May 20 - Tom Sawyer Island

Image copyright Disney

On this day, in 1973, Tom Sawyer Island opened in Frontierland of the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. The 19^th century, small town existence portrayed in Mark Twain’s classic story of Tom Sawyer, would seem to be a perfect vehicle for Walt Disney to have explored at some point. Given his own childhood in Mareceline, Missouri and the entrance to his theme park that was modeled after his boyhood home, it might come as a surprise that Walt never produced a film version of Tom Sawyer. In fact, Disney wouldn’t make a film featuring Tom and his friend Huckleberry Finn until nearly three decades after Walt’s death, the 1995 clunker Tom and Huck. That doesn’t mean Walt couldn’t find a use for the classic idealization of Middle America; he just chose to include it in his living movie instead.

Image courtesy waltdisney.org

The original Tom Sawyer Island opened in Disneyland on June 16, 1956, one month and one day before the park’s first anniversary. Walt had considered several different themes for the large island in the middle of the Rivers of America before settling on the Twain tale. He asked the legendary Marc Davis to design an area especially for kids to enjoy some unstructured play (that of course wasn’t the phrase they used back then; they just called it having fun). Supposedly, none of Marc’s plans wowed Walt enough, so the Boss took the task upon himself and cranked out his own final design in one late night session. That makes Tom Sawyer Island the only attraction completely designed by Walt himself (in macro of course, Imagineers still took care of all the details).

Image courtesy youtube.com

Guests had to board free floating rafts to get between the island and Disneyland proper. Once on the island, they could freely roam the paths, exploring caves, discovering forts and generally whooping it up in the ‘wilderness’. At one time, cast members would even leave large paintbrushes hidden around the island, evoking a sense that Tom had left it behind after doing some chores for Aunt Polly. If guests found one and turned it in, they received a small prize (and no it wasn’t getting to white wash a fence for the rest of the afternoon). Guests could also experience Tom Sawyer Island from afar by riding the Riverboat, the Mike Fink Keelboats or using their own power on the Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes to glide along the Rivers of America and circumnavigate the island.

Image courtesy themeparkreview.com

Tom Sawyer Island proved pretty popular through the years, so when Walt Disney World opened, it was decided to replicate the area. The Florida version opened about 20 months after the park. Ten years later, when the theme parks went international for the first time, Tokyo Disneyland got its own version that opened with the park. Disneyland Paris has an island in the middle of its River but theirs is occupied by Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

While Walt Disney World’s version of Tom Sawyer Island is still operating (albeit on a more seasonal basis; if it is open when you go, the snack bar is killer) and is virtually unchanged from when it opened, the same cannot be said of Disneyland’s. In 2007, the theme of the original Island was pretty much completely changed over to Pirates of the Caribbean. A thin link was kept to the story of Tom and Huck by claiming that now, since the boys loved to pretend they were pirates, the island is an extension of their imaginative playtime. The only non-pirate themed structure is Tom and Huck’s tree fort, but even that has some pirate elements in it to tie everything together. The guest accessible area of the island has also shrunk over the years, as most of the technical equipment for Fantasmic! now takes up one end of it (for those of you only familiar with that show at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, the Disneyland show takes place on the Rivers of America). So if you're looking for the original experience, head to Florida or Japan. If you want to do Tom Sawyer Island 2.0, head on over to Anaheim. Either way, be prepared to slow down a little bit and let your sense of adventure take over for an hour or so. You'll be glad did.