Swiss Family Treehouse


Swiss Family Treehouse was an attraction featured at several Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. The remaining versions based on the original are located at Magic Kingdom Park, Tokyo Disneyland and at Disneyland Park in Disneyland Paris. The walk-through attraction is centered on a giant treehouse where everyone can hear and see various scenes based on the Disney film Swiss Family Robinson.

History

The Swiss Family Treehouse opened November 18, 1962, in Adventureland at Disneyland, two years after the Disney film Swiss Family Robinson. Imagineer Bill Martin worked out the treehouse's design; Disney animator Wolfgang Reitherman, who designed the treehouse for the movie, contributed. At tall and wide, constructed of concrete and reinforced steel, the attraction weighed 150 tons. The tree species was humorously dubbed "Disneyodendron semperflorens grandis -- large, everblooming Disney tree."
John Mills, who played Father Robinson in the movie, and his daughter Hayley appeared at the attraction's opening. The attraction was a walk-through rather than a ride, in which visitors walked up 68 steps in the trunk of the tree through various "rooms" designed on the theme of the movie, with items and structures made to appear salvaged from a 19th-century shipwreck and desert island finds. When it opened, the attraction required a C ticket. The attraction originally opened with reddish brown leaves. However, the red leaves faded very easily in the sun and were eventually switched to green leaves sometime during the early 1960s.
When the Magic Kingdom opened at Walt Disney World Resort on October 1, 1971, the Swiss Family Treehouse was one of the original attractions of Adventureland. The tree, while intended to look real, is actually made up of steel, concrete, and stucco, stretching tall and wide. Similarly, when Euro Disneyland opened on April 12, 1992, it featured a version of the attraction located in Adventureland, named La Cabane des Robinson. Tokyo Disneyland also has a Swiss Family Treehouse which opened in 1993, ten years after the park's debut.
In March 1999, the original attraction at Disneyland was closed. Refurbished and remodeled on a new theme, it reopened in June the same year as Tarzan's Treehouse.

Trivia

In the Disney Sing Along Songs volume Disneyland Fun, the Swiss Family Treehouse sign was seen during the song "Following the Leader".

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