06/11/2023
My boss at Ear To There Travel, Phil Gramlich, knocks it out if the park with his Disney History Stories! I love learning things I may not have known about my favorite place💙
The late Disney Legend Rolly Crump designed some classic attractions in Disneyland and Walt Disney World including it's a small world & Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, but he might be best-known for his numerous contributions to Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room. I had the chance to talk to him for almost two hours several years ago on my podcast, and he and his wife Marie were literally two of the kindest people I've ever spoken to! This story comes from Rolly since he tells it best! ❤️
"I was very fortunate to be asked by Walt to design all of the pre-show tikis that went in there. Now, the Tiki Room had been originally designed as a restaurant. They wanted a Tahitian restaurant in Adventureland and so they though, well, let's do one, and the background could be tikis. So Walt felt that when people were waiting in line that he wanted something to kind of entertain them before they went in to eat. He didn't want them just standing out there. So he asked me if I would design some pre-show tikis that would entertain them before they went in." 🍴🧉
"So, I did. I got a book out of the library called "The Whispers on the Wind" that was written by missionaries that had been out to the islands of the Pacific and had documented all of the different beliefs that the Islanders had about their tikis. So I got the list of the tikis and started developing; I did some sketches of 'em and Pele was one of 'em, (s)he's the God of Volcanoes. And then we had the God of the East Winds, we had Rongo who was the God of Agriculture, so I developed all these little sketches of tikis and I showed them to Walt and Walt said, 'Great, Rolly. We'll have these and we'll have some dialogue written and we'll actually have the tikis talk to the public while the people are waiting there.' So I said, 'Okay, that's great.'"
"So I went to Blaine Gibson who was our head sculptor, and I said, 'Blaine, Walt wants to get these sculpted.' And Blaine says, 'I can't. I don't have the time.' Actually Blaine was our only sculptor at the time. So I said, 'Who is gonna sculpt them?' He said, 'You are!' I said, 'I am? I've never sculpted one thing in my life!' 😮 And he said, 'Well, you're gonna sculpt now!' So Blaine taught me how to build the armature (the metal framework on which the clay is molded), how to put the clay on, and how to sculpt."
When Rolly first got started sculpting on his own, the air conditioned studio was much to cool and the clay wouldn't get soft enough to mold. Rolly took the clay outside to the WED Cafe parking lot and sculpted in the sun. He had forgotten some fine sculpting tools, so he used plastic cutlery from the cafe to carve and sculpt the finer lines of the tikis. ❤️
"The interesting thing about it is, the first one I did (sculpted), Maui, that's the one that's spitting water into a bamboo tube...now, the cute thing about Maui is he also has the sun setting over his head. Well the sketch that I did did not have a sun over his head. I did all of these sketches and there was Rongo and all of the others and they all had real titles, but this was just a sketch I did of one spitting water into the bamboo and then letting the bamboo dump it, but it wasn't really a tiki and I didn't give it a title and Walt asked me, he said 'Are all of these tikis authentic tikis?' And I said, 'Yes, sir'. And he said, 'Well, what's that one the God of?' and he was pointing at the one spitting water into the bamboo. I didn't have A CLUE what to say!" 😬
"Luckily, (Disney Legend) John Hench was standing next to me and he said, 'Well, Walt It’s the god of tapa cloth beating.' And Walt didn't quite understand what John said; John had said tapa cloth, and Walt thought he had said clock. So Walt asked John, 'Is he a clock??!' And John said, 'Yes, it's the god that tells the time!' After the meeting was over, John took me aside and he said, 'Rolly, you better go find out who the god of telling time is!'" 😂🤣
This story comes straight from "A Walk in the Park" with Rolly Crump. It's one of my all time favorites. No one could tell a story like Rolly! ❤️🏰❤️
