To Build a Disney Tiki Bird - Part One

Ever since I was in high school I've wanted to build a Disney Enchanted Tiki bird from scratch. Even though I've built a few animatronic birds over the years, I never made a "Dead on the Money" replica. I've decided to do it and share the experience.

I'm going to build a Toucan. The Tropical Serenade Barker Bird (WDW) to be exact. Complete with perch. I have no photos or blue prints of the inner workings of this bird. I have photos of other tiki bird parts and a set of 1966 patent drawings. I want this figure to be air powered and I want to use the same air cylinders as the 1963 version so I get the exact same motion. I'm going to sculpt this a close to the original shape as I can but I have no official measurements.

Background:

It all started when a few friends and I were goofing around in the school library cutting gym class. We were looking at old National Geographic Magazines when my pal Kevin said "I didn't know they had Minnie Mouse in Malaysia! He showed me the article and I couldn't believe my eyes. It was the single greatest spark of imagination I ever got. It was my introduction to the inner workings of Walt Disney's Audio Animatronic technology. (National Geographic August 1963 was the date for those of you who want to find one.)

My friend Schell and I started to build a parrot right away. We were both poor so fancy equipment was out of the question. I would find out over the years that hat we built was surprisingly close to some of the different systems involved in an early AA figure. Out birds mouth ran on a tape recorder with a headphone jack plugged in. One wire was the audio and went to a little speaker and the other wire was wound with fine copper wire around a small iron rod creating an electromagnet. The birds beak was hinged and the back had a small piece of steel glued to it. The pulses from audio track coming through that wire charged the magnet, which attracted the steal, and opened the birds mouth! The damn thing would chatter in sync with the audio track! A few days later we borrowed and amplifier from Schells mom and it worked even better.

The next thing to do was animate the other parts. We got an electronic surplus store to donate some solenoids, which sort of act like an air cylinder, a car battery, a record player etc. Schell made a wooden disk that fit the record player and could be screwed to the turntable. we started it and drew lines a half inch apart around the disk. Like a little race track. we had a wooden rod that hung over the record and over each little "track" we hung a rectangle of thin sheet metal just above the wooden surface. Those were our tracks. We needed 4. Along each little track we screwed in a metal screw where we wanted a motion to happen. The underside of the wooden record had all the screws connects by copper wire which was fed by the positive side of the battery. As the wooden record turned the screws would hit their metal triangle and activate a motion of the bird! We had head up and down, head left and right, body rocking back and forth, and a breathing effect. For that we used a roll on deodorant ball. It was pretty awesome to watch. Sparks would fly out of it when the screws hit the contacts. It was like Frankenstein coming to life. But we did it!

  We had plans to show our bird, Poncho the Parrot, at the Seniors art show but it never happened. We weren't well liked by the 3 art teachers and they decided Pancho was unsafe. They even went as far as to say "If you ever showed that thing to Disney they'd NEVER hire you." The night of the show we were sitting in Schells front yard drinking beer with Poncho in front of us. Schell flew into a rage and threw Pancho into the street like a football. 15 seconds later a truck ran over him and completely destroyed him. The controls were thrown in the junk pile behind Schells house.


                                                           The only reference I had for years.

Part Two Coming Soon.