Jungle Cruise

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.

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 37 inches (0.94 m) diameter underground pipe before it can be used again. The waterway depth is approximately 5 feet (1.5 m) 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 1,920-foot (590 m) waterway was later shortened and re-routed in 1994.^{[citation needed]}

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.

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.^{[citation needed]}

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. The original spiel was similar to the narration of a nature documentary.^{[citation needed]}