Work on the retheming of Tarzan’s Treehouse that has taken twice as long as the original creation of Disneyland is nearing completion as the final set pieces are being installed and tested in the what’s old is new again Adventureland Treehouse.
Disneyland will reopen the Adventureland Treehouse this fall after a refurbishment project that has stretched for more than two years. The fall opening date means the Adventureland Treehouse will return sometime between late September and late December.
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Most of the scaffolding and scrims that have encased the 80-foot-tall man-made tree over the past two years have been removed as Walt Disney Imagineering tests and adjusts an elaborate water wheel system with bamboo buckets.
“The treehouse is all but done,” according to MiceChat. “There is just some fine-tuning going on with the water wheel system and then they’ll hopefully be able to announce an opening date.”
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Tarzan’s Treehouse closed in September 2021 — meaning the two-year refurbishment project has taken twice as long as the yearlong construction of Disneyland that was completed in 1955.
The 150-ton evergreen with 6,000 vinyl leaves even has its own tree species name — Disneydendron semperflorens grandis.
The new Adventureland Treehouse inspired by Walt Disney’s “Swiss Family Robinson” pays tribute to Disneyland’s original Swiss Family Treehouse while also serving as a tie-in to a new Swiss Family Robinson television show in the works for the Disney+ streaming service.
A family of five who possess magical and unique gifts that help them survive life in the jungle will soon be moving into the Adventureland Treehouse once work is complete on their new home, according to the backstory created for the rethemed Disneyland attraction.
The chef father has built a kitchen where meals cook themselves and “magical water” fed by a water wheel cools an ice box.
The musical mother has a player organ in her room that plays “Swisskapolka” in an homage to Disneyland’s original Swiss Family Treehouse.
The teenage daughter is an astronomer and astrologer whose room near the top of the treehouse is filled with diagrams of the stars and models of the universe.
The naturalist twin sons — one an animal lover and the other a plant lover — share a room filled with monkeys, toucans and man-eating plants.
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The Disneyland treehouse has changed ownership a few times over the past six decades.
The original Swiss Family Treehouse based on the 1960 Disney film opened at Disneyland in 1962. The Disneyland attraction was rethemed in 1999 as Tarzan’s Treehouse based on the Disney animated film from the same year about a boy raised by apes.
The Adventureland Treehouse has been closed since September 2021 — an unusually long time for an attraction retheme.
Disneyland announced plans in 2022 for a rethemed version of the attraction that would be once again inspired by the “Swiss Family Robinson” novel written by Johann David Wyss in 1812.
