Tom Sawyer Island
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Forget All Your Troubles
Bordered by a muddy river, the old west, and an untamed frontier, Tom Sawyer Island is the most remote location in Disney’s Magic Kingdom. What better place could there be for kids’ (or adults’) imaginations to run wild. TSI is a frequently misunderstood attraction, often host to guests hurriedly looking all over to find out why they bothered to take that raft across the river. What these visitors don’t know is that it is in that search that the magic of the island unfolds. It’s as if you, in crossing the river, become Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn in search of some fabled buried treasure. You wander through a separate world which takes as its inspiration the literary works of Mark Twain. Twain, America’s most celebrated writer, relived in books his childhood home on the Mississippi. Works like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn draw the reader, no matter his or her age, into a charming place and time. With the creation of Tom Sawyer Island, Walt Disney wanted to draw the guest into a fantasy world which has been lost to time, and it is in that escape that TSI finds its very soul.
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So far there are three iterations of the same attraction, the original in Disneyland, CA, a second in Walt Disney World, FL, and most recently in Tokyo Disneyland, Japan. Each is slightly different but all share the same mission- to transport you into that dreamworld of Twain’s recollection and imagination.
All the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill beyond the village and above it, was green with vegetation, and it lay just far enough away to seem a delectable land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.
This was how Mark Twain imagined the world of his first novel, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and how Walt Disney imagined Tom Sawyer Island would find a special place in his park. As much as that forested island of Twain’s book provided an escape for friendless and crestfallen boys, so too TSI would accept all manners of children seeking an escape from their everyday lives.
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