RIP Tiki Room Designer Rolly Crump

age 93. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-03-13/rolly-crump-dead-disneyland-designer

"Animator turned theme park designer Rolly Crump, who was instrumental in the design of early Disneyland, died Sunday in his Carlsbad home..Crump was 93...

It’s a Small World, the Enchanted Tiki Room and the Haunted Mansion are just a few of the projects Crump would contribute to ...Crump‘s designs would help define the look of Disneyland...

...he carved the tikis of the Enchanted Tiki Room with plastic forks from the Disney commissary. The tikis still stand in the park today, and Crump’s designs — tiki gods and goddesses such as Pele, a fire goddess, and Hina Kaluua, a mistress of rain — continue to shape and influence tropical art.

The Disneyland Hotel’s wildly popular bar Trader Sam’s is steeped in the Crump influence. It was designed in his vision of tiki culture, which was based on weeks of research aided by anthropologist Katharine Luomala’s book “Voices on the Wind.”

And to this day, Crump is heralded as co-leading what would become Disneyland’s greatest version of Tomorrowland, a sort of mod vision of future-past that opened in 1967."

Didn't he also do some freaky beatnik, non-family type stuff, too? Apart form Disney, of course.

He made some truly wonderful and admirably achievements for which his life should be celebrated by Tikiphiles everywhere. Carving with those flimsy plastic forks alone is surely something of a skill?

However I will never forgive anyone who had anything at all to do with inflicting "It's a Small World" on us.

[ Edited by TIKIGIKI on 2023-03-13 19:34:25 ]

YouTube: Rolly Crump talks about developing the Tiki Room at Disneyland

[ Edited by King Bushwich the 33rd on 2023-03-13 23:10:01 ]

Sadly, I'm guessing there can't be many Walt-hired Imagineers left. RIP Rolly