Why a Jungle Cruise Can't Happen Again under Modern Disney World

This might be old-school Disney fandom complaining, but hear me out.

One of the best overall attractions in all of Walt Disney World believe it or not is the Jungle Cruise. In terms of theming, atmosphere, attention to detail, and the ability to somehow create a unique experience every single time you enter one of the famed boats, there are very attractions around the entire world that can quite match up to the unique detailed nature of the Jungle Cruise.

Of course, your experience also depends strongly on the cast members that actually maneuver and narrate your cruise, but luckily Disney does a great job choosing their cast to deliver these magical moments to the guests. I have never had a subpar ride experience, which I can’t say is the same for the Kilimanjaro Safari in Animal Kingdom (I once had a driver who had a monotone voice the entire ride through, even when the poachers were shooting at us). But the most underrated aspect of the Jungle Cruise actually is in the queue.

The queue is something that nowadays most people bypass in favor of fastpassing straight through to get to the ride itself, but the cruise dock itself is chock full of personality. We can start with the background audio, which is almost an hour of great antique music meshed with hilarious material from the radio personality; intercutting between songs to give out humorous updates about what is happening in the area. The soundtrack itself isn’t full of pop songs or well-known classics, they feature a lot of obscure music from the 1950s, 1940s, and even before that. There’s something intriguing about listening to music nearly a century old while on your smartphone taking pictures of everything around you. The music does an incredible job taking you back to a faraway time when the world felt much larger and much less-discovered.

Then you’ll see little funny details scattered all over the queue, some above you, some out in the corner, and they sometimes even have references to other attractions in Disney World (from Indiana Jones in the Disneyland side to the eternally-loved Adventurer’s Club). The Jungle Cruise along with the Pirates of the Caribbean are two classic attractions that best reels in guests to a unique setting, the deeper you go the farther away you feel from modern day reality.  

But the virtual queue has nearly eliminated the need for such extensive details in queues, and this is part of the magic that may never make a comeback in Disney theme parks from now on. We have fastpasses, virtual queues threatening the magic of exploration, threatening the experience overall, bypassing everything and just focusing on the ride itself. And even those fastpassed queues that do take through all the pre-show activity gets kind of lost because you are essentially rushing through all the details to get to the main show. On top of that, to match up with the fastpass system, the actual ride experience themselves, are getting shorter. Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean can easily run you 10-15 minutes. Smuggler’s Run? Barely 5 minutes. Slinky Dog Dash? Barely 2 minutes.

The waiting part, the anticipation part feels like something is going to be in the past since Disney has attempted to run through as many guests through each of their attractions as quickly as possible to minimize the complaints while finding ways to stuff more people into their parks without it reaching unsurmountable numbers that hinders the enjoyment. Disney finds it nowadays unacceptable for anyone to physically wait in a queue for longer than half an hour. The exception of course is Flight of Passage, which has a giant queue daily, but part of it is because the river journey next door really, really doesn’t deliver and gets avoided much more (how it ended up being shorter than It’s a Small World and even the “Mexican It’s a Small World” at Epcot despite modern technology and potential, I’ll never understand)  

This is where an attraction like Jungle Cruise doesn’t really have a future in this modern-day era of sped-up queues and having to plan everything out in advance.

Yes there are indeed little detailed visuals in modern attractions like your Toy Story Mania, like Slinky Dog Race, and Smuggler’s Run, but they don’t necessarily provide much beyond instagrammable material, space for you to pose in front of. You basically walk ramps with material within distance, you don’t get to interact much with what lies around you. There’s no intricate walking voyage deeper and deeper into said environment of the attraction itself like a Pirates of the Caribbean, which starts out small with some rock formations with weaponry lying around as if you are in an abandoned fort and then puts you through a jail cell, more weapons, and ultimately treasure with the background noises of pirates digging for more. Now compare that to the queue of the new Test Track. Ew.

Disney is ultimately a business, and yes it makes sense to focus the spending on improving the pace as opposed to improving the queues throughout the parks. It makes much more sense to figure out ways to ensure that enough people can ride Space Mountain as opposed to figure out ways to enhance the surrounding environment as you slowly make your way through the barren space before the still-thrilling ride. It also makes sense for the “rides” to also not take up too much time, as we are long gone from a Haunted Mansion take takes up 10-15 minutes. But it’s still kind of a bummer that the future of theme parks and theme park attractions within Disney World seems to be focused more on how to rush your day through as opposed to how to engage your senses better as you enter new terrain.

But it’s the business model to fit more people in the parks, try to max out the capacity. One could have a more immersive and lengthened experience with a park on much smaller capacity, giving you plenty of time to wait, explore, and be able to see everything before the park closes. But that wouldn’t be as profitable. I think in the future, classic attraction setups like the Jungle Cruise, whose experience starts the moment you enter the area, and can last you dozens of minutes overall is going to be replaced with attractions with a few picturesque scenes outside the attraction before going through a series of ramps on your way to the core of the queue and the ride shortly after.

As I’ve said, this is the old-school Disney fan in me complaining, probably a result of me being older and grumpier towards unrealized potential. This won’t break Disney or will make it unworthy of a visit, from shortened attractions to increased emphasis on bypassing waiting, it is the signal of changing times and changing interests and changing methods of entertainment---whether I like it or not.