Bonus Features - Disc 2:

Use your remote to guide you through the digital Vault Disney menus:

Adventures in the Making Featurette:
James MacArthur narrates this extensively researched, brand new ‘making of’ documentary that is worth the cost of the disc alone to Disney historians. Interviews of MacArthur, Annakin, Kirk, Corcoran, Sir John Mills, matte artist Peter Ellenshaw and the film’s special effects supervisor Danny Lee are interspersed with rare behind-the-scenes footage, storyboard art and production stills.

Six months were spent on the island, and the filmmakers, just like their subjects, had a lot to deal with, including a mutinous crew, extreme weather conditions, a Typhoid epidemic, and voracious insects. Other dangers were brought on by the demands of the script. The cast, who bonded into their own ‘family’, did a lot of their own stunts, with little use of doubles in the final film. Amazingly, there were no major injuries during the entire shooting period.

It wasn’t until after the film was shot that the biggest challenge arose: due to the location filming, the entire soundtrack was unusable. Annakin and his cast reassembled in a London soundstage to re-record all of the dialogue for the entire film, a process that took another month. Watching it, though, you could never tell that it is completely post-dubbed.

Be sure to stay tuned for the end credit outtakes, where the cast expounds on the omnipresence of rum and steel drum music on Tobago.

Conversations with James MacArthur Featurette:
Another great addition to this set: A personal interview with actor James MacArthur on his experiences making movies with Walt Disney. The son of cinematic royalty Helen Hayes and playwright Charles MacArthur, James began his career at Disney playing a ‘white boy raised by Mohawk Indians’ in the western adventure drama The Light in the Forest, co-starring Fess Parker and Jessica Tandy. In only his second film, he had to sport a Mohawk haircut long before Mr. T.

He teamed with his Swiss Family director Ken Annakin and co-star Janet Munro for Third Man on the Mountain, which featured cameos by his mom and future wife. He had never climbed a mountain before, but managed to scale the film’s locale, the Matterhorn, which was later turned into the popular attraction at Disneyland based on this film. His next feature for Disney was the adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped opposite Peter Finch and a young Peter O’Toole. (MacArthur mentions that this was O’Toole’s first film; it was his second.)

After Swiss Family Robinson, MacArthur made one more movie for Disney, the television project Willie and the Yank, a.k.a. Mosby’s Marauders, with another studio favorite, Kurt Russell, and a pre-Mod Squad Peggy Lipton. He then went on to make other movies for other studios, but his biggest claim to fame would be his role in the long-running TV crime show Hawaii 5-O, where he will forever be known as the one that Jack Lord’s Steve McGarrett would say: “Book em, Danno”.

Pirates! Featurette:
Vintage footage of Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean is the highlight of this musical salute to Disney pirates (to the tune of “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me)”, naturally), from Captain Hook to Blackbeard’s Ghost.

Lost Treasures:
Not exactly lost, as some of this footage of the opening of the Swiss Family Tree House at Disneyland was seen in the Disneyland 10^th Anniversary show included on the recent Walt Disney Treasures: Disneyland USA DVD released last year. But it is worth including here for completists sake, plus it shows more footage of John Mills, along with his wife and daughter Hayley, touring the attraction prior to its opening with Walt, as well as Walt receiving the Swiss flag from young ambassadors from Switzerland during the opening ceremony. Hayley Mills provides a brief audio commentary for the clips, in which she reveals that she has never seen them before