The Jungle Cruise Pranks

It's no secret Jungle Cruise skippers have most fun work environment at Disneyland. Look at all the toys!! You're given a boat and a microphone and a captive audience... what more could a comic-at-heart want? On top of that, you have a giant nature preserve with water, hiding places, and theatrical sets in which you can act out some of the most bizzare skits ever devised.

With that, I'm hoping to begin a string of Jungle Cruise pranks... hopefully to be written by current or former skippers, but also guests who experienced them firsthand. (Yeah, I guess those dweebs down in WDW can contribute their stories, too. Even though we ARE the original!)

I'm now a retired skipper, so I don't have to worry about what the "suits" have to say. Heck, the "suits" were once skippers themselves who taught us our best stuff!!!

So here's my list. I'll admit, I've been a part of a lot of these... others I saw firsthand or heard from very reliable sources.

(In the order they would appear in the attraction):

• Dropping a rubber spider on guests' heads as they disembark and pass under the boathouse bridge.

   

• Fishing from the "catwalk" (center dock). The fishing line usually has a rubber fish or snake attached to it, waiting for a cast member to pull it up in a moment of glee with the entire boathouse audience watching.... one time somebody had put a broken "stroller parking" sign out on the catwalk with a stroller on it.

   

• Making jars of "baby piranha" to display in the dispatch office

   

• Playing chess with a fellow cast member in the "luggage storage" part of the queue building.

   

• Playing dead on the infirmary bed upstairs in the queue building.

   

• re-routing the queue so the line goes in a circle, but never to the loading area (only works when there is only a few people in line)

   

• Hi-jacking a passing boat by standing on the rocks outside of Indy and leaping into the boat.

   

• Sitting on the back of a baby elephant and riding it like a bucking bronco while screaming to passing boats about this exciting "Dumbo" ride at Disneyland.

   

• Intentionally timing the "Squirting Elephant" to soak yourself or passengers. (There is also a way to manually activate the "Squirter" on an unsuspecting skipper by hitting the animatronic's reset button, located inside the large rock where the Elephant Pool waterfall is (the rock is actually a hollow building!)

   

• Shooting boats with a maintenance hose that sits behind the gorilla camp.

   

• Having fun at the Schweitzer Falls bend. This actually needs some explaining. Sometimes a skipper will take out an empty boat to prevent the fleet from backing up and keeping the boats evenly spaced. This boat is called a "deadhead". When that solo skipper passes Schweitzer, he'll eventually get an audience when another boat passes in the other direction. Skippers have been known to dangle their bodies off the edge of the boat, playing dead, with a spear jammed in their back. Others will sit indian-style like a monk on top of the boat's smokestack. Sometimes the "deadhead" skipper gets a prank pulled on HIM. Other skippers will climb on TOP of Schweitzer falls with a giant bucket of water. As the "deadhead" passes underneath (the 2nd time past it) the skippers will dump the bucket of water on the boat from above. Oh yeah, one more "deadhead" story. As a tribute to Jerry Garcia on the night of his death, the crew sent a unmanned "deadhead" (obviously because of its coined name) around the river after park closing. A skipper jumped inside, set the throttle, and leaped back out as the boat pulled away from the dock. A few skippers even heard the ghost of Jerry out on that boat, singing to the animals. : )

   

• Speed Trap. (This is by far my favorite prank... but, unfortunately, a hand-me-down story from the guys who did it) After dark, two skippers would take the skiff (a small maintenance boat w/ an outboard motor) out on to the river and hide around the corner from Schweitzer Falls. As a Jungle boat would pass by and head towards the Nile Elephants, the skiff would zoom around the corner behind the boat. The skiff operator would hold up red-and-white flashing police lights purchased at Radio Shack. He'd demand the Jungle boat to stop, where then the host skipper was required to do a field sobriety test. Obviously he'd fail. So the arresting officer would make the Jungle skipper ride back home in the skiff while that officer would finish giving the guests their tour.

   

• The hose behind the gorilla camp could also be used to shoot from behind the Nile elephants.

   

• Playing dead in the Lion's den.

   

• Playing dead beneath the Lost Safari pole, near the rhino. It was also fun to put a Jungle hat on the hyenas' heads or the rhino's horn.

   

• (During breaks, skippers would sometimes take "safaris". That was a walking/running tour of the jungle. It was like a real safari because you had to scale a temple (climb over the top of the Indy queue to start the journey), avoid the HUGE spiders that were imported in to the jungle along with the tropical trees, hide from passing boats, scurry up the hill the African Veldt and then climb down a rope towards the railroad tracks, hide from passing trains, and make it back to the dock in 15 min. without getting caught.

   

• Speaking of the Indy temple, Jungle CM's have been known to hide out on top of the long queue corridor where there are openings in the ceiling (usually with rope ladders draped through them). They'd yell down to guests waiting in line "Do you have any Grey Poupon?" or "Throw me the idol, and I'll throw you the whip!"
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• Not really a prank, but my favorite off-color Jungle joke. As skippers would pass the Lion's Den at night, they'd point their light at the baby lion and say "Awww, look...it's SIMBA!!!!" The crowd would go "awwww", too. Then as the skipper later passed the Native Village, he'd point the light at the dead lion hanging upside-down over the fire pit. "Look, it's Simba again!!!!" Always a moan after that!

   

• Nearly every skipper has danced with the natives, usually wearing only boxer shorts.

   

• Putting hats on the natives.

   

• Some skippers would do the spiel about the attacking natives and then yell to the animatronics "Hey guys, I said throw the spears! Next time you better do it, OK? Now get down in the bushes and hide again... I'll be back later!" At that moment the animatronics appeared to crouch down and hide in the bushes as he commanded... a result of the computer resetting itself for the next boat.

   

• Wow, we're at the end of the trip and I can't think of any others. Oh yeah. One more. Inside the dispatch office are the on/off switches for all the animation, lights, and sound inside the Jungle. Sometimes when a skipper was taking the last boatload of the night and he was the only boat still on the river, other skippers would "turn off" the Jungle. That left the piloting skipper with dead silence, no moving animals, and no lights to see anything. Even worse, sometimes the cast members at the dock would get on the all-Jungle PA system and taunt the skipper by saying "Good night, Rob".

   

Larry G added:

Those brought back some great memories - as we used to say "and they're paying us for this?". I think every summer crew had their version of the Speed Trap. Here were some other favorites that used to happen one summer long ago...

 

• The Shootout - a couple of skippers take a couple of guns into the jungle and stage shootouts at the African veldt (a la the Great Movie Ride) with one person on both sides of the boat shooting and the skipper returning fire and pleading for the guests to get down - at night it was especially great with the muzzle blasts (used weak blanks otherwise the whole park thinks the ride is down)

   

• The Rookie - during a new person's first trip a "special" load would be filled with about 4-5X as much powder nearly blowing the gun out of their shaking hand.

   

• On the last day on the job, skippers would either bathe in a swimsuit with the elephant in the "shower" in the bathing pool or dive off the Columbia (very dangerous and very stupid, but they did it anyway)....

   

gjw noted:

All of this Jungle Cruise talk reminds me of the infamous incident a while back where the skipper was arrested for taking a swim in the river on his last day of work. From what I heard, it was a last-day tradition. Did the arrest put an end to that tradition?

Judi Lane adds:

My two most memorable Jungle Cruise "skipper farewells":

• Early Sunday morning, skipper has a card table and chair set up next to the "safari up a pole" group, reading the morning L.A. Times with his coffee and breakfast. Don't know how long it lasted before security nabbed him. This happened in the late '70's.

   

• George "the Monk," before leaving to tour with Beatlemania in '80, pulled the best one I know of so far. Traveled out in another skipper's boat, pretended to go "mad" at some point near the hippos, dove off the front of the boat into the water, then reappeared inside one of the hippo's mouths when it surfaced to be "shot." Needless to say, George earned the ultimate "no rehire" for that one. (Now if only I could remember his last name!)

   

Judi
- who really misses George's spiels, and wonders if the end-of-summer "Banana Ball" is still a time-honored JC-hosted tradition

Bill Shellorne adds:

Or the skipper we saw dancing with the natives (celebrating their lion kill) on his last day a few years ago. After their dealing with a summer full of tourists, I can sympathize with them.

Patrick Olguin adds:

 

• Skipper Bo, had a crew of rowdy Hispanic kids, so he decided to teach them a lesson and let the elephant squirt them. He turned the lights out, just as the elephant surfaced. When the right side of the boat got soaked, he remarked, "Well, I guess we've got a lot of wet backs on board now." [note I'm Hispanic, and I think that one is exceedingly funny, and true. Bo Burnett was the skipper's name. -Pat]

   

• Rookies were sometimes told that if they accelerated fast enough, they could beat the squirting elephant. Of course they couldn't, and the guests would get wet, much to the skipper's embarrassment.

   

• One year, there were at least a half dozen skippers named Doug, so rookies were told that, "Hi, I'm Doug, and I'll be your skipper...." was a required part of the spiel. They were also told they must turn in their name tags for a "Doug" name tag, if they worked JC nights. This went on for about two summers.

My own observation on July 17, 1997

A maintenance cast member stood along the rope along the Indy exit queue, shined a light in his face, and imitated the attacking natives.

Richard L. Lawton, M.D. who was a lead and r.o. on the Jungle Cruise from 1984-91, adds:

• On his last day, a skipper spent his break emptying a few gallons of industrial soap into the base of the falls in the elephant pool. A huge mound of soap bubbles quickly developed such that it began interfering with show. Finally, a boat rounded the turn after Ganesha and ran into a 7-foot wall of suds. Crazy. Needless to say, the ride went 101.

  Skippers stood around on the dock trying to look busy during the breakdown and trying not to giggle. Eventually, one foolishly admitted that he knew who did it, and was taken upstairs and interrogated until he sang like the stool pigeon he was. The culprit has force to pay roughly $1300 for the cleanup and downtime. Ouchy-mama!

   

• On the last day of a skipper who was not well liked, the lead and other cast members really played up this guys' last trip...I mean really created a lot of anticipation as it inevitably approached. As he ceremoniously set off with his last full boat, the lead positioned on cast member at the front switch and another at the Dominguez switch. When his boat was about to emerge from the jungle, returning from his last, highly celebrated trip, the lead gave the signal, both switches were thrown to 'storage', and the startled skipper and cheering crew veered sharply to port, bypassing both the unload and load docks on their way back out into the jungle for another 'last' trip. The skipper was pissed (he realized he'd been the victim of a diabolical plot conceived very early in the day), but the other cast members and the crew laughed pretty hard.

   

• On his last day, a skipper snuck out into the jungle, disrobed, and mounted the 2nd Africa bull elephant ("mother-in-law"). As full boats passed, he whooped and hollered like he was riding a bucking bronc. The guests didn't know quite what to think, and the skippers reactions were mixed (new guys tried to divert attention away from the guy while the old timers really played it up).

   

• I heard that in the early 70's (when supervision didn't have a huge hook up their asses), skippers strategically fixed ropes to trees in the jungle that allowed them to swing across the river in front of boats. This practice came to a halt after one guy began his swing in front of a boat, but didn't have enough momentum to carry him completely across, so he swung back smack into the side of the boat. He had to drop into the river to get out.

   

• Larry Kaml got arrested for honoring the long-lived tradition of jumping into the river on his last day. He had worked at the park (most of it on Jungle as a lead) for more than 10 years at the time of his arrest.

   

• Before that restaurant had an Aladdin theme [Aladdin's Oasis --Y], it was, of course, the Tahitian Terrace, featuring Polynesian food and nightly dancers and authentic drummers. Skippers who used the rocks to travel between storage and the dock were often made fun of by other skippers with crews as they pulled into the unload station.

  Occasionally, a Tahitian Terrace performer would be also lightly roasted by skippers as they used the rocks as well. Anyway, that all came to a screeching halt one day when a skipper used his usual jokes on a particularly large Samoan drummer. "Over here on the right folks is a member of the species, African Black-Footed Rocker Hopper..yadda yadda...its lack of intelligence noted by his sloping forehead and protruding buttock...". Again, this was standard fare. Anyway, this Samoan took offense, followed the boat back to the dock, waited for completion of unloading, then called the skipper to get out of the boat so he could fight. When the skipper refused, the drummer entered the boat and had to be separated from the skippers pals from unload. Crazy! From that point on, skippers were not allowed to make any comments about the Tahitian Terrace performers.