Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room - Almost Wordless Wednesday

While scrolling through some music in iTunes this morning, I stumbled across my recording of the Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room attraction.  Whenever I hear the song, I can't help but instantly be transported into Disneyland inside our beloved Tiki Room, singing "like ze birdies sing".  One of our favorite things in the world is to grab a Dole Whip Float just inside Adventureland and walk inside and eat our treats while enjoying one of our favorite shows on the planet; hence the inspiration for today's post with some of our favorite pictures from inside The Room.  We hope you enjoy! 

It always begins with a float...

Magical Blogorail Blue: The Days In The Park Never-Miss!

by: Chad

Welcome to those of you joining me from Pursuing the Magic.  I am the second stop on our Magical Blogorail.

This month we are focusing on that one thing you absolutely have to ensure that you do each and every time you go into The Parks.  Unfortunately, I'm unique among my peers in that I'm a "Lander".  I've talked about it before, but among most of my Blogorail partners I'm the only person who considers Disneyland my home Park.  Everyone else calls Walt Disney World home.  Plus, I'm an Annual Passholder and most weeks I can be found in The Parks fairly frequently either with my family or friends.  I'm there a lot.  It's a blessing and it's great to be able to say that I can, but it makes things like this a little bit more difficult, because I'm there so often I really don't have that one thing that I have to do every time I go.  I'm pretty much all over the place, all the time, and no two visits ever really follow the same pattern.

If I had to pick one attraction I would like to do every time I go, though, and one that I would suggest to anyone who might be making their first visit to The Park as a can't-miss, it would have to be Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room.

Sunset at the Enchanted Tiki Room

Like it or love it, the Enchanted Tiki Room is a Disneyland icon, and one that is definitely not to be missed, especially if you are new to the Parks and have never been inside before.  We absolutely love the Tiki Room, which might seem a bit strange considering most of our little group here are grown men, but that doesn't stop us from sitting on our preferred bench in the back and singing right along with "all ze little birdies" as "zey" sing.

Main entrance to the Tiki Room

The premise behind the Tiki Room is simple, but it is quite the spectacle.  You begin your journey outside the Tiki Room where you are treated to the Tiki Room Garden Show, featuring some of your friendly neighborhood Hawaiin Tiki gods such as Tangaroa-Ru.  There are several of these totems all around the garden, and while you are waiting for your show inside the Room itself, the show moves around the garden where all the gods talk about themselves and give their stories for everyone in the audience to hear.  It really is entertaining and well worth showing up early to experience. 

Tiki Room Garden Show totems and gods

But once the garden show is over, the real fun begins.  The Enchanted Tiki Room is a roughly 15 minute show conducted by some of Walt's favorite audio-animatronic birds, excuse me, parrots (Walt himself had a personal hand in the creation of this attraction), singing some of the catchiest songs this side of It's A Small World.  It's not uncommon to be sitting there hearing everyone else in the audience singing right alongside the birds.  The songs move all around the room (there are well over 100 birds, drummers, plants, totems, and more participating) and are quite varied in spirit and pacing (from the classic "The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room" to "Hawaiian War Chant"); each is a lot of fun to listen to and sing along with.

Love the enchanted fountain

The lady birds!

Master of Ceremonies Jose!

And not to demean the Tiki Room in any way, or put a damper on it's cultural significance and place in Disney lore in any way, but perhaps the best reason you need to check out this attraction?  It's the only place at the California Parks where you can get a Dole Whip!  This bit of dairy Heaven on Earth is definitely a reason to check out the attraction.  We only have one flavor here, unfortunately, but to us there's almost nothing on the planet than can beat a bunch of Pineapple soft-serve piled high on top of a glass of fresh pineapple juice.  While lines outside the Tiki Room typically filter out and into Adventureland, there is an alternate line for the Whip inside the Tiki Room Garden where the aforementioned Garden Show takes place.  It's completely common for us to grab a Dole Whip, watch the Garden Show, and then mosey into the Tiki Room itself to finish off our desserts and watch the show.  If you're going to order one, order the float!  It's highly recommended by 3 out of 3 Days In The Park bloggers.

Yes please!

So there you have it, the Days In The Park must-do attraction.  It was really hard to choose just one out of the many that we love so much, but after some discussion this is what we came up with.  We hope that the next time you are in our Park, if you haven't already, or heck, even if you already have, make sure you pay the Tiki Room a visit.  And if you have a chance, and you see a certain Cast Member named Maynard working the show, sprint straight inside and watch it.  He brings an entirely new meaning to the word awesome.  There aren't too many people who could spruce up your typical pre-attraction spiel (don't take flash photos, etc.) but Maynard does, and he's definitely one of those "hidden treasures" everyone should know about.  So the next time you're at the Room, check and see if Tiki Maynard is there, and enjoy the show!

Pay no attention to the crazed look in the Cast Member's eye - this dude rocks!

Thank you for joining me today.  Your next stop on the Magical Blogorail is The CanaDisney Blog.

Here is the map of our Magical Blogorail should you happen to make a stop along the way and want to reboard.

1st stop - Pursuing The Magic

2nd stop - Days In The Park

3rd stop - The CanaDisney Blog

4th stop - Disney Babies Blog

5th stop - Cooking With Mickey

Final stop - Meet The Magic

Trippin' With Days In The Park: Dining

We're trippin' again!

Anyone who has followed us for any length of time by this point knows what huge fans of Gowalla we are.  One of our favorite functions that we only recently discovered is the ability to create our own trips on their website so people can complete trips that we ourselves make, highlighting some of our favorite things to do in The Parks.

Trips on Gowalla are a lot of fun to do and are easy.  By checking in at predetermined locations (or spots) within the trip, and eventually checking in at all of them, you are awarded a nice shiny virtual pin for your efforts.

About a month ago we did one highlighting our favorite attractions in the two Parks, and this month we're doing another trip for you guys, this one highlighting some of the things we enjoy almost as much (if not more so) than the attractions: Dining locations!

We each (Mark, Amy and Chad) selected three spots we like to call our "favorites" in The Parks (and one honorable mention) and created a trip from them.  We thought we'd share it with you guys today.  Just a few of our favorites included:

• Big Thunder Ranch BBQ
• Steakhouse 55
• Whitewater Snacks
• Rancho del Zocalo 
• and more!

If you want to check out all of the spots for yourself (and why we chose them), you can check out the "Dining With Days In The Park" trip on Gowalla, and we'll be adding it to the top of our website here as well.

If you're interested in doing our trip, it's easy!  If you're friends with us on Gowalla, the trip should already be showing up in your own Gowalla app since we are friends.  It's done automatically so friends can do each other's trips easier.  If we're not friends (why aren't we?!), then you can visit our trip on the Gowalla website, bookmark it, and it will then show up in your app for you to do.

Hope you guys enjoy; next time you're out at The Park, give our little trip and look-see and if there's someplace you've never eaten before, give it a try.  It is, after all, Days In The Park recommended!

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