Adventurers Club


The Adventurers Club was a themed nightclub in Pleasure Island at the Walt Disney World Resort. It was styled after a private club for world travelers and explorers and was set in 1937. The walls of the club were covered with artifacts and photographs from various explorations. The Adventurers Club featured animatronics, puppets, and a cast of adventurers who performed in shows and improvisational comedy while mingling with the club's patrons. Shows and conversation were often laced with innuendo, and the patrons might have been welcomed as guests, given fictitious names and "recognized" as fellow adventurers, or simply referred to as "drunks".

History

The Adventurers Club opened with the rest of Pleasure Island on May 1, 1989, as part of a fictional legend about the island's previous owner, Merriweather Adam Pleasure, and back-story describing each of the buildings' former uses. Disney's Imagineers, led by Head Writer, Show Producer and Show Director, Roger Cox and designer Joe Rohde, conceived and created the club.
The Adventurers Club's unlikely hero, Emil Bleehall, is based on a semi-autobiographical character Cox created. He is a little guy from Ohio who gains respect and admiration with his awkward but uniquely crowd-pleasing talents. Cox felt it paralleled his own story at Disney. A docudramatic version of Cox’s journey at Disney by Sandra Tsing Loh, called, "It Happened in Glendale", from her book Depth Takes a Holiday, was performed on an episode of the radio show This American Life titled "Something for Nothing."
Until December 31, 2005, every night in Pleasure Island was celebrated as New Year's Eve. The club's show schedule was set to create a break near midnight to allow people to go outside to see the fireworks and to accommodate the noisy explosions that resulted. One of the launch points for the nightly fireworks was the Adventurers Club's rooftop.
On June 27, 2008 Disney announced the Adventurers Club would be closing permanently on September 27, 2008. An online petition to save the club was created at by members of the Disney fan community in hopes that Disney would consider moving the club or keeping it open as part of the new Pleasure Island format. Over 2,750 signatures were collected in the first 72 hours. There were also letter-writing campaigns to company executives, web sites, and blog postings. In February 2009, Disney announced that Adventurers Club and the dance clubs Motion and Soundstage would reopen for private party rentals at least through September, 2009.
On September 26, 2009, it was confirmed that props from the Club would be sent to Hong Kong Disneyland. The props were worked into the Mystic Manor attraction, which opened in 2013. A few props which were created by cast members for use in the shows have been sold at auction by the performers who owned them. There are rumors that several "artifacts" from the former Club made their way to Trader Sam's in the Disneyland Hotel. A stuffed peacock named "Scooter" and several other item have a new home high on the walls at D Street in Disney Springs, Florida. Some items have been internally offered for sale to cast members.
The last public performance was held September 27, 2008 to overflowing crowds. The last semi-public event held at the Club occurred on September 25, 2009. It was a convention party for The ConGaloosh Society, Inc, a Florida nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of interactive improvisational theatre. The ConGaloosh Society continues to hold events that bring together fans of the Adventurers Club with cast members in new settings.
The Adventurers Club's cast reunited for one last performance and "membership renewal" at the Disney D23 Destination D event on Sunday, November 23, 2014, at around 8:30PM in the Disney's Contemporary Resort Fantasia conference building and rooms.
The Adventurers Club cast reunited again for the Countdown to Midnight event at Disney's Yacht and Beach Club Resort on December 31, 2015, inducting new members for the first time in seven years.
On April 29, 2019, some of the Cast of the Adventurers Club reunited to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Pleasure Island, and new members were inducted into the Club at a special event on the beach at Disney's Beach Club Resort.

Inspiration

The Adventurers Club was designed and created by Walt Disney Imagineering in the late 1980s. Walt Disney Imagineering is the design and development arm of The Walt Disney Company, responsible for the creation and construction of Disney theme parks worldwide. Chris Carradine, the Vice President of Walt Disney Imagineering, played a significant role in the creation of the club.
The origins of the club were recently described by Craig McNair Wilson, who worked with the dramatic team for the club. According to Wilson, "it came out of our collective, shared love of the world of the pith helmet and all that circled around it. It was the place we always wanted to go, but it didn't exist."
Wilson said the idea originated from a Sunday afternoon theme party, given by Disney employee Joe Rohde. The theme of the party was "The Last Days of the Raj." Every year for years, the employees would dress up in theme costume to recreate the days of British colonialism.
According to Wilson, the Los Angeles show Tamara was also a "major influence on the team." Tamara was a live theatrical, multiroom play, which allowed 150 audience members to follow ten actors through an Italian Villa set in the late 1930s. It took place in an old Elks hall in Los Angeles. Wilson and Disney Imagineering Vice President Chris Carradine saw the show "three or four times together and a few times more with others."
According to Wilson, there was also "more than a pinch of Rick’s Cafe," from the film Casablanca.
There are several organizations that may have served as inspiration for the attraction. The Explorers Club was founded in New York in 1904. There is also an actual "Adventurers' Club" which had chapters in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Honolulu. The Adventurers' Club of Los Angeles, which was incorporated in 1922, has been in continuous operation since its founding.
Additionally, another organization, called the Ends of the Earth Club, was created in 1903. Its members included Mark Twain, General John Pershing, Admiral Robert Peary, Gutzon Borglum and more than 100 other prominent businessmen and academics located, primarily, in the northeastern United States. However, there is no evidence that the Disney team was aware of the existence of any of these clubs.
The physical layout of the club was designed by Chris Carradine, who is an architect by training. The building was made intentionally large, so that the club could be expanded with additional exhibits.

Characters

Resident adventurers

Different actors portrayed the adventurers on different nights, and most actors played more than one part.
The maid is the only character in the club to have a unique identity when played by a different actress. Past and present maids include "Anelle", "Yvette", "Sugar Snap", "Beullah Belle", "Ginger Vitus", "Sunny Knight", "Kiki McGee", "Gabby Normal", "Tish Myash", "Dusty Cabinets", "Tallulah Buttertart", "LaRue", "Molly McClean", and more.

Other characters

The Adventurers Club offered many shows throughout the night. The main shows were hosted in the library, which seated over 100 people, while smaller shows occurred in the Mask Room and Treasure Room, seating about 40 people each. The times were not always fixed, but there were plaques next to each room to show the schedule for that particular evening. The shows mostly follow a script and order of songs and jokes, but performers would sometimes make running jokes about guests' behavior, dress, or place of origin. Some guests would be invited to participate. Shows include:
Some shows were performed in the club's earlier years but later canceled. These include the beer tasting session, "Fingers Plays Requests", Madam Zarkov's show, and more.

Holidays

While every day is the Open House and the performers have free rein to alter the script to fit the evening, the club does do some specialty shows for the Halloween and Christmas seasons in place of one or more of the Library events.
During the Club's run, several unique traditions emerged. Some date back to the opening day of the club, others were added over the years.
Marching along we're adventurers

Singing the song of adventurers

Up or down

North, south, east, or west,

An Adventurer's life is best.
KUNGALOOSH!!
We climb the highest mountains,

just to get a better view.
We plumb the deepest oceans,

cause we're daring through and through.
We cross the scorching deserts,

martini in our hands.
We ski the polar ice caps,

in tuxedo looking grand.
We are reckless, brave, and loyal,

and valiant to the end.
If you come in here a stranger,

you will exit as a friend.
~Merriweather Adam Pleasure

Club Founder 1927

Another tradition was when a regular performer left the cast, a custom-designed artifact with obscure references to that person was placed on display to memorialize them; many of these were kept in a locked cabinet in the Treasure Room.

Costumes

Throughout the years the costumes of the main characters changed several times. Emil Bleehall originally wore a plaid jacket and resembled a traveling salesman. This was later changed to a green "Junior Adventurer" outfit, reminiscent of a Boy Scout uniform. Hathaway Browne wore a Green Jacket, which was later supplanted by a leather aviator coat. As a result of the many layers of the newer costume, his character was often the object of jokes during the hot Florida summers. Fletcher Hodges went through one of the more strange transitions, switching from a professor lab coat to a "ponga" skirt with boxer shorts, then back to pants again. Pamelia Perkins originally wore a purple dress, then graduated to a blue dress with a prominent "Club President" sash. She continued to wear the sash through the rest of her costumes, including a bright dress reminiscent of a peacock and her final costume, which was a red and blue kimono.
The later costumes were more outrageous than the earlier ones to make the characters stand out, and sometimes at the desires of new show directors. The cast would sometimes also add personal touches of their own, with some wearing different hats or carrying props.

Musical numbers

Songs performed in the library shows include several written by comedians Heywood Banks and Tom Lehrer. Others come from a wide variety of sources: Broadway, children's songs, pop and jazz, comedy.
Several of the longest running songs were originals written by the performers themselves.

Merchandise

There are several cross references between the Adventurers Club and the Magic Kingdom Jungle Cruise attraction, both themed to the same era of time. Some of the artifacts in the club are attributed to scenes on the Jungle Cruise. The fastpass machines at the Jungle Cruise are designed to resemble travel trunks. Two of these have nametags on the top, one with Emil's address, and one with Pamelia's. Recently the tags have gone missing, either from vandalism or a deliberate redesign of the machines. In addition, several "artifacts" throughout the queue are labeled as belonging to a private collection from the Adventurers Club, including its physical address. The Skipper Canteen, a restaurant in the Magic Kingdom, is supposedly run by the Jungle Navigation Co LTD and has a cake on the menu called Kungaloosh.

Connection to the S.E.A.

The Society of Explorers and Adventurers, or SEA for short, is an organization that Walt Disney Imagineering has been steadily incorporating into attractions around the world. When the Adventurers Club closed, props would be saved and repurposed in other places and occasionally, narrative connections between the Adventurers Club and SEA would be made in some of these locations, with the Adventurers Club being established as being a successor or a branch established decades after most SEA attractions.
At Hong Kong Disneyland's Mystic Point, the Explorers Club Restaurant's collection of artifacts includes several pieces from the Mask Room. Lord Henry Mystic, the lead SEA member of the land, notes in journal excerpts on the wall that noticing the way these masks moved made him nervous enough to move them out of the main museum in the house. With the land being set in 1908, this makes this the first chronological home for them.
At the Magic Kingdom's Skipper Canteen Restaurant, inspired by the Jungle Cruise, a display case of SEA club fezes near the restaurant's SEA meeting room dining area features the SEA membership fez of Merryweather Pleasure. Additionally, one of the menu items is named for Pamelia Perkins, the Perkins Thai Noodles.
At the Aulani resort kids club, Aunty's Beach House, a portrait that once hung in the Adventurer's Club and a letter from Pamelia Perkins identifies and retcons the figures depicted as being of a predecessor to the Adventurer's Club known as the "Pillagers Brigade" with a younger Harrison Hightower III of Tokyo Disney Sea's Tower of Terror among them, years before he joined SEA and eventually found the Shiriki Utundu Idol.

In the media