The Great Enchanted Tiki Room Dress Story

I've been dying to tell this story for a while now, and today the wait is over!

This past summer, to celebrate the new Enchanted Tiki Room merchandise that Kevin Kidney & Jody Daily created for Disney, they were invited to do a presentation to the NFFC (that's a huge Disney fan organization) at their big annual Disneyana convention in Anaheim. Kevin & Jody, who have a pretty darned good sense of show themselves, decided to go beyond just a simple "here's what we're selling" spiel, and instead developed a whole performance emceed by King Kukulele. There was singing, there was whistling, there was comedy bits. It was a smash success.

For the show, they wore their reproduction purple Enchanted Tiki Room shirts, one of the more anticipated items in the new merchandise. Kevin & Jody also happened to have the original, vintage, matching purple Enchanted Tiki Room dress; they had pressed the Powers That Be at Disney to also do a repro of the dress, and they were laughed at -- their coworkers said no one would be caught dead in such a frumpy, dated dress! So, only the shirt was made.

Kevin & Jody asked me to participate in their show for the NFFC, and I got to wear their vintage Enchanted Tiki Room dress, which was a dream. We were quite a sight, all four of us in our matching purple Tiki Room prints, and after the show was over we went to Disneyland in them. It was a blast. I posted the story of this event, and the pictures from it, on Tiki Central in this thread:

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=15605&forum=1

Fast forward a bit -- Kevin walks into the Disney offices one morning to see this picture of me, EVERYWHERE:

It was on everybody's desk, including the VP, and one of the women in the apparel group had it blown up to be a few feet tall and mounted on posterboard. You can probably imagine Kevin's "what the...?!?" expression that morning, trying to figure out why he was seeing a picture of his weekly drinking buddy all over the place at work. He asked around to find out where everybody had gotten the picture, and discovered that someone at Disney had -- totally independently from any efforts of Kevin & Jody -- found that Tiki Central thread about the NFFC show, and the picture of me in that dress, and had flipped their lid! All of a sudden, they now LOVE this dress, and decided to make it!

They had already used all of the purple fabric for making the shirts. They were already underway on developing a reproduction of the vintage green version of the shirt, so they decided to make this dress in the green fabric.

So, this spring, you will be able to purchase this dress, in the same print but with a green background instead of purple, thanks to this bizarre turn of events!

Wow, Hum! Talk about serendipity. What a great story! Thanx for sharing.

I know that Johnny Dollar is gonna be excited!

Great story. I give it an 8.
The dress gets a 9.

Wow - thanks for the inspiration to continue with Weight Watchers, lose the baby weight and get into one of those dresses!

mrs. p

The line forms behind me. I've wanted one of these for ages. :)

Cheers,
Gwen Smith

Oh, me too!!! MEYOW!!

If it sells well maybe they'll make more purple fabric :wink:

Oh, and they really oughta give you the nearly-life-sized posterboard YOU!

On 2006-01-14 22:29, tikivixen wrote:
Oh, and they really oughta give you the nearly-life-sized posterboard YOU!

Haha! I don't know what I'd be able to do with it, though. I do know that Kevin was lobbying to have Sven & me as the catalog models for the green shirt & dress (the guy they got last time to model the tiki room shirt showed up with black nail polish on -- I'm all for wacky nail polish, but it didn't exactly go with the outfit). That would have been neat!

I'd be happy just to get the fabric, so I could make my own dress (probably a cheongsam).

I have a feeling that style will make zaftig chicks like me look pregnant, even when they're not. 8)

this is such a neat story! and you definitely need to get the life size poster of yourself. you can stick it on a cardboard life size cut out and put it in the doorway of tc events to guide people. and im sure the creative people of tc could think of more (possibly scary) uses for it as well. and damn right they need to use your image to model the new dress! you look fabulous in it! :)

you look so great; Humu in a muu-muu!

How could the powers at be not want to repro that shift?!

I want one too!!

Do those coconut shells go under the dress? :)

wow- great story.

Those shirts and the dress are one of the pinnacles of tiki. I am stoked they are coming back. There is actually another dress as well, with shrunken heads and spears.. my wife has one, and someone else posted theirs recently.

Now since TC seems to have some influence on the decision makers at Disney- perhaps we can convince them to reverse that GOD AWFUL faux pas they made when they redid the Tiki Room show and wrecked it completely.

I still go in there with my kid when I am Disney (world) but UGH how much of Gilbert Godfrey's annoying screaming can you take?

PLEASE if anyone at Disney is listening, get the "new management" OUT of the tiki room and get the old show back- or at least something soothing and neat, not obnoxiously stupid like it was altered to become.

I almost feel guilty bringing my son into the "new school" tiki room and depriving his childhood memories of the authentic greatness it once had.. to be replaced with goofy Buster Poindexter

That being said, man, I'm glad these dresses and shirts are coming back- that RULES! While you're at it, bring back the little wooden tiki statues too!

EDIT:
Here is the other dress- (my wife had it slightly altered to be a better fit) along with one of the wooden statues and the Disney Polynesian Village lidded mug (ala Mr. Bali Hai)

[ Edited by: fatuhiva 2006-01-21 18:36 ]

Whoa! I had no idea that there'd been a mug for the Polynesian Village Resort!

Yea that mug is my holy grail.

http://www.tikiroom.net/gallery/marked/ahg

But to be precise. It is from the Polynesian RESORT and not the Polynesian VILLAGE.

Disney changed the name in the 90s so this mug is not very old. I guess that the white goblet from the Village is so much more prevalent is because it was sold in the 70s when tiki was still relatively popular and this one from the Resort was sold in the 90s when tiki was dead.

Does anyone know if this mug was sold in the lobby gift-shop or was it included with a drink during the luau diner show.

thats a good point Phil- it is actually marked "resort"

I didnt know the timeline of the name change or that the hotel did in fact change its name- hmmmm

I have no idea where the mugs originated from in its day, if they were even sold there or if they were restaurant ware.

I had heard rumours that the gift shop was, or was going to be selling them again, but i have not seen this with my own eyes. I doubt it.

Either way, its a nice heavy quality piece, and you can see the tiki the design came from right as you pull into the entrance driveway.

some good info on the polynesian resort here:

http://home.cfl.rr.com/omniluxe/poly.htm

[ Edited by: fatuhiva 2006-01-22 20:56 ]

I was at the resort a couple of weeks ago. There's some mugs in the new gift shop, but they're pretty much standard issue.

all the talk of the Polynesian resort got me jonesing, so the wife and I looked into pricing, and turns out right now is a dead period for the resorts- got booked into "Samoa" 1st floor with a patio facing the pool- spent two nights there and it was BLISS

didnt see any mugs other than new stuff..

The story of the Enchanted Tiki Room Dress took a turn for the fantastic:

The latest update is on Humu Kon Tiki, it's a doozy!

The next chapter in the dress story

Congratulations, Humuhumu!

You and Kevin look absolutely smashing in your photoshoot. (and I like the green dress even better than the purple one). Lucky Girl!

Sabu

my god!

there's a disney couple if ever i saw one!

congrats!

Congrats Humu - that's great news! The pics are awesome.

I especially like the "Polynesian Gothic":

Great stuff, Humu! What a great story, what great pics! You are so the right person in the right place to make something like that happen! So, we can add fashion model to the growing list of talents/occupations?

Great story Humu! You & Kevin look great....

We are looking forward to next week!

Haha! I'm so glad you picked up on our Polynesian Gothic photo, bot! Here's a new, improved version:

Just to let ya know the dress is now on sale!!!

http://disneyshopping.go.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/DSIProductDisplay?catalogId=10003&storeId=10052&productId=1195151&langId=-1&categoryId=13841

sorry for late Congratulations

I like Mens dress shirts any one tell me where i can buy this shirt

You're in luck: The link you posted is to a site that sells men's dress shirts!!!

Well, at least we can thank the spammer for bumping a cool thread that I had not seen before. Thanks spam-dude.

Hi

I recently purchased this dress. Can anyone confirm that it is a 60's dress? I'm waiting for it to arrive in the post and will add more info soon.

Also posted here