Disney is about to close one of the most influential attractions in theme park history. But does anyone care?
Disney's Tom Sawyer Island opened at Disneyland in 1956. The company built a much larger version at Walt Disney World in 1973. Surrounded by the Rivers of America (or, as The Muppets' Sam Eagle might say, "the Rivers of America, but mostly the Mississippi"), Tom Sawyer Island is dismissed by many Disney fans as a playground. But the island - and the book it is based upon - helped redefine their media in American entertainment.
Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is a book about play and mischief by ordinary children. Kids did not figure in much in literature before then, beyond in fairy tales. And fairy tales traditionally are not stories about children so much as they are moral lessons for children to learn.
Twain centered the kids in Tom Sawyer. Its sequel, "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," is considered by many critics as the Great American Novel, illustrating a nation's moral struggle with slavery through the actions of a single child. On Twain's Mississippi River, young people can be villains or heroes - but they get to be the ones who makes decisions about what they will or will not do.
That makes it a perfect theme for what may have been the first immersive land themed to a single IP. Tom Sawyer Island references scenes and character from "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but it does not offer the "book report" recreation of its narrative that Disney's dark rides had done before. Instead, the island provides an immersive space wherein guest can define their own roles through their imaginations.
Tom Sawyer Island casts you as a character in Mark Twain's adventures on the Mississippi. You can explore caves, defend a fort, hide in mills, or just play in the woods. So long as you are back on the raft by sundown, you are free to do as you please. When Disney's Imagineers talk about giving narrative agency to guests in lands such as Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, they are not talking about something new in theme parks. Tom Sawyer Island was providing that opportunity to its visitors years before some of today's Imagineers were born.
But even if you know nothing of Twain and his works, Tom Sawyer Island fulfills an aesthetic need for theme park guests. As a wooded outpost surrounded by water transversed by watercraft under human control, this attraction contrasts with much of today's theme park experience. While that leads many guests to overlook the island consciously, I argue that even those who never visit understand and appreciate its role within the park subconsciously.
It's all about the water.
Life cannot exist without water. Therefore, we are biologically programmed to crave and appreciate water - especially clean and gently flowing water. We feel relaxed and comfortable in the presence of water, for we know that our survival is assured when water is near. That makes water a powerful element in themed entertainment design. Streams, ponds, and waterfalls all tap into our evolved affinity for water, priming us to welcome and fall in love with the places where we find them.
Yet Disney is eliminating water elements from Magic Kingdom. The 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea lagoon is gone now. As are the old Swan Boat channels around the hub. And next year, Disney will begin removing Magic Kingdom's largest water element, the Rivers of America.
By offering an innovative and empowering guest experience in an environment proven to satisfy our most basic emotional needs, Tom Sawyer Island and the Rivers of America helped make Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom the world's most popular theme park. Again, even if you never considered riding a raft over to the island, their presence helped make the west side of Magic Kingdom just feel "right."
As many Theme Park Insider readers might remember, Tom Sawyer Island was my first and favorite attraction when I worked at Walt Disney World. So when Disney announced this summer that it was closing the island and the rivers to make way for new attractions, I booked a visit back to the Magic Kingdom to walk around Tom Sawyer Island one last time. Please join me for my Tom Sawyer Island tribute video:
Here is another view of the island, from the Liberty Belle Riverboat.
Five years after I left Disney, I posted my first theme park-related website, The Tom Sawyer Island Appreciation Page. That single webpage eventually grew into the Theme Park Insider website that you are reading now. Over the years, I have written several "cast member stories" about my time working on Tom Sawyer Island, including these favorites:
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You can find more polished versions of these and other stories from my time working at Disney in my book, Stories from a Theme Park Insider. If you'd like a fun time - and to support my work - please consider buying a print copy here. (It's just eight bucks!)
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Excellent job. Im headed back to Disney in April and hope this is still around. I dont know how i missed this in all my years of going. Guess I was just a youth looking for thrill rides.
If my mom came back to life, she'd assume that 7 year old me was STILL running around that island! Guess these days they'd be arrested for letting me explore on my own.
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Been a while since visited the Island but the Rivers were always a fantastic part of Frontierland. It was a good backdrop, the waters cooling things down and getting rid of all that robs it of a lot of appeal and history so a bad move.