A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis: It’s Tough to Be a Bug

By Dave Shute

Welcome back to Fridays with Jim Korkis! Jim, the dean of Disney historians and author of Jim’s Gems in The easy Guide, writes about Walt Disney World history every Friday on yourfirstvisit.net.

IT’S TOUGH TO BE A BUG

By Jim Korkis
Many different proposals were considered for the area in the base of Disney’s Animal Kingdom Tree of Life. At one point the area would have been used by The Roots Restaurant, an upscale eatery. When it was decided the area should feature a show, a Wonders of Nature and a Lion King character show were possibilities that were seriously discussed.

It was CEO Michael Eisner who suggested during a particularly disappointing pitch meeting that bugs live in and under trees and that Pixar Animation was working on a new feature film about bugs called A Bug’s Life (1998). Imagineering consulted directly with Pixar, and while several characters from the film were used, new ones were created as well.

The decision to go with this concept was approved after construction had already begun on the Tree of Life. However, it still opened April 1998, roughly a full seven months before the release of the film that inspired it.

The queue line into the theater was designed to create the illusion that guests were shrinking to bug size as they navigated the increasingly narrow tunnels with everything else including the roots seeming to become enormous.

(c) Disney

Currently the nine minute show being performed in the 430 seat auditorium is “It’s Tough To Be A Bug! Starring Flik and a cast of A Million Billion Bugs” that is similar to a vaudeville revue with individual acts.

This performance is the current show produced by the Tree of Life Repertory Theater. The pre-show waiting lobby is decorated with playbill posters from past performances whose titles are parodies of popular Broadway shows. Over the years, the followings posters were displayed:

My Fair Ladybug (My Fair Lady), Barefoot in the Bark (Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park), A Grass Menagerie (Tennessee Williams’ A Glass Menagerie), A Cockroach Line (A Chorus Line), Beauty and the Bees (“Bee Our Guest!”) (Disney’s Beauty and the Beast), Antie (Annie), Web Side Story (West Side Story), Little Shop of Hoppers (Little Shop of Horrors), A Stinkbug Named Desire (A Streetcar Named Desire) and The Dung and I (“featuring the hit song “Hello Dung Lovers”) (The King and I).

Some of those poster designs were done by Imagineers Nicole Armitage Doolittle (daughter of Frank Armitage, a Disney animation background artist and later Imagineer) and Milton Noji (who worked for almost five years at Disney on both interior and exterior signage). Unlike traditional theater posters, these posters are not decorated with snippets of critics’ reviews but interesting facts about the insect world.

The background music consists of a bug orchestra, sounding a lot like buzzing kazoos, playing iconic songs from these shows: One (Chorus Line), Beauty and the Beast (from Beauty and the Beast), Tomorrow (Annie), I Feel Pretty (West Side Story), Hello Young Lovers (The King and I), and Tonight (West Side Story but also includes the counterpoint Flight of the Bumblebee).

The theme song, “It’s Tough to be a Bug,” was written by George Wilkins with lyrics by Kevin Rafferty, who was the Show Writer for the project. The show’s score was composed and conducted by Bruce Broughton.

“My job was to impart the facts about ten quintillion bugs in only eight minutes,” stated Rafferty, who met with Ray Mendez an insect naturalist. “Ray said that, most important, they are responsible for our food, as pollinators, and they handle our waste. If it weren’t for bugs, we’d all be dead in six months. That impressed me. All the acts featured in the show are based on what actual bugs do. There really, truly are acid-spraying termites.”

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Thanks, Jim! And come back next Friday for even more from Jim Korkis!

In the meantime, check out his books, including Secret Stories of Walt Disney World: Things You Never You Never Knew, which reprints much material first written for this site, and The Vault of Walt: Volume 4, and his contributions to The easy Guide to Your First Walt Disney World Visit, all published by Theme Park Press.

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