What jokes would YOU make as skipper of a jungle cruise boat?

Origin stories vary but the I put the most stake in goes something like this:

The Jungle Cruise is unique in that it's one of the only attractions that doesn't use audio-animatronic figures. Each of the animals movements are controlled by a series of cams each hand cut exactly to length. The labor costs and inflexibility of this system inevitably led to the creation of true animatronics with the Tiki Room a few years later, but these new figures wouldn't arrive in the Jungle till many years later.

Sometime shortly after the park opened many figures began to slip into disrepair. Skips of the time were generally young, just out of school and bored out of their minds. Ask yourself this, how many times could you deliver the Thurl Ravenscroft style Jungle Cruise spiel before going insane? After one too many trips you may begin to poke fun of the malfunctioning figures instead of following the approved script. This is of course explicitly forbidden though so you'll need to spend the last leg of the trip reminding guests that "The Jungle Cruise is a serious attraction, please no smiling, giggling or laughing as we approach the dock."

Eventually upper management realized what was happening and took a moment to reevaluate the Jungle. Sure it's original intention was to provide guests with the sights and sounds of safaris across the world. To take them to untamed and far away lands and show them things they may never see in real life. That all sounds great on paper but you can only see the same figures with the same factual spiel so many times before losing interest. Something had to change in the Jungle to keep tickets coming in whether management wanted it to or not.

That need to change led to the introduction of a series of vignettes designed by Marc Davis. This is when the Gorilla Camp and Lost Safari were added; the Veldt and Elephant Bathing Pool received upgrades/overhauls during this same time. The Jungle Cruise was reborn and Skippers have been sharing their unique brand of "humor" in an official capacity ever since.


That's at least how I remember the story going, it was told to me once upon a time by a Skip who'd been there for nearly as long as I'd been alive.

/r/Disneyland Thread