The
Adventureland Veranda

Extinct WDW Restaurant

Located:
Adventureland,
Magic Kingdom

Opened: October 1, 1971
Closed: July 1994

Sponsors:
Kikkoman (1977-1994)

Remnants:
Space still exists as big empty building

All images copyright The Walt Disney Company.
Text 2011 by Mike Lee

   I would like to acknowledge the
thoughtful assistance of
Chris Foxx,
Don Gillinger,
Brian Lee
and
Michael Sweeney 
with my
Adventureland Veranda
research

Last Update to this page: February 5, 2011 (additional text, images, audio and video embeds)

The Adventureland Veranda opened with the park, at which time its menu was described simply as "Polynesian" in most print references.  A first-year offering, as detailed in WDW News , was Chicken Fiji.  A 1972 entry in that same publication listed the Veranda as serving chicken, ribs and shrimp.  In 1976, the park's guide book read "Polynesian entrees, hot sandwiches and soft drinks in a South Seas setting." 

In October 1977, Japanese soy sauce giant Kikkoman stepped in to fill what seemed like a custom-built sponsorship void.  The guide books, however, do not reflect the menu veering off toward anything overtly Asian until 1986, at which time a mention of "oriental sandwiches" hints at the magnetic presence of what we already believe to have been there in 1980, if not sooner ... the Teriyaki Burger!   This was a piece of probably-not-beef sharing its bun with a slice of pineapple and corn-syrup-sticky teriyaki sauce, a concoction which Kikkoman had perfected in 1961.  The Shrimp Fried Rice with Egg Roll or South Seas Fruit Salad were among the other choices for a discerning explorer's palate.  Years before the park ever experimented with waffle fries, the Veranda served the thinnest, soggiest french fries in the world which, when that Teriyaki sauce got all over them, were just amazing.  Also worth mentioning is a highly suspect staple of many a childhood Magic Kingdom visit - the Sweet and Sour Hot Dog.  That delicacy, unfortunately, did not survive menu changes during the restaurant's later years. 

Below is a representational overview of the Veranda menu from its last year of operation, 1994:

Cast members at the Veranda were bestowed with the double blessing of a relatively tranquil work environment and some of the best costumes in the park.  From the mid-70s until April 1994, they wore the outrageous turquoise, green and black outfits that screamed "groovy" with a voice rooted firmly in 1969.  It was virtually impossible to look bad in these getups, and for this and other reasons I lament never having worn one during my time as a Kingdom cast member.  The costumes were enough to make one overlook the polyester reality, although former cast member Don Gillinger said the mens' version were not uncomfortable if compared to those just down the street at the Pecos Bill Cafe.  The ladies' version, as shown in photos on this page, was almost as wild as the old Tropical Serenade dresses.  Later Veranda costumes, such as those worn at Aloha Isle in the 2000s, did not exude the same wiggy flair.

The Adventureland Veranda entered into a cyclical operating schedule in late 1993, which kept it closed two days out of the week except in peak seasons.  Less than a year later, its doors were permanently closed.  A similar approach was taken with Liberty Square's Columbia Harbour House the following year, but that decision was reversed due to apparent guest demands.  In early 1998 the Veranda "reopened" in only the most base sense while Frontierland's Pecos Bill Cafe underwent a major rehab.  The menu items were entirely generic renditions of once-exotic plates, meaning hot dogs, hamburgers and french fries - all free of the questionable embellishments this restaurant used to foist upon them.  Beyond that, the Veranda has been used on occasion as a staging area for special events such as children's birthday party packages.  One WYW facebook subscriber said the restaurant reopened briefly during the Christmas 2010 season, but I haven't managed any extra information to that end.

The Veranda presents one of the earlier Magic Kingdom case studies in wtf / are you serious?  By closing up shop a few months ahead of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and proceeding to sit empty (save for those occasional special events and a couple peak season stints) for the next sixteen years and counting, this one-time oasis of South Seas languor served as a nice poke in the eye to park visitors who missed both its atmospheric charm and its great menu items.  Everyone working in the park at that time knew that the Veranda was closed as means of reducing labor costs - other high-capacity restaurants in the park could take up the slack for a fraction of the staffing demands necessary to keep a completely separate location running on a full schedule.  But at what price to the park's environment?  It's a constant reminder of how a WDW that once infused every possible corner with places to relax and discover unexpected details had set out in the mid-1990s to unceremoniously dismantle as many of those wonderful hideaways as possible**.

That wouldn't be so obvious if all the Veranda ever consisted of was quiet interior spaces, but the building's exterior constitutes a quarter of Adventureland's exterior elevations.  And for guests entering from the Hub, it's the first quarter.  So whereas the average building on Main Street USA still houses some ground-level approachability for those wanting to see what lies within, the ex-Veranda building has managed to offer nothing more than closed doors and shuttered windows for a seeming eternity ... babies born when the Veranda closed are now driving cars and the average dog born at that time has gone on to meet its maker.  People have been walking past a closed Adventureland Veranda for more years than they've been riding past that weird "hair salon" scene on the Peoplemover.

It's surprising that 2005's Imagineering Field Guide to the Magic Kingdom, which in many instances serves up great accounts of how WDI "plussed" Adventureland with a flood of theming debacles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, resisted the urge to assign a backstory to the Veranda's closure.  Surely there's some legend-worthy reason behind a fake proprietors' decision to shut the place down or some show writer who drafted an account of how having the restaurant boarded up serves a useful purpose in Adventureland's "big picture?"  Okay, that isn't completely fair, since 20K proved a major point about how WDW as its own entity had by 1994 ceased to care about how WDI would run the Kingdom.  So even though much of what Imagineering did to the park past that point was indefensible, there's no evidence that they wanted the Veranda itself closed.  The silver lining here is that by ceasing to staff the restaurant when it did, WDW made it less likely that the operation would be renamed Jafar's and serve Agrabah Burgers and Iago Dogs.


* There are plenty of archaeologists out there looking for dinosaur bones and mummies, yet so few trying to shake far more important park BGM information out of old WED recording engineers who might be able to clear this shit up.

** Someone realized around 1995 that a lot of the park's interior spaces previously marked for merchandise or food sales would make great stockrooms, which they then became.