Walt Disney came up with the concept of a Disney-themed amusement park after visiting several similar places back in the 30s and 40s with his daughters. Initially, he thought of creating an attraction just next to the studio in Burbank to entertain visitors.
The Tarzan character was temporarily removed from the Disney Parks because visitors kept pinching his butt cheeks.
The Tarzan Animated Film
Tarzan was released in 1999 by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. The Walt Disney Feature Animation produced the film. It is the only major motion picture adaptation of the Tarzan property to be animated, and it is the 37th animated feature in the Disney Animated Canon. The film was based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes novels. (Source: Disney Fandom)
The Tarzan Butt Pinching Incidents at Disney Parks
Character meet and greets are essential to the Walt Disney World experience. They allow guests to interact with their favorite characters and give them hugs and autographs. Captain Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean has to be one of the most popular Disney Parks characters.
With an excellent blockbuster movie starring Johnny Depp who played the iconic role of Jack Sparrow, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightley, and an already epic ride at Disneyland, the series was destined to be a big hit within the Parks. As with any character’s resemblance to their source material, Disney World’s Jack Sparrow adopted Depp’s cheery demeanor for his most commercially successful role.
The popularity backfired in a shocking and incredibly unpleasant way. An ex-cast member described some of the strange and tragic situations other cast members encountered while working at Disney Parks. According to some of the members, one of the walk-around characters was removed owing to repeated allegations of sexual harassment.
The male character they had pulled was Tarzan. He moved around the tree house dressed in just a butt flap. Disney had hired these good-looking, muscular guys—even airbrushing abs on—and apparently, there was excessive pinching of Tarzan’s a** by the park’s female visitors. Knowing all this, and also knowing what women were like around Jack at the Renaissance Faire, I told the other guys, “Don’t complain if girls flirt with you too much. If you do, they’ll pull the character from the park”
Disneyland Park Cast Member who played Jack Sparrow
Surprisingly, it doesn’t stop there, as the cast member portraying Jack Sparrow is repeatedly approached and proposed to by inebriated women.
I’ll be honest: I played Jack like he was real, and if a woman flirted, I would flirt back. Women loved it. But there were also women who would have too many beers at California Adventure or smuggle in alcohol you could smell on their breath, women who were clearly sloshed. I would also get offers from women in my ear: “Anything you want, just find me.” I had a girl who had turned 18 the day before. She was with a high school group, and she wrote down her room number at the Downtown Disney hotel.
Disneyland Park Cast Member who played Jack Sparrow
(Source: Lamag)