The Boats

"…where people would come in and look at something and actually laugh out loud." — Marc Davis, on what the park needed (Wikipedia: Jungle Cruise)

Disneyland is a park built on water. Most of what you see floating in it, the river, the jungle, the castle moat and the Storybook canals, is part of one connected system laid out in 1955 (Wikipedia: Rivers of America). When the Rivers of America was first filled, the water soaked straight into Anaheim's sandy soil and disappeared, and the riverbed had to be lined with clay before it would hold. Over seven decades, that water has carried a sternwheeler, a tall ship, keel boats, canoes, rafts, launches, submarines, canal boats and logs.

The Mark Twain

A Mississippi steamboat was in Walt's plans even for the small park in Burbank, and it survived every change after that. The Mark Twain is a five-eighths-scale sternwheeler, 105 feet long and weighing 150 tons. Its hull was built at Todd Shipyards in San Pedro and its decks at the Burbank studio (Wikipedia: Disney riverboats). It is often described as the first working paddle steamer built in the United States in fifty years. Joe Fowler insisted on digging a dry dock for it. Walt, watching all that land disappear into a hole, called it "Joe's Ditch." It is Fowler's Harbor today. When company money for the boat ran short, Walt paid for it himself.

The Mark Twain sailed for the first time on July 13, 1955, four days before the opening, for a private party celebrating Walt and Lillian's thirtieth wedding anniversary. The story is told that Fowler, checking the boat before the guests arrived, found Lillian sweeping the deck and picked up a broom to help. On opening day, actress Irene Dunne, the star of Show Boat, struggled to break a bottle of water from American rivers across the bow. No one had yet worked out how many people the boat could safely carry. A few days later, operators waved more than 500 guests aboard. The boat listed, slipped its guide rail and stuck in the mud. The limit has been 300 ever since.

The Mark Twain is not steered by its pilot. It follows a steel I-beam hidden under the dyed water and draws only 18 inches, while the pilot keeps watch for canoes and rafts. Its decks and boiler were replaced in 1995 and its keel in 2004.

The Columbia

By 1958 Walt wanted more traffic on the river, and he asked Fowler to recommend a historic ship. Fowler went through the country's maritime museums and came back with the Columbia Rediviva, the first American ship to sail around the world. Only one picture of the original is known to survive. The designer Ray Wallace drew up the plans in 1957, and Todd Shipyards built the masts, rigging and sails (Wikipedia: Sailing Ship Columbia). When Fowler told Walt it was a sailor's custom to place a silver dollar under each mast, Walt put one under each of the three himself.

The ship was christened on June 4, 1958, by Gretchen Richmond, wife of the Coast Guard commandant, with Fowler in an eighteenth-century captain's costume and the Mouseketeers as his crew. It opened to guests on June 14. A museum of crew quarters was added below decks in 1964. The Columbia is 110 feet long and 84 feet tall. It fires a 12-gauge blank from one of its ten cannons as it passes the fort on Tom Sawyer Island. At night it becomes Captain Hook's ship in Fantasmic!

The ship also carries the river's saddest day. On December 24, 1998, a cleat tore loose from the hull as the ship docked and struck a guest, Luan Phi Dawson, who died two days later. His wife and a cast member were also injured. The Columbia returned to service on June 28, 1999. As of this writing, it is closed for refurbishment and scheduled to reopen on November 7, 2026 (TouringPlans).

Keel boats, canoes and rafts

The two keel boats came straight from television. The Gullywhumper and the Bertha Mae were the actual props from the 1955 Davy Crockett episodes about a keel-boat race with the river man Mike Fink, and they went into service on the river on Christmas Day, 1955 (Wikipedia). On May 17, 1997, the Gullywhumper began to rock and capsized, dropping a full load of passengers into the river with only minor injuries. Neither boat carried guests again. The Bertha Mae sold at auction for $15,000. The Gullywhumper stayed on the island as scenery until it took on water and sank, and it was finally hauled away in 2009.

In 1956 two more kinds of boats appeared. The Indian War Canoes, today Davy Crockett's Explorer Canoes, are paddled by the guests themselves. They gave rise to a cast-member tradition, the annual canoe races held before the park opens. Rafts began carrying guests across to Tom Sawyer Island that June.

The Jungle Cruise

The Jungle Cruise was ready on opening day. Harper Goff designed its launches after the steamer in the 1951 film The African Queen. Real animals were considered and dropped once it became clear they would sleep through the day. The landscape architect Bill Evans built a jungle on a budget, in part by planting orange trees upside down and growing vines on their roots (Wikipedia: Jungle Cruise).

At first the skippers narrated it like a nature documentary. When Walt asked Marc Davis what the ride needed, Davis said it needed humor, and the jokes have never left. The twelve boats carry river names in pairs of sounds: the Amazon Belle, Congo Queen, Ganges Gal, Irrawaddy Woman, Zambezi Miss and the rest. Skippers were disarmed of their prop pistols in 2001 and rearmed in 2004. In 2021, Disney removed the ride's depictions of native people and rewrote its final scenes.

The Tomorrowland lagoon

The first ride ever to close at Disneyland was a boat ride. The Tomorrowland Boats opened in July 1955 for guests to drive around a lagoon, like an Autopia on water. The fiberglass boats overheated, smoked and broke down. Disney enclosed the motors, renamed them the Phantom Boats, and put an employee in each one to keep it running. On busy days, 14 little boats needed 14 employees and carried only two or three guests apiece. They made their last lap in August 1956 (Disney History Institute).

The lagoon's second fleet was far grander. On June 14, 1959, the Submarine Voyage opened with eight submarines named for real nuclear submarines, from the Nautilus to the Ethan Allen (Wikipedia: Submarine Voyage). They were built at Todd Shipyards for about $80,000 each, with advice from the company that built the Navy's nuclear submarines. Mildred Nelson, the wife of a machinist's mate on the real Nautilus, christened the fleet. The subs never actually dove. Guests sat below the waterline and looked out through portholes while curtains of bubbles made it feel like a descent. Summers from 1959 to 1967, cast members in mermaid costumes swam and sunbathed in the lagoon. The gray military subs turned yellow in 1986. The ride closed on September 8, 1998, judged too costly to run, and the lagoon sat full and quiet for seven years. It reopened as Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage on June 11, 2007.

Canals and small boats

Fantasyland's canal ride opened in 1955 as the Canal Boats of the World. The miniature world it promised was never built, the outboard motors overheated, and with nothing growing on its banks, executives nicknamed it the mud bank ride (Wikipedia: Storybook Land Canal Boats). It closed after two months. On June 16, 1956, it reopened as Storybook Land, entered through the mouth of Monstro the whale and lined with buildings at one inch to the foot. Walt planted a bonsai along the banks himself. The boats are named for Disney heroines, with one exception: Flower, the skunk from Bambi, since retired. Arendelle from Frozen arrived in 2014, and Rapunzel's tower in 2025.

Nearby, guests steered their own boats on the Motor Boat Cruise from June 1957 until January 11, 1993. A Gummi Bears makeover in 1991 did not save it (Wikipedia). Indoors, "it's a small world" has floated guests past singing dolls since May 28, 1966, and Pirates of the Caribbean has sent its boats down a waterfall since March 18, 1967.

Logs

Splash Mountain sent hollowed-out logs down its big drop from July 17, 1989, until May 31, 2023. The same flume reopened on November 15, 2024, as Tiana's Bayou Adventure (Disney Parks Blog).

The fleet at a glance

Fun facts: the boats

1. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl had its world premiere on the Rivers of America in 2003, on a 90-foot screen (Wikipedia: Rivers of America).
2. The river is only 4 to 8 feet deep. Crews add green or brown dye now and then to hide the machinery underneath.
3. The lighthouse at the entrance to Storybook Land was once a ticket booth. The ride took a D coupon (Wikipedia: Storybook Land).
4. On September 24, 1995, a couple were married on the bow of the Mark Twain as it circled the river. The groom's father, a 50-year Disney veteran, dressed as Mark Twain for the occasion (Wikipedia: Disney riverboats).
5. In its early years, the Mark Twain served non-alcoholic mint juleps, and performers played cards on board, acting out conversation from the steamboat era.
6. A copy of the Columbia was planned for the Magic Kingdom in Florida but was dropped in favor of a second steamboat (Wikipedia: Sailing Ship Columbia).
7. The submarine lagoon holds about nine million gallons. In the original ride's day, divers went down every night to clear debris and repair the figures (Wikipedia: Submarine Voyage).
8. Walt was reportedly disappointed when Nikita Khrushchev was kept from visiting in 1959, because he had wanted to show the Soviet premier his submarine fleet.
9. Beginning in 2013, the Jungle Cruise has been redressed for the holidays as the Jingle Cruise, and the Amazon Belle sails as the Jingle Belle (Wikipedia: Jungle Cruise).
10. In 2010, after fifty-five years of growth, Disneyland's man-made jungle was declared a real one, with its own self-sustaining ecosystem.