Swiss Family Treehouse is a walk-through attraction featured at

Magic Kingdom Magic Kingdom Park is a Amusement park, theme park at the Walt Disney World, Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida. It opened on October 1, 1971, and is owned and operated by the Walt Disney Company through its Disney Experiences, Expe ...

, Disneyland Park Paris and

Tokyo Disneyland is a theme park at the Tokyo Disney Resort in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, near Tokyo. Its main gate is directly adjacent to both Maihama Station and Tokyo Disneyland Station. It was the first Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Disney park t ...

. It was formerly located at

Disneyland Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. It was the first theme park opened by the Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney, ...

. The attraction is centered on a large

treehouse A tree house, tree fort or treeshed, is a platform or building constructed around, next to or among the trunk or branches of one or more mature trees while above ground level. Tree houses can be used for recreation, work space, habitation, a ha ...

based on the 1960

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...

film '' Swiss Family Robinson''.

History

The Swiss Family Treehouse opened November 18, 1962, in Adventureland at

, two years after the Disney film '' Swiss Family Robinson'' (1960). Imagineer Bill Martin worked out the treehouse's design; Disney animator

Wolfgang Reitherman Wolfgang Reitherman (June 26, 1909 – May 22, 1985), also known and sometimes credited as Woolie Reitherman, was a German-American animator, director and producer. As a member of the "Disney's Nine Old Men, Nine Old Men" at Walt Disney Animati ...

, who designed the treehouse for the movie, contributed. At tall and wide, constructed of concrete and reinforced steel, the attraction weighed . The tree species was 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 An uninhabited island, desert island, or deserted island, is an island, islet or atoll which lacks permanent human population. Uninhabited islands are often depicted in films or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereotypes ...

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. DLP LaCabanedesRobinson

When the

opened at

Walt Disney World Resort The Walt Disney World Resort is an entertainment resort complex located about southwest of Orlando, Florida, United States. Opened on October 1, 1971, the resort is operated by Disney Experiences, a division of the Walt Disney Company. ...

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 (now

Disneyland Paris Disneyland Paris is an entertainment resort in Marne-la-Vallée, France, located about east of Paris. It encompasses two theme parks, seven Disney-owned hotels, two convention centers, a golf course, an arena, and a shopping, dining and entert ...

) 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 due to issues with the main tree structure and former Disneyland president, Paul Pressler wanting to replace it with a gift shop. Despite this, it reopened in June of the same year as Tarzan's Treehouse, based on

's 1999 film ''

Tarzan Tarzan (John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke) is a fictional character, a feral child raised in the African jungle by the Mangani great apes; he later experiences civilization, only to reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer. Creat ...

''. In September 2021, the attraction closed. In April 2022 it was confirmed that it would reopen with a different theme. It reopened as Adventureland Treehouse on November 10, 2023, which is inspired by ''Swiss Family Robinson''.

Note

References

External links

Magic Kingdom site

Tokyo Disneyland site

Disneyland Paris site

Photos Magiques - La Cabane des Robinson
{{Disneyland Park (Paris) Amusement park attractions that closed in 1999 Walt Disney Parks and Resorts attractions Magic Kingdom Tokyo Disneyland Disneyland Park (Paris) Adventureland (Disney) 1962 establishments in California 1999 disestablishments in California 1971 establishments in Florida 1992 establishments in France 1993 establishments in Japan The Swiss Family Robinson