The Tech Secrets Behind Disneyland's 'Enchanted Tiki Room' (sfgate.com)
- Reference: 0175329501
- News link: https://idle.slashdot.org/story/24/10/27/0025247/the-tech-secrets-behind-disneylands-enchanted-tiki-room
- Source link: https://www.sfgate.com/disneyland/article/disneyland-attraction-walt-disney-name-19844367.php
> "Beneath the room, the heartbeat of the attraction is a $1 million installation of electronics equipment, operated by a roll of 14-channel magnetic tape," the Orange County Register wrote upon its opening. "It is the same system which programs the U.S. military's polaris missile." That system also ran very hot. To keep guests from overheating, [2]air conditioning was installed throughout the building, making the Tiki Room Disneyland's first attraction to be fully air conditioned...
Or, as [3]another article puts it, "While Disney did not delve into the speculative science of cryogenics to preserve his life, he did borrow the mechanical brain of a nuclear missile to simulate life, creating a new type of entertainment in the process."
The article remembers how Wernher Von Braun became a technical advisor (and [4]on - [5]camera [6]presenter ) for three Disney-produced [7]TV episodes about space travel — at the same time Von Braun was working as technical director for the U.S. Army rocket program that produced the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile, plus the first submarine-launched ballistic missile with its ground-breaking launch control mechanism:
> An important aspect of the Polaris launch system hinged on the fact that the conditions under which the missiles might be launched were constantly changing. Different underwater currents, temperatures, and flexing of the metal hull all contributed to the difficulty of a successful launch. In order to minimize human errors and to automate the sequence as much as possible, scientists developed an audio control system. A magnetic audio tape with a series of prerecorded cues precisely timed to account for the submarine's movement, controlled the launch machinery.
>
> This new technology, invented to deliver nuclear destruction, proved exactly what Disney needed for his wonderland developed for children.
The article concludes that Disneyland engineering "transformed Von Braun's military technology" to the point today where "what was once controlled by the artificial brain of a nuclear missile is now run by the equivalent of a MacBook."
SFGate delves deeper into the attraction's strange origins — and how it all came full circle 63 years later...
> At the intersection of Main Street and Adventureland, a restaurant called [8]the Pavillion — now the Jolly Holiday — bridged the gap. Under one roof, it served food to Main Street guests on one side and Adventureland diners on the other. The inelegant transition created an eyesore that Walt despised... The need for the Tiki Cafe "appeared to be less about food and more about aesthetics," Ken Bruce writes in [9]Before the Birds Sang Words , a comprehensive history of the attraction.
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> In 1961, Walt gathered with park designers about the concept. The sketch made by legendary theme park designer John Hench was remarkably thorough, with much of its design incorporated into the final product... When Walt saw a plethora of birds in the sketch, he famously exclaimed, "We can't have birds in there ... because they'll poop in the food." Hench hurriedly ad-libbed that the birds would be mechanical, a concept that Walt adored...
>
> Although its powerful air conditioning may be its biggest draw today, many attractions you love owe their existence to the flock of singing birds. Disney engineers' work on the talking flora and fauna laid the foundation for much more complex Audio-Animatronics (a word that Walt Disney coined). Without Jose, Fritz, Michael and Pierre, there would be no Haunted Mansion, no Pirates of the Caribbean, no Rise of the Resistance. Next year, in celebration of Disneyland's 70th anniversary, the park will unveil one of its most sophisticated animatronics yet: [10]Walt Disney himself . It will be the first time Walt appears in a Disney attraction anywhere in the world, completing a journey that started with a mechanical bird and ends with an immortal homage.
Their article also reveals that a year after the Tiki Room opened, one of the birds was programmed to say "Come, there's an island there for you in Hawaii. Soaring birds of United Airlines fly there too!" Because Disneyland had signed a sponsorship deal with United Airlines...
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/disneyland/article/disneyland-attraction-walt-disney-name-19844367.php
[2] https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/lost-la/the-enchanted-nuclear-robots-of-disneys-tiki-room
[3] https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/lost-la/the-enchanted-nuclear-robots-of-disneys-tiki-room
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zcU85O82XE
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JJL8CUfF-o
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz7njI0wEIw
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_N3EYMgya4&t=12s
[8] https://davelandweb.com/centralplaza/jollyholiday.html
[9] https://www.tikiroom63.com/
[10] https://www.sfgate.com/disneyland/article/disneyland-walt-disney-animatronic-show-19650121.php
Have they changed that song? (Score:1)
It makes me want to commit seppuku, in my eardrums.
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You mean the one about how the birdies sing and the flowers croon? In the tiki-tiki-tiki-tiki-tiki room?
Must be AI writings again (Score:2)
Simulating life, my ass! Putting some clothes on a couple of mechanical arms is hardly a simulation of any sort, let alone life.
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Hey, it's just a simulation within the simulation we live in. Don't set your expectations too high.
Target audience. (Score:1)
> Simulating life, my ass! Putting some clothes on a couple of mechanical arms is hardly a simulation of any sort, let alone life.
From ages 2-7, you and a bazillion other kids thought that cheesy shit was real as fuck. Don’t lie.
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For its day the tiki room was magical. Now they're just annoying and loud as fuck.
My friends and I used to beeline for the Mission to Mars at Disneyland for the super cheese animatronics when we were teens.
Too old to enjoy most of the park, too young to go anywhere interesting, stuck going to Disneyland several times every summer just to alleviate the boredom of Orange County summers for a few hours. We held a moment of silence when they trashed it for some random crap no one cared about. One of the wors
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> Now they're just annoying and loud as fuck.
I'd have to say your level of theme park experience is somewhat lacking if you think the Tiki Room is loud . You could practically take a nap in there (though Hall of Presidents is better for that). The fireworks shows are loud. Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios with someone revving a chainsaw right next to your face, now that's loud as fuck .
Ah, the Tiki Room AC. Memories. (Score:2)
Relief from the blazing inferno hell of the SoCal summer sun.
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> Relief from the blazing inferno hell of the SoCal summer sun.
That's pretty much why people still go to the Tiki Room at the Florida park, too. It used to be more popular when Fastpasses were still free, because the animatronic shows were a good way to kill time while you waited for your return time for another attraction.
1 million dollars (Score:2)
"$1 million installation of electronics equipment, operated by a roll of 14-channel magnetic tape,"..and how many decades ago are we talking about here, and are replacement parts even made for it anymore? And what about the energy being wasted running equipment of this vintage? Unsorry, but this does not impress me except for the fact that somehow someone managed to keep equipment that absolutely should be regulated to being in a museum (for being such an energy hog for what it does) off of the top brass's
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I checked Wikipedia because neither article was clear on what is currently running that particular attraction so I checked Wikipedia.
BTW: is - present tense / was - past tense
"Afterward, the original show and storyline remained, but were now enhanced with a digitally remastered audio track,[c] a new sound system indoors and out, and completely new Audio-Animatronics figures that looked the same as the previous ones, but had a completely different internal apparatus."
"The original Tiki Room *was* controlled
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The best part is they left the air conditioning which, strictly speaking, is no longer needed though now it must cost quite a bit less.
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The 14-track magnetic tape is a bit surprising. I am not aware of any 13-bit computers. It makes me wonder if these were 14 analog tracks that decoded into music and control signals, i.e., not very much digital computer at all.
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If you're too lazy to read TFS, you deserve to be modded into oblivion
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Feel better?
M-I-C..a defense contractor. (Score:1)
> The article concludes that Disneyland engineering "transformed Von Braun's military technology"..
Thats one creative way of describing your transformative technology that was based on what would be considered stolen technology today. Article reads like the origin story of the birth of NDAs and non-compete clauses.
Imagine if it were reversed, and it was Disney who created and provided long-range guided missile technology to a warmongering world..
Re:M-I-C..a defense contractor. (Score:5, Informative)
>> The article concludes that Disneyland engineering "transformed Von Braun's military technology"..
> Thats one creative way of describing your transformative technology that was based on what would be considered stolen technology today.
No, it's a creative way to slide Von Braun, and rocket technology, into an article that had nothing to do with Von Braun, or rocket technology.
Again: Von Braun worked for the Army missile program. Polaris was a missile developed by the Navy missile program. The two programs were competitors. Von Braun would have had nothing to do with the Polaris guidance and navigation system (which was [1]developed by MIT's Charles Stark Draper Lab [computerhistory.org]. Not by the Army missile program.)
In any case, magnetic tape was widely used for storage back then. This is as silly as saying the IBM 360 computer was technology stolen from Elvis Presley, because they both recorded on magnetic tape.
[1] https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/real-time-computing/6/128/529
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Back then? One of my jobs was still using half inch reel tapes into the late 90s.
If memory serves, a full reel could hold about 50 mega bytes but it depended on how long the tape was. They came in different lengths.
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OMG thank you so much!!! That part of the article, about who was technical director of the Navy missile program, was clearly wrong. I used to work for IBM in the early 1990s, modeling DASD performance using APL that ran on z/360 systems. I think that mainframe was called Sierra.
Werner von Braun sought out U.S. Army soldiers of his own accord, in order to surrender to them toward the end of WW2. He became a U.S. citizen and chose to be buried here. He did a lot for our country. I am Jewish, and I get tir
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Please see here [1]https://idle.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
Adaptation and use of important and highly secret defense project tech isn't controlled by mere NDAs or non-compete clauses! If the audio control system were released to Disney (via the U.S. Navy not Von Braun and the U.S. Army, as Geoffrey.landis explained twice already; the article is probably wrong) then all necessary review and authorization would have been done first. Remember, the U.S. government develops tech for we, the people, and US-domiciled com
[1] https://idle.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23500719&cid=64897709
Uncanny valley (Score:2)
"Next year, in celebration of Disneyland's 70th anniversary, the park will unveil one of its most sophisticated animatronics yet: Walt Disney himself."
They might want to stop right there. No matter how good the "Imagineers" may be, this is taking a huge risk and they can't afford to overestimate their abilities with this. Unless they plan to keep this one at a 'safe' distance from the audience like the Hall of Presidents animatronics.
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Mussolini made the trains run on time but that doesn't make him any less of a piece of evil shit that got what was coming to him at the end.
He was lucky they killed him so fast and didn't torture his evil ass for months first.
We can acknowledge that evil people sometimes do things that aren't evil without making them heroes or any less evil.
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Agree with your larger point, but note that [1]Mussolini did NOT make the trains run on time [snopes.com]... he didn't even have that going for him.
[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/loco-motive/
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Oh, he didn't even do that. Well, fuck him for being completely worthless then.
Thanks for the link.
Re: Is von Braun an example of sonething Hitler di (Score:1)
Was von Braun less evil than Hitler, or just more useful?
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Although vB helped Hitler, he was not the guy in charge. He didn't run any death camps, he didn't order any attacks, etc.
I think there are degrees of evil. Should we have let him off the hook and let him continue his work for us? On the whole, yes. He wasn't conducting human experiments like Mengele (I will not use the honorific 'doctor'). AFAIK, we did not use any of his so-called medical research. But vB was working on what was essentially a neutral technology. The fact it was put to evil use is an
"the equivalent of a MacBook" (Score:2)
> the equivalent of a MacBook
Oh?
Is it a Dell?
A RPi4?
What kind of bus? How are they muxing?
Call me crazy but I was hoping for more seeing this on /.
Anyone who got to see Disney in the 70's was truly fortunate. The magic is replaced with marketing now.
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Call me crazy but I was hoping for more seeing this on /.
You're crazy. That slashdot is long dead. This hasn't been news for nerds and stuff that matters through any of the last several owners.
american culture (Score:1)
American culture produces some real doozies.
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We make some weird shit but most cultures do. (Japan, looking at you, and Korea don't try to hide behind Japan).
It's a win-some lose-some proposition. Having been to the tiki room (twice... ugh) I'd say this one was a lose-some one.
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In California, from about 1850 on, as we settled and made our mark, we did a lot of questionable things and made a lot of kitschy stuff.
I love my jeans. I love skateboards. So much great things have come from California. I suppose you could argue that it is this very environment of possibilities, even the questionable ones, that helps drive the creativity. Hopefully, we can learn, evolve, and improve. Failure is often the best way to learn, but you don't always need to fail yourself to learn the lesson.
Re:Polaris? (Score:4, Informative)
> ""It is the same system which programs the U.S. military's polaris missile"
> The Polaris missile went out of service long ago, replaced first with Poseiden and then Trident.
However, when the Tiki Room was created, Polaris was the missile system.
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The article is about the history of the Tiki Room. Wernher Von Braun is long gone. From context, it implies that Polaris missile development was decades ago.
I admit having to read these parts twice to understand that the Tiki Room has been around for 63 years (emphasis mine)!
> "Beneath the room, the heartbeat of the attraction is a $1 million installation of electronics equipment, operated by a roll of 14-channel magnetic tape," the Orange County Register wrote upon its opening . "It is the same system whic
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I was saying that Von Braun is dead now! He was obviously alive when the Tiki Room was built. Yes, Von Braun was on television, presenting Disney TV shows about space travel AND the article says he was a technical director for the U.S. Army at the same time. Specifically, it says he was director of the program that developed the first submarine-launched ballistic missile and its novel launch control, i.e. Polaris. I would think the Navy would do that, not the Army.
Regardless, I seriously doubt that Von
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I was in a shitty mood and I jumped the gun regarding the electronics run off of a 14 track tape. But I had to go to Wikipedia to verify that Disney is no longer using this system to run that particular attraction. There is still quite a bit of power hungry legacy hardware pushing 50+ years still being used in the US these days
Polaris was a Navy project (Score:4, Informative)
Polaris was a Navy project. Von Braun worked for the U.S. Army rocket development program. Von Braun, working on liquid-fuel rockets for the Army, has nothing to do with developing the Polaris missile, a solid-fuel rocket developed for the Navy.