When you
ride the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland, you are, in theory, taking a ride down several of the world’s big jungle rivers. The ride was based on a Disney “True Life Adventure” (probably Jungle Cat) and takes riders down the Irrawaddy, Mekong, Congo, Amazon, etc. According to the Daveland website (see links), the boats were modeled after the boat used in the “African Queen”.
This past week I was on vacation in Costa Rica and took a river boat cruise on the Tarcoles river to check out the wildlife. Almost immediately upon entering the boat, I thought, “This looks very similar to the Disneyland River Boat Cruise!” Sure…the boats were not exactly the same…but we had the river, the 
animals (crocodiles primarily and lots of birds) and we even had a guide with a great sense of humor…José. But it was all real! I was thinking that this type of cruise must have been the kind of thing that inspired Walt Disney in the first place.
Anyway…here are a few shots to compare to card NT0272. We didn’t see any hippos of course, but we were just as close to the crocodiles as the boy is to the hippo in the 
postcard (arms were inside the boat though!!). It was rather unsettling
actually! Oh, and here’s one observation…ever notice that there are no postcards taken from the interior of the boat that show the boat in the card (at least not in the B-Series cards…I think there may be one that was published later though.)
I will be back tomorrow to discuss some interesting eBay results.
Until next time…
