ORLANDO, Fla. — Yes, they’ve monkeyed around with Jungle Cruise, one of the original rides at Walt Disney World. But the spirit of the Magic Kingdom attraction remains on board with skippers punning the show.
Disney World posted on its Twitter account that work is complete on the Jungle Cruise makeover, which had not forced the ride to close for day guests. New scenes were plopped in over several weeks, and some affected areas were tarped over during the transition.
Unless you’re a headhunter fanatic or someone steadfastly against change, the enjoyment level for Jungle Cruise should be similar before and after the adjustments.
New things to see include a lot of monkey business, with animatronic animals playing with munitions, breaking into boxes of live insects and taking over a partially submerged vessel. A replaced scene has new characters scurrying up a tree to avoid the horn of a rhino.
Near the end of the ride, Trader Sam’s spot is now the lost-and-found/gift shop location, and there’s a lot to browse through while floating by, courtesy of Walt Disney Imagineering, including hats, phonographs, radios, oars, canteens, fans, socks and a disputed pair of heart-print boxer shorts. Plus, a little monkey snaps the “official cruise photo” with a flash.
There also are additions to the themed queue area and signs.
As with many theme-park additions, there are associated subtractions. Now missing are headhunter figures and savage references.
“Plussing and re-imagining the experience in Jungle Cruise was, to us, a unique opportunity to basically tell a story that does not perpetuate any stereotypes and to make sure that it’s reflective of our guests in a very positive way, but it also gave us an opportunity to salute the skippers that are critical to the experience that guests have,” Carmen Smith, executive creative development and inclusion strategies for Walt Disney Imagineering, said in a video on the official Disney Parks Blog earlier this year.
Changes to Jungle Cruise were announced in January. The alterations kicked for the Disneyland version of the ride this summer, which was updated while the resort was closed as a pandemic precaution.
The monkeys give skippers new fodder. On a Friday morning ride, there was a reference to “hot-air baboons.”
The Jungle Cruise population continues to feature a menagerie of automated animals, including zebras, lions, hippos, elephants and snakes. Humans on board also supply entertainment with groans for puns and cheers for the long-running “backside of water” joke. A kid in a Pluto cap Friday gave rounds of slow applause to skipper bits, while another covered her ears until approaching a tiger in the temple. “It’s a bear!” she exclaimed.
The journey ended with a skipper joke about if you leave your kids behind, they might be incorporated into “it’s a small world” and forced to learn songs in multiple languages.
On the pandemic front, the clear plastic sheet between skippers and Jungle Cruisers remains in place. Disney World currently is not requiring face coverings in outdoor settings, and the Jungle Cruise queue is open-air; however, the queue is tight, winding and sized to the proportions of Americans of 1971, so there are a lot of face-to-face-to-face encounters.
Disney also plans extensive renovations to Splash Mountain rides at Magic Kingdom and Disneyland, which will result in storylines based on characters from the 2009 film “The Princess and the Frog.” No timelines have been given for that project.
———
