The Enchanted Tiki Room

Image: Disney

The third song inevitably linked to the Shermans is also their laziest work. It’s basically the word tiki repeated so often that I suspect Tiki Barber’s mother suffered subliminal trauma that caused her to sign that name on his birth certificate. Seriously, sing the lyrics once and then have a mental debate. Did you just say the word tiki more in those two minutes than you had in your entire life up until that moment? Unless you’re a New York Giants broadcaster, the answer is certainly yes.

Let’s break down the lyrics to reinforce this point. The first singalong line goes: “In the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki tiki room”. That’s eight words, five of which are tiki. That’s not lyricism. It’s an echo.

Okay, I’m mostly joking because only someone who is dead inside wouldn’t warm to the charms of Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room. It’s the first attraction to feature one of the theme park industry’s strapless, audio-animatronics (AAs). When Imagineers designed the room, they had grand plans to combine eating and drinking with talking birds, but those fell by the wayside. Instead, the show focused on four talking (and singing) macaws named Fritz, Jose, Michael, and Pierre, who host a gathering of 150 of their avian pals. Since the birds are AAs, *ahem* hygiene isn’t an issue.

Instead, the focus of the presentation is on silly fun. The macaws host a singalong for guests. The presentation is a show in the finest sense of the term. The Shermans simply had to augment the experience by offering the perfect music to put a smile on the faces of theme park tourists. They chose to implement this strategy by asking guests to say the word tiki a lot. If my repetition of this fact bothers you, then the song itself must drive you absolutely bonkers. The Shermans were devout believers in lyrics that get in a person’s head and stay there. Perhaps no song of theirs exemplifies this philosophy than The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room.

To be fair, Uncle Walt asked a lot of the Sherman Brothers on this assignment. Nobody had ever written a song for robots before. That’s effectively what happens during the performance. The Shermans designed lyrics that a piece of hardware had to replicate in believable fashion. Otherwise, the audience would lose their sense of whimsy. To fit the mechanical mouths, the composers tweaked their ideas more and more, generally having to perform reduction to their grander ideas. Ergo, the repetition is by necessity more than laziness. They did what they had to do to deliver a satisfactory accompaniment for their boss. Amazingly, nobody has ever updated the lyrics over the years as AAs have advanced dramatically in terms of technological capabilities. Instead, the lyrics were reduced to make each performance shorter. So, if anybody’s being lazy, it’s modern Disney execs.

During their run of Disney compositions, the brothers earned nine nominations in variants of the Best Original Song and Score categories at the Academy Awards. They won twice, both times with Mary Poppins. The winning song might surprise you, though. It wasn’t for Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious but Chim Chim Cher-ee instead. They also won for Best Score with the film, which means that if you haven’t watched Saving Mr. Banks yet, you should do so soon.

Over the course of their partnership with Disney, they created music for 10 different attractions plus the World Showcase March at Epcot. In addition to It’s a Small World, Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room and Carousel of Progress, they also contributed to Adventure Thru Inner Space,  America on Parade, CommuniCore, Journey into Imagination, Magic Journeys, Meet the World, and Rocket Rods. Whether you’ve ever realized it or not, your visits to Disney theme parks were chock full of encounters with the music of the Sherman Brothers.