Welcome to Extinct Attractions. This week, I’ll be taking a look at one of a very small number of extinct attractions from the newest Disney park.
Last Sunday, Disneyland celebrated its 67th anniversary and while there wasn’t much in the way of a celebration at the park, they did do a cavalcade. It’s crazy that Disneyland has been around for so long and inspired eleven other Disney parks around the world. Of course, Disneyland has had countless extinct attractions over the years, but today’s journey takes us to the park with the fewest extinct attractions given that it's the newest Disney park.
Via D23
Shanghai Disneyland opened on July 16, 2016 as the first Disney park in China. As we heard so many times, the park was “authentically Disney and distinctly Chinese,” basically trying to pay tribute to Chinese culture by infusing Chinese design archetypes into the park. While I’ve never been to the park, the design of it certainly stands out amongst all of the Disney parks worldwide, especially through its takes on some classic lands like Tomorrowland and Fantasyland. But today, I’ll be focusing on Adventure Isle, the park’s version of Adventureland.
From everything I’ve seen of Adventure Isle, it seems like a pretty awesome upgrade to Adventureland. The land has two of the most popular attractions in Soaring Over the Horizon and Roaring Rapids, both of which can command huge lines even six years after the park opened. There is also a full exploration area called Camp Discovery that makes the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail look like child play. The last area was the Storyhouse Stage, which was designed to appear like a storehouse for expedition supplies. But as the name would suggest, inside was the final attraction that was there on opening day, our attraction of choice today, Tarzan: Call of the Jungle.
Choosing Tarzan to design a show around was a pretty fascinating choice considering that the movie was released seventeen years before the show debuted. Tarzan isn’t a particularly huge property in China, but the characters fit the theme of Adventureland really well and The Jungle Book has been done so often that I really appreciated the decision to go with Tarzan and make a brand-new show around it. We had previously had Tarzan Rocks at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and Tarzan: The Encounter at Disneyland Paris and while Tarzan: Call of the Jungle had some similarities to those shows, it also did quite a lot to differentiate itself.
This show was pretty awesome because it definitely reshaped what a theme park show could be. The show began with animation on some giant curtains around the stage, with the animation basically taken from the movie but done in black and white. I thought it was a really cool approach to kind of give guests the familiar feeling of the film and engage people right away.
But then the curtains rose to reveal an extremely elaborate stage that featured moving sets and probably 25 different performers. The entire scope of the show was simply gigantic and just had a kinetic energy to it that was hard to match.
One of the other really cool aspects of the show was how they went with the style of the Broadway version of The Lion King by basically making each of the animal costumes humanoid. The idea was that the general style and colors of the characters would be followed, but the performers themselves would have the flexibility to perform the acrobatics that the show was known for.
In a way, the show was closer to a Cirque du Soleil show than a traditional Disney stage show. The songs from the movie played in Mandarin as dancers galavanted around the stage in animal form and performed high rope tricks and flips and jump roping (while jumping on the back of other people). There was no dialogue, with the story really being told by just knowing the story of the film. But the story wasn’t really needed because there were too many other things going on that it was kind of hard to keep up with it all. Like at one point a stilt walker was launched in the air with a catapult. I mean, you don’t see that every day!
Now, I couldn’t find a reason why this show ultimately closed on August 6, 2019 as nothing replaced it. I would imagine that it left guests feeling a bit confused as to how the show fit inside of a Disney park. It didn’t really, but in a way that uniqueness helped it really epitomize the meaning behind “authentically Disney and distinctly Chinese.” In other words, this show rocked.
Via Juicy Quotes
As always, don’t forget to check out my interactive maps of the Disney Parks throughout the years where you can watch or learn more about all the attractions from every Disney park around the world.
Thanks for reading and have a magical day!