EXPLORING THE ADVENTURE OF BACKSTORIES
Imagineers wanted a way to tie together their rides’ tales. The solution: A secret society.
A secret society of explorers and adventurers created by Walt Disney Imagineering ties together the backstories of Disneyland’s most popular rides, and connects attractions at Disney theme parks around the world with an underlying mythology.
Knowing winks and nods to the Society of Explorers and Adventurers are hidden in plain sight throughout Disneyland like an Imagineering Easter egg hunt — if you know where to look and what to look for.
Society members are associated with the elaborate backstories created by Imagineering for the Jungle Cruise, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Adventureland Treehouse, Tropical Hideaway and Bengal Barbecue at Disneyland as well as Mystic Manor at Hong Kong Disneyland and Tower of Terror at Tokyo DisneySea.
More tangential connections to the fictional organization are interwoven into the Disneyland backstories of the Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Club 33 and Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar.
Key members of the Disney secret society include Dr. Albert Falls (Jungle Cruise), Barnabas T. Bullion (Big Thunder Mountain Railroad), Lord Henry Mystic (Mystic Manor) and Jock Lindsey (Jock Lindsey’s Hangar Bar at Walt Disney World).
The Disney Illuminati are memorialized on a back wall of Disneyland’s Tropical Hideaway eatery with a dozen rowing paddles — each with a plaque to one of the society members.
The recently refreshed Adventureland Treehouse, inspired by Walt Disney’s “Swiss Family Robinson,” is the latest Disneyland attraction to employ an extensive society backstory.
Despite the attraction’s name, the new residents of the Adventureland Treehouse are not the marooned Robinsons, but rather a nameless yet creative family of five. The family’s daughter loves the stars and has a great spot to watch the night sky from her treetop room.
The daughter’s observatory has a telescope fashioned out of old barrels, ancient astronomical instruments and celestial charts. The self-taught astronomer dreams of one day becoming a society member and is already in communication with it.
The daughter’s room is filled with Society of Explorers and Adventurers books that include a “Guide for Prospective Members,” “Who’s Who Compendium of Membership” and the “Official By-Laws.”
A leather book with two belt-buckle straps labeled “Official Member Fan Club,” next to a “Membership Application Kit” in a wooden box, both feature the distinctive society insignia. A banner with the society logo hangs outside her astronomy room.
A 1938 letter from society member Aya KouameBeauciel to the daughter rests on a writing stand in the treetop room.
“I’ll be sending the highpowered lenses you requested to Dr. Kon Chunosuke’s field office at the JNC headquarters,” reads the letter. “He confirmed that Alberta would be happy to hold onto them for you until you can pick them up.”
The Kouame-Beauciel letter references microscope lenses shipped to the Jungle Navigation Co. that are found in the Jungle Cruise queue in a wooden box stamped “Hightower Industries” and “Fragile.”
Keep searching through the Jungle Cruise queue and you’ll find a painting of society members from 1897 that makes a sly reference to the Mystic Manor, according to MiceChat.
The letter also references society member Chunosuke — one of the members of the trapped safari chased up a tree by a rhino on the Jungle Cruise.
The Alberta mentioned in the letter is the Jungle Navigation Co. president and granddaughter of society member Albert Falls — of “Backside of Water” fame.
The fictional history of the Society of Explorers and Adventurers stretches back hundreds of years — but the birth of the Imagineering storytelling device started with the Adventurers Club in 1989.
The Adventurers Club was part of the Pleasure Island nightclub district in the Disney Springs outdoor shopping mall at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. The Imagineering masterpiece was filled with audio-animatronics on the walls, secret rooms, potionlike drinks and performances by society characters, according to SFGate.
Although the Adventurers Club closed in 2008, the society characters and backstories created for the restaurant endured and expanded, starting with the debut of Mystic Manor in 2013 at Hong Kong Disneyland. The adjacent Explorer’s Club restaurant is filled with elements from Disney World’s defunct Adventurers Club.