Swiss Family Treehouse is a walk-through attraction featured at several

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, Inc., formerly Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Worldwide, Inc. and informally known as Disney Parks, is one of The Walt Disney Company's five major business segments and a subsidiary. It was founded on Apri ...

, located at

Magic Kingdom Magic Kingdom Park, previously known as Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom (1971–1994) and The Magic Kingdom (1994–2017), is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, near Orlando, Florida. Owned and operated by The W ...

Tokyo Disneyland (local nickname ''TDL'') is a theme park at the Tokyo Disney Resort in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, near Tokyo. Its main gate is directly adjacent to both Maihama Station and Tokyo Disneyland Station. It was the first Disney park to be ...

and

Disneyland Park Disneyland is a theme park in Anaheim, California. Opened in 1955, it was the first theme park opened by The Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. Disney initially envision ...

Disneyland Paris Disneyland Paris is an entertainment resort in Chessy, France, east of Paris. It encompasses two theme parks, resort hotels, Disney Nature Resorts, a shopping, dining and entertainment complex, and a golf course. Disneyland Park is the origin ...

. The walk-through attraction is centered on a giant

treehouse A tree house, tree fort or treeshed is a platform or building constructed around, next to or among the trunk or branches of one or more mature trees while above ground level. Tree houses can be used for recreation, work space, habitation, a han ...

where everyone can hear and see various scenes based on the 1960

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

film ''

Swiss Family Robinson ''The Swiss Family Robinson'' (German: ''Der Schweizerische Robinson'') is a novel by Johann David Wyss, first published in 1812, about a Swiss family of immigrants whose ship en route to Port Jackson, Australia, goes off course and is shipwreck ...

''.

History

The Swiss Family Treehouse opened November 18, 1962, in Adventureland at

Disneyland Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park in Anaheim, California. Opened in 1955, it was the first theme park opened by The Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. Disney in ...

, two years after the Disney film ''

'' (1960). Imagineer Bill Martin worked out the treehouse's design; Disney animator

Wolfgang Reitherman Wolfgang Reitherman (June 26, 1909 – May 22, 1985), also known and sometimes credited as Woolie Reitherman, was a German–American animator, director and producer and one of the "Disney's Nine Old Men, Nine Old Men" of core animators at Walt ...

, who designed the treehouse for the movie, contributed. At tall and wide, constructed of concrete and reinforced steel, the attraction weighed 150 tons. The tree species was dubbed "''Disneyodendron semperflorens grandis'' -- large, everblooming Disney tree."

John Mills Sir John Mills (born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills; 22 February 190823 April 2005) was an English actor who appeared in more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades. He excelled on camera as an appealing British everyman who often portray ...

, who played Father Robinson in the movie, and his daughter

Hayley Hayley (pronounced ) is an English given name. It is derived from the English surname Haley, which in turn was based on an Old English toponym, a compound of ''heg'' "hay" and ''leah'' "clearing or meadow".Katie Martin-Doyle, ''The Treasury of ...

appeared at the attraction's opening. The attraction was a walk-through rather than a ride, in which visitors walked up 68 steps in the trunk of the tree through various "rooms" designed on the theme of the movie, with items and structures made to appear salvaged from a 19th-century shipwreck and

desert island A desert island, deserted island, or uninhabited island, is an island, islet or atoll that is not permanently populated by humans. Uninhabited islands are often depicted in films or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereot ...

finds. When it opened, the attraction required a C ticket. The attraction originally opened with reddish brown leaves. However, the red leaves faded very easily in the sun and were eventually switched to green leaves sometime during the early 1960s. When the

opened at

Walt Disney World Resort The Walt Disney World Resort, also called Walt Disney World or Disney World, is an entertainment resort complex in Bay Lake, Florida, Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, Florida, Lake Buena Vista, Florida, United States, near the cities of Orlando ...

on October 1, 1971, the Swiss Family Treehouse was one of the original attractions of Adventureland. The tree, while intended to look real, is actually made up of steel, concrete, and stucco, stretching tall and wide. Similarly, when Euro Disneyland (now

) opened on April 12, 1992, it featured a version of the attraction located in Adventureland, named La Cabane des Robinson. Tokyo Disneyland also has a Swiss Family Treehouse which opened in 1993, ten years after the park's debut. In March 1999, the original attraction at Disneyland was closed. Refurbished and remodeled with a new theme, it reopened in June the same year as

Tarzan's Treehouse Tarzan's Treehouse is a treetop walk-through attraction at Hong Kong Disneyland and formerly at Disneyland in California. It is based on Disney's 1999 film ''Tarzan''. Disneyland version In February 1999, Disneyland closed its version of the Sw ...

, based on

's 1999 film ''

Tarzan Tarzan (John Clayton II, Viscount Greystoke) is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungle by the Mangani great apes; he later experiences civilization, only to reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adv ...

''. In September 2021 the attraction closed. In April 2022 it was confirmed that it would reopen with a different theme. and in November 2022 it was announced that it will reopen in 2023 as the Adventureland Treehouse, which will again be inspired by ''Swiss Family Robinson''.

Note

References

External links

Magic Kingdom site

Tokyo Disneyland site

Disneyland Paris site

Photos Magiques - La Cabane des Robinson
{{Disneyland Park (Paris) Walt Disney Parks and Resorts attractions Magic Kingdom Tokyo Disneyland Disneyland Park (Paris) Adventureland (Disney) 1962 establishments in California 1999 disestablishments in California 1971 establishments in Florida 1992 establishments in France 1993 establishments in Japan The Swiss Family Robinson