterflies.
The boats now pass behind Schweitzer Falls (referred to as "the Backside of Water", which they call "the Eighth Wonder of the World") to enter the Amazon River. Skeletal animal remains and warning signs featuring pictures of dagger-toothed fish forewarn the next show scene, where the boats encounter a swarm of leaping piranha. The guests then pass a couple of water buffalo and a boa constrictor. The boats then finally pass by a former lost and found stand which has been transformed by Trader Sam to become Trader Sam's Gift Shop.
Boats
There are 12 vehicles, with a maximum of 9 in operation at any given time (8 with guests and 1 training vehicle). The boats in 1955 were painted as clean, idealized replicas, but have since been given a more realistic theming reflecting the grunge and wear of actual watercraft due to the addition of Indiana Jones Adventure and its ruggedness. Names in use: Amazon Belle (Renamed "Jingle Belle" during Christmas) Congo Queen (Renamed "Congo Caroler" then "Candy Cane Queen" during Christmas) Ganges Gal (Renamed "Ganges Garland" then "Gingerbread Gal" during Christmas) Hondo Hattie (Renamed "Hondo Hollie" then "Hanukkah Hattie" during Christmas) Irrawaddy Woman (Renamed "Irrawaddy Snowwoman" during Christmas) Kissimmee Kate (Renamed "Yule Kissimmee" then "Kissimmee Under the Mistletoe" during Christmas) Nile Princess (Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle) (Renamed "Nile Nutcracker" then "Noel Nellie" during Christmas) Orinoco Adventuress (Renamed "Orinoco Ornament" then "Navidad Adventuress" during Christmas) Suwannee Lady (Renamed "Suwannee Sleigh" then "Sugar Plum Lady" during Christmas) Ucayali Una (Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle) (Renamed "Ucayali Eggnog" then "Evergreen Una" during Christmas) Yangtze Lotus (Renamed "Yuletide Lotus" during Christmas) Zambezi Miss (Renamed "Peppermint Miss" during Christmas)
Names decommissioned in 1997: Magdalena Maiden Mekong Maiden
Magic Kingdom The Walt Disney World Jungle Cruise is set as a depression-era British outpost on the Amazon River, operated by the fictional company, The Jungle Navigation Co., whose advertisement poster is painted on the wall near the exit of the attraction. Albert Awol's broadcast is different from that of Disneyland's, being ride specific. Also unlike Disneyland, the queue never extended to a second level.
Near the Hippo Pool, a piece of a downed airplane can be seen along the shoreline. This is the back half of the Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior previously found at The Great Movie Ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios in the Casablanca scene.
Each variety of plant throughout the attraction was carefully selected by landscape architect Bill Evans to ensure that the foliage would be able to endure Florida's unique climate: hot summers and relatively cool winters. The most difficult aspect of this was making sure these plants had the appropriate look and feel of traditional tropical plants in the equatorial jungle.
A Jungle Cruise themed restaurant, the Skipper Canteen, opened in December 2015 and expanded on the Jungle Navigation Co. storyline, making Dr. Albert Falls into the founder of the company in 1911, with his granddaughter Alberta Falls taking charge of the Navigation Company and the Jungle Cruise in the 1930s.
Queue The queue of the Jungle Cruise is heavily themed with period artifacts, tools, gear, photos and more. It is intended to resemble a colonial outpost where an exploration of the jungle rivers may be booked. It is divided into four main sections which may be opened or closed in sequence to accommodate crowd fluctuation. The queue was designed to wind about extensively so that guests may see all of the different artifacts in the queue. The most notable section of the queue is the office of Albert Awol.
Attraction summary