In an attempt to stop the repeated “Where are the Pirates?” questions, cast members even began wearing buttons that stated, “The Pirates are Coming! Christmas 1973.”
To add insult to injury, it was Marc Davis who was tasked with designing the Magic Kingdom version of Pirates of the Caribbean. Placed in a precarious situation, Davis at the very least wanted the opportunity to improve upon his work from the Disneyland version of Pirates. Unfortunately, because of several factors including time, cost, and geographic constraints within the park, Davis was actually forced to shorten the original Disneyland experience rather than expand it. Davis was not happy, but nonetheless completed his work on the abbreviated Pirates of the Caribbean project while still holding out hope that Thunder Mesa and the Western River Expedition would still be constructed.
Pirates of the Caribbean opened in the Adventureland section of Walt Disney World on December 15, 1973. This was notably seven years to the day since Walt Disney’s death on December 15, 1966. The addition of Pirates of the Caribbean was one of many blows to Thunder Mesa that ultimately resulted in the concept never getting off the drawing boards and into the parks. [For a complete discussion of Thunder Mesa and the Western River Expedition, see The Walt Disney World That Never Was, Stories Behind the Amazing Imagineering Dreams that Never Came True (2016).] As for Pirates of the Caribbean, it quickly became one of the most popular attractions in the entire park, and remains so today.
chapter three
Swiss Family Treehouse
Don’t you sometimes feel that this is the kind of life we were meant to live on this earth? Everything we need, everything, right here, right at our fingertips. You know, if only people could have all this and be satisfied, I don’t think there’d be any real problems in the world.
—Father, Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
The Swiss Family Treehouse is a walk-through attraction in the Adventureland section of the Magic Kingdom that allows guests to take a self-guided tour through the world’s most amazing treehouse. Designed to recreate the magnificent residence of the shipwrecked Robinson family from the Disney live-action film Swiss Family Robinson, the attraction is an adventurous child’s dream come true. As Walt Disney described in 1964 when discussing the Disneyland original: “Every kid has had a dream of living in a tree house and the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House probably tops those dreams.”
The Swiss Family Treehouse opened with the Magic Kingdom on October 1, 1971, and immediately captured the imaginations of visitors both young and old. However, after almost 50 years in operation, the walk-through experience is viewed by many as “dated” by today’s standards and is now one of the least visited attractions in the Magic Kingdom. The unfortunate result is that many guests miss out on a true marvel of Disney Imagineering and an attraction that is filled with storytelling details and ingenious props, all of which pay homage to a classic work of literature from the early 19th century and a heart-warming live-action film from the 1960s.
Backstory
Johann David Wyss and
The Swiss Family Robinson (1812)
The story of the Swiss Family Treehouse begins in the early 1800s with Swiss author Johann David Wyss. Wyss wrote his famous novel in order to teach his four sons self-reliance, family values, and the importance of the natural world. The Swiss Family Robinson was first published in 1812 and has become one of the most popular adventure novels ever written. Wyss drew inspiration from another classic story of adventure, the 1719 book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. As a matter of fact, that is where the “Robinson” in Swiss Family Robinson came from.
The Swiss Family Robinson begins with the Robinson family, composed of father William, mother Elizabeth, and four children, Fritz, Ernest, Jack and Francis, in the hold of a sailing ship during a treacherous storm. Although the ship survives the storm, the Robinsons find themselves shipwrecked near a tropical island. The family makes safe passage to that island while recovering many provisions from their vessel, including guns, tools, books, and livestock.
The remainder of the Wyss novel recounts the trials and tribulations of the Robinson family as they adjust to life on their new island home. During their adventures, the Robinsons take up residence in different areas on the island, including an initial camp on the beach, a treehouse, and eventually a cave. A British ship finally discovers the Robinsons after more than a decade on the island. In the end, some members of the Robinson family decide to remain on the island, while others return to Europe on the British vessel.
The Disney Film Connection: Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
The Disney connection to the Robinson family began in 1960 when the company released the live-action film Swiss Family Robinson. As the film begins, the Robinson family, composed of Father, Mother and their three boys, Ernst, Fritz, and Francis are on their way to a new colony in New Guinea. Their vessel, the Swallow, is attacked by pirates and driven into a storm, during which the captain and crew abandon ship. Thanks to some quick thinking by Father, the pirates eventually abandon their chase, and the Robinsons find themselves shipwrecked close to an unidentified tropical island. The film exudes the heart-warming, adventurous storytelling that is characteristic of other Disney live-action films from that era. As was the case with the Wyss novel, the film depicts the adventures of the Robinson family as they adjust to life in a rustic tropical paradise and culminates with the family defending their home against invading pirates.
Swiss Family Robinson featured an all-star cast. Noted British stage actor John Mills played the role of Father. His other acting credits included roles in Great Expectations (1946) and War and Peace (1956). James MacArthur played the role of Fritz. MacArthur was perhaps best known for playing Danny “Danno” Williams, the second-in-command of the fictional Hawaiian State Police squad in the popular television series Hawaii Five-O. Tommy Kirk and Kevin “Moochie” Corcoran played the roles of Ernst and Francis. This well-known Disney duo also played brothers in the 1957 film Old Yeller and the 1959 film The Shaggy Dog. Dorothy McGuire played the role of Mother. She also played the mother of Kirk and Corcoran in Old Yeller, as well as another classic mother role in the 1963 film Summer Magic with Haley Mills and Burl Ives.
Notwithstanding the outstanding merits of the film’s cast, the true star of the film was the massive treehouse home of the Robinson family. The family used materials salvaged from their shipwrecked vessel to build the magnificent treehouse. It is the type of home that adventurous boys and girls only dream about. The treehouse included bedrooms, a library, and even a kitchen, with many luxuries and modern-day (for the time period depicted) amenities.
Disney filmmakers constructed the treehouse in the “200-foot spread” of a real-life samaan tree. Disney even left the treehouse intact when it finished filming Swiss Family Robinson, and the treehouse remained in place until a hurricane eventually swept it away. The samaan tree itself, however, survived the hurricane and still stands today.
Rather than filming Swiss Family Robinson in Burbank, California, on a movie set, Walt Disney decided to film on location in an area where the fictional Robinson family could have actually found themselves shipwrecked. Disney discovered the perfect location in Tobago, a small island near Trinidad in the Caribbean Sea. In addition to being the legendary home of Robinson Crusoe, Tobago offered every natural advantage Imagineers could have hoped for:
The island had six different beaches, a giant tree for the Robinsons’ famous treehouse, swamps, mountains, and four hotels to house the cast and crew for six moths. Most incredible, however, was the natural beauty of the island, undiscovered as yet by tourists.
—“Scintillating Swiss Family Robinson Fun Facts,” https://d23.com/scintillating-swiss-family-robinson-fun-facts
While the natural beauty of the island was great, it did present major logistical problems in terms of filming:
Thousands of tons of equipment and materials were flown in, as a crew of nearly 1,000 descended on the island to construct roads, storm shelte
rs, cooking and dining facilities, and even the inevitable parking lots. Greenery (including green paint) camouflaged any neighboring buildings. The wreckage of the Robinsons’ ship was built from scratch on one of the island’s reefs. Three months, two sixty-foot towers and the assistance of highly trained divers were required to build the wreck, modeled after Captain Cook’s famous three-master, the Endeavour.
—Id.
In order to populate the island with a wide variety of animal species, more than 500 animals were shipped to Tobago from the four corners of the globe, including 40 monkeys, 2 elephants, 100 flamingos, 4 zebras, 6 ostriches, 2 anacondas, 6 hyenas and, of course, a tiger.
Swiss Family Robinson premiered in December of 1960. Advertisements for the movie proclaimed that it was the “Greatest Adventure Story of Them All” and “They Turned a Lost Island Into an Exotic Paradise.” Swiss Family Robinson was a big commercial success for Disney, and was actually the highest grossing film of 1960, bringing in approximately $40,000,000. That was good news because the sweeping adventure film was, at the time, the most expensive Disney film ever made. Walt Disney explained that “such a great story as the Swiss Family Robinson deserves every penny we spent on it.”
A Shipwrecked Backstory
Disney Imagineers did not leave the backstory for the Swiss Family Treehouse up to mere speculation. Instead, they placed it directly on a plaque that hangs on a thatch-roofed sign just inside the entrance of the attraction:
On this site, July 17, 1805, the
Swiss Family Robinson
composed of myself, my good wife
and three sons, Fritz Ernst and
little Francis…we’re the sole
survivors by the grace of God
of the ill fated ship SWALLOW.
From the wreckage we built our
home this tree for protection on
this uncharted shore.
The Imagineers explained that this backstory, along with the attraction, “fit perfectly into our vision of Adventureland. It explores the exploits of a family stranded on a deserted island and their resourcefulness in making a new life for themselves.”[The Imagineers, The Imagineering Field Guide to the Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, An Imagineer’s-Eye Tour (2005), p. 42.]
Storytelling Elements
The Queue
Out-of-the-Ordinary Disney Tree
The queue for the Swiss Family Treehouse begins as soon as guests first see the massive structure, as the tree is a stunning architectural marvel. The Imagineers make clear that the sheer sight of the treehouse plays a critical role in the storytelling process for the attraction:
A central component of the story is the tree itself, on which the family built their tree house using all the materials on hand, both from the island itself and from the remnants of their shipwreck. Our tree is a bit different, of course, as we have different structural and spatial requirements in our park environment than a family on an island would have.
—The Imagineers, The Imagineering Field Guide to the Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, An Imagineer’s-Eye Tour (2005), p. 42.
Modeled after a banyan tree, the treehouse was constructed using concrete, steel, and stucco, and weighs more than 200 tons. It stands 60 feet high and has concrete roots that run 42 feet into the ground. Disney described the significant engineering and architectural issues Imagineers faced when designing and building the Swiss Family Treehouse:
Like many Walt Disney World attractions, the Treehouse presented special challenges to designers and engineers. It was a one-of-a-kind creation, unlike any studied in architectural or engineering schools, and it had to comply with stringent building codes for public buildings.
—The Disney Company, Walt Disney World The First Decade (1982), p. 46.
In order to make the treehouse appear to be authentic to the naked eyes of guests, Imagineers created more than 300,000 leaves, flowers and buds to decorate the tree’s 600 branches, which themselves spanned more than 90 feet. The Spanish moss that drapes much of the treehouse, however, is real. Most guests don’t realize that the Swiss Family Treehouse actually has a scientific name: Disneyodendron eximus, which translates to “out-of-the-ordinary Disney tree.”
A Simple Queue
Pay attention to the volcanic rock benches that sit near the entrance to the Treehouse, as they feature primitive cave-like paintings of people and animals. These benches also incorporate wooden doors and posts that were no doubt salvaged from the Robinson’s shipwrecked vessel, the Swallow. Several canons sit near the Swiss Family Treehouse, ready to defend the Robinsons from pirate attacks or other dangers.
In addition to the sign that provides the attraction’s backstory, another sign near the entrance to the treehouse is labeled “Swiss Family Treehouse,” below which a wooden plank with the Robinson family crest hangs. The crest is a shield with two red stripes at the top and bottom and a white stripe in the middle. An exotic black cat is depicted in the middle of the crest.
The entranceway to the attraction was constructed with oars and sails from the Swallow. The wood utilized for that bridge, as well as the steps that lead guests through the treehouse, appear to have been made from planks taken from the deck of the ship. The rails on each side of the walkway path have bannisters with belaying pins, wooden dowels that are used to secure lines on sailing ships.
Guests gain access to the treehouse by crossing a beautiful 75-foot suspension bridge. The bridge was constructed using a combination of native elements from the island (bamboo posts) and a variety of materials recovered from the Swallow, including wooden rails, decking, and rigging.
To the left of the walkway, just before guests begin to ascend the treehouse’s steps, they will see an ingenious bamboo waterwheel system that transports fresh water throughout the rooms of the treehouse. The waterwheel is turned by a moving stream, which in turn moves a series of bamboo buckets into the water. The water-filled buckets are then dumped into a network of bamboo pipes and gutters that, through natural gravity, distribute the water to different rooms throughout the treehouse. The waterwheel system lifts approximately 200 gallons of water per hour.
Before beginning their journey up the steps of the treehouse, guests should take time to notice the Swiss family coat of arms that is posted at the base of the Treehouse on the tree’s trunk. This crest consists of a shield with a cross in the middle (similar to the cross in the flag of Switzerland). Two axes are located behind the shield, both of which come together behind a crest with a large “S” and the words “Swiss Family Treehouse” etched thereon.
The Attraction
The Living Room
The first room guests see as they begin their journey through the amazing home of the Robinson family is the living room. It sits to the right-hand side of the walkway, and has wood-framed walls and a thatched roof. This room is filled with assorted items recovered from the Swallow:
A large wooden captain’s wheel is the room’s centerpiece.
An authentic antique organ sits to the back left of the living room and plays the attraction’s theme song, the Swissapolka.
A bible sits on a mahogany table in the center of the living room. A bowl of fruit sits close beside.
Fine china and silverware are displayed in a bamboo-constructed bookcase.
Books, a quill and inkwell, and a large silver candlestick holder all sit atop a mahogany writing desk.
A vintage hourglass, a nautical barometer, and a portrait of a sailing ship in the rear of the living room.
The Jungle Lookout / Master Bedroom
Guests next pass by the bedroom of the Robinson parents, which is also located on the right-hand side of the walkway. A large bed sits in the center of the bedroom and is covered by modest bedding. Rope-like netting provides a barrier for larger animal intruders. Other pieces of furniture displayed in this bedroom include a dresser, a stand holding a water pitcher and mirror, and a nightstand. Perhaps the most interesting element of this room is a cask of brandy hidden
high above in the rafters.
On the walkway directly across from the parent’s bedroom is a sign labeled “Jungle Lookout.” A plaque posted on that sign provides the following information:
In this compound we often
pause to contemplate our small
world—HeRE adventure
beckons with every view & every
sound, the jungle & its river call
out their mystery
& invite us to new discovery.
As the name implies, the Jungle Lookout provides guests with great views of Tomorrowland and Cinderella Castle in the distance. The reference to “the jungle & its river” is a not-so-subtle nod to the nearby Jungle Cruise attraction.
The Crow’s Nest / The Boys’ Room
At the summit of the Swiss Family Treehouse, guests will see the bedroom of the Robinson children, Fritz, Ernst, and Francis. Like the parent’s bedroom, the boys’ room is constructed with bamboo and has a thatched roof. One unique feature of this bedroom is an actual window with six glass panes that was presumably recovered from the Swallow. A plaque posted by the walkway provides the following information:
The Crow’s Nest
Fritz-Ernst-Francis
Their Room
completed on the 1st anniversary
of our deliverance July 17, 1805.
The plaque includes a picture of a captain’s wheel and a telescope, and also provides clarity on the exact date that the Robinson family was shipwrecked, July 17, 1804. July 17 is also a key date in Disney history, as Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955.
Rather than traditional beds, Fritz, Ernst, and Francis sleep in hammocks. Strangely enough, however, the room only has two hammocks. A large wooden dresser sits beside the hammocks. Given it is the bedroom of three boys, it should come as no surprise that this area is very messy, with various items of clothing strewn around the room.
Adventureland, Tomorrowland, and Fantasyland Page 8