The little people at the ALOHA PHOENIX RESORT

Do you ever click on the “Next Blog” label at the top of Blogger blogs? Google seems to think that by analyzing where you’ve come from they’ll be able to recommend where you’d like to go next. I can say with 100% certainty that not once have they guided me to something I would remotely be interested in. In fact, they send me to sites that are always far removed from who I am and what my interests are. In short, I’m not someone who can be easily compartmentalized using data mining. I know they’d like to believe we are all anxiously awaiting their guidance, but we’re not. That said…

Do you ever visit Google’s Blogs of Note? Again, rarely is their choice something which interests me, but at least I know that the choice that shows up on the screen has more to do with the person(s) choosing the blogs than it does with any data they’ve collected from my net searches. Occasionally they do come up with something that I find interesting that might hold my attention for longer than 30 seconds. They got my attention with the February 29th choice, Little People. It’s a site I’ll be back to visit to see what new photos have been posted of the little people underfoot we never notice. Well, my best friend and I did have little people living outside her apartment in Waikiki that we were fond of, but the story is way too long and odd.

This pointless ramble is to say that the little people at the Little People site made me think about all the little people you see in commercial post cards for hotels/motels, etc. Models stuck in some position in which they hopefully add human dimension to what would otherwise be a cold sterile shot of generic architecture. And so…I give you the little people at the Aloha Phoenix Resort in 1976.

From what I'm finding online this resort no longer exists. At one time it was apparently known as Samoan Village Motor Hotel back in the day when Tiki was all the rage. Tiki gods run very deep in my childhood so I do miss the days of Tiki.

Click on either image to see it larger.

This card was produced by Petley. To see a few other Petley cards click "Petley" below in the labels.

If I had not seen the Little People site I’d have never done this post. Don’t hold it against them.

It's the tiki tiki tiki tiki TIKI ROOM

The year after I moved back from Hawaii my family went to Disneyland where we met up with my best friend and her family who had also recently moved back to the Mainland. There is only one photo, that we know of, showing us standing in front of the Matterhorn.

There are two things that are hardwired into my brain from that day. The first is seeing Jimmy Dodd and Roy from the Mickey Mouse Club signing autographs in a room that also contained a lot of sets from the movie "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." It was all a strange mix. One side of the room was dark and mysterious with the sets while the other side had Jimmy and Roy sitting at a table in front of I believe the Mouseketeer house all brightly lit. Sort of the yin and yang of Disney I guess. I so wanted an autograph, but was too shy to walk up to the table. Jimmy Dodd died the next year in Hawaii.

The second thing I vividly remember is the Tiki Room. It was "An entirely new concept in entertainment" according to the brochure. It certainly was! I don't think Disney had used animatronics at the park before this. And it was perfect for two families who had just lived amongst the lush jungles, bird calls, and tikis of Hawaii. We enjoyed it on a level I'm sure the other patrons didn't. I remember feeling a bit at home for the first time since leaving Oahu, even if what I was surrounded by was unreal. It was watered down touristy Hawaii which we generally only saw when we went down to Waikiki. But ohhhhhh talking tikis! How good could that be?

My best friend and I first became enamored of tikis aboard the Matsonia on the way to Hawaii. They were exotic and funny, maybe even a little bit scary. There were tiki statues in the lobby where we'd sit next to them playing with our favorite dolls. Tikis are still important to us beyond the pseudo hipster-ness with which they are thought of today. I have a tiki god standing near my front door that was carved by a prisoner on the Big Island of Hawaii in probably 1960 or '61 that my folks bought while on R and R at Kilauea. 

But then back to the Tiki Room. I found this brochure dating from that summer in '63. The Tiki Room was new, exciting, and very colorful. And all you did was sit. Sit and look up. Of course most of the stuff you do at Disneyland requires nothing more than sitting (and standing in lines), but this took sitting to a whole new level. You didn't sit in something pretending to be something other than what it was, a motorized chair. No, you sat in a chair. Just chairs lined up. And the "guides" were dressed in, for us, familiar Hawaiian attire. The sort of clothes we had worn all the time. 

This brochure has survived 46 years because it's been stashed away inside a Disney book my folks bought me that day. So take a look at the brochure, clicking on each image to see it larger. Then take a look at the fun videos I found.

This shows the front and the back of the brochure.

Opening up from the first fold.

And finally completely unfolded, the brochure inside.

This video is a fun bit of information telling you how the Tiki Room came to be.

Here's another fun video showing what goes on behind the scenes in the Tiki Room.

And here's a nice video of just the theme song.

Then take a look at this video of what appears to be the full Tiki Room experience, including the "pre-show" as you stood in line.

And as far as the puppeteer advertised on the back of the brochure, André Tahon, you can click here to read about him in French and English.