Kidnap the Magic: Enchanted Tiki Luau

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Spring has sprung and the weather is warming up! It's the time of year when people start to think about moving their recreational activities outdoors, and one of the classics is the luau. A better term might actually be “Hawaii theme party,” since we mainlanders don't usually follow all the genuine island traditions, but “luau” is the accepted term used by all the party supply stores. Luau gear is in abundance all throughout the spring and summer in the U.S.—all the leis, tiki torches, and plastic piña colada glasses molded to look like coconut halves that you could want.

But this isn't just any party planning guide. This is the Disneyland Dilettante! And when a Disneyland aficionado gets it into their head to hold a luau, there's only one place to go...

To the Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room!

In this issue of Kidnap the Magic, I'll provide tips for turning your party space into a tropical hideaway for the lucky people you welcome there.

Decorations

This part is more a matter of knowing what not to use. As you start shopping for luau décor, you'll notice a lot of beach and ocean-related motifs—sea shells and surfboards and tropical fish. On the whole, you'll want to avoid that stuff. The Enchanted Tiki Room doesn't give off a beach vibe at all...there's no sand, no waves, definitely no surfboards, and the only sea shells are the birds' name tags. Rather, it seems to be located in the interior of some minor, undeveloped Hawaiian island. Even the human natives have long since abandoned it to the local wildlife and mysterious tribal gods, and by now the structure is barely distinguishable from the surrounding rainforest.

Wow. Is anyone else getting tingles?

Anyway, extensive beach imagery is out. What's left?

• Foliage. You want it lush, richly colored, and big—big leaves and big blooms. If you keep tropical plants, put them to work. If not, get some—either rent live ones or buy artificial, depending on your budget and how much you trust your guests. The crooning flowers in the Tiki Room are of course orchids and bird-of-paradise flowers, so definitely try to get some of them. Hibiscus is another iconic flower commonly associated with Hawaii and luaus. If you can't afford to spend much on greenery, get just a few plants and fill in the gaps with fabric drapes in prints such as these:

 

(You might want a few of these to use as tablecloths anyway.)

Palm trees and bamboo are two more plant motifs that are heavily associated with the tropics in general and are in use at the Enchanted Tiki Room. There is no shortage of either in the luau section of the party store, so go nuts.

• Birds. The exotic birds are the stars and the spokes-critters of the Enchanted Tiki Room, so you'll want plenty of them in evidence. Some of the fabric prints shown above feature parrots and toucans, but this situation practically demands that you have some three-dimensional ones perched around. Very few of us can afford to drop five figures on a gen-you-wine Disney animatronic like the two that were auctioned off earlier this year, but you still have a few options.

1. Live birds. If you have one or more pet birds—especially members of the parrot family—with the right temperament for entertaining guests, let them help you host! Attach a sea shell name tag to their perch and give them regular breaks from the excitement.
2. Plush birds. Plush parrots are pretty easy to find in toy stores, not terribly expensive, and some of them even come with internal electronics so they repeat speech and sounds. The major downsides are that they are usually too small to really stand out, and all you'll find is parrots—no jolly toucan or elegant bird-of-paradise to populate a properly diverse Enchanted Tiki Room.
3. Craft birds. Craft and floral supply stores often carry artificial birds, made from Styrofoam and real feathers, in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. Most of them represent common garden visitors such as finches, but with a package of extra feathers and some glue, you can gussy them up into convincing tropical birds. Go for the biggest, brightest ones you can find and give them fancy crests and long tails. You can also check the pirate theme section of the party store for artificial parrots constructed much the same way, but the quality might not be great. Use your judgment—though if you can find four in different colors to be your “hosts,” go for it! Most craft birds have wires on their feet that you can use to perch them on curtain rods, lampshades, or anywhere else they will catch the eye without getting knocked over. Better yet, pick up a few pairs of circular bamboo purse handles from a sewing supply store and hang them from the ceiling for your birdies to sit inside.
4. Figurines, sculptures, etc. If you collect tropical bird figures, go ahead and put them on display!

With all this said, there are certain birds commonly used in luau or tropical theming that don't really suit the Enchanted Tiki Room. Flamingos are a big one—much more South America than South Pacific. Seagulls and pelicans have that beach connection, but since the Tiki Room is focused away from the beach, they don't belong there either. Stick to the sorts of birds you can imagine perched in the trees of a rainforest and have fun choosing them!

Moving on...

• Tikis. Should this one have been first? You'll see lots of tiki imagery in the luau party stuff, though unfortunately they all seem to depict the same being or character. You know, this guy:

If you really want that distinctive Enchanted Tiki Room look, you're probably going to have to fork over some cash to Disney themselves. But on the plus side, look at this stuff!

Not only is it all tiki-tastic,* but these are party-ready kitchen items: fruit bowls and drink mugs and knickknacks suitable as centerpieces. Definitely worth the price for diehard Tiki fans.

On the other hand, if you're crafty with any sculpting medium (such as polymer clay or papier-mâché) and have plenty of time to prepare, you might save some money by making your own tiki figures! In this age of the Internet, reference images are plentiful, so you can copy the style. Your guests will be mightily impressed if you construct a few of these:

(Chanting capability is optional.)

As long as you're in the tiki groove, you could do worse than to look for other examples of traditional Polynesian art. The Enchanted Tiki Room is brimming with such designs and it will really help give character to your luau. Fair trade, please!

• Pineapples. In addition to being the official food of the Dole-sponsored Enchanted Tiki Room (see Food, below), the pineapple is a common image for luaus in general. Your party store will probably have a selection of inflatable and tissue-paper pineapples for use as decoration, but don't bother with these—get yourself at least one ripe pineapple from the grocery store. Give it a place of honor until it's time to slice it up and eat it!

Invitations and Favors

If you're the sort of fuddy-duddy who still mails or emails formal party invitations instead of just sending out a mass text...you're in good company. You've got nothing to be ashamed of. Designing invitations for a themed party can be a marvelous exercise in graphic design. It can also be an embarrassment of choice with all the absolutely free computer fonts and clip art available to even the casual Google-naut.

But that's why I'm here. To provide you with a shortcut to awesomeness.

If you look for “luau” or “tropical” fonts, you'll come up with a lot of lettering styles that mimic bamboo or palm trees. But that's not what you want for your Enchanted Tiki Luau. You want something that looks like this:

This is a very gimmicky typeface, with some of the letters overlapping each other some of the time. Out of context, you would probably never peg it as “tropical” style lettering...and you'll never find it if you use that as your search term. The best-known version is actually called Darkheart, and unfortunately, it is not freeware. The above link is the cheapest price I've seen it offered for.

Assuming you decide to spring for it, the overlapping letter clusters are found among the special characters. Type out your text, and then look through the character map for clusters you can swap out. Your spell-checker will go into fits. Ignore it.

If you really feel like splurging on fonts, I also recommend Tangaroa, by the amazing typographical artist David Occhino. I don't think lettering quite like this is used anywhere in the Enchanted Tiki Room, but it was obviously designed (and named!) with the attraction in mind. Need more proof? Look no further than the accompanying dingbat font, Tangaroa Glyphs, which includes the actual faces of the Enchanted Tiki Room's deity statues among its Polynesian-themed graphic design elements. If you acquire just one of these three fonts, make it that one—those very specific designs are too good to pass up and it's free. Install the font, open your word processor, and type the Enchanted Tiki Garden. To say nothing of lots of cool Polynesian-themed borders and symbols.

Once you have your fonts, it seems a shame to use them to make awesome invitations and stop there. You could create signs for your own Enchanted Tiki Garden, label your buffet tables, or maybe set up some games. (Instructions for easy sign creation can be found in my Mardi Gras post. One of these days, I need to write them out in more detail and include photos of the process.)

As for party favors, leis are traditionally given out at luaus (and to tourists arriving in Hawaiian airports). Your party store will have scads of them, in all different colors. Go for the nicer silk floral ones in realistic colors rather than the bolder ones with tinsel bits, and definitely stay away from those incredibly tacky necklaces made of ruffled plastic.

For something a little more specific to the Enchanted Tiki Room, make your guests personalized sea shell name tags. Look for shallowly cupped, white scallop shells in craft stores. Write each guest's name on the inside of a shell in black marker (sketch it in pencil first if you aren't confident of your calligraphy) and attach a self-adhesive brooch pin (also available in most craft stores) to the outside.

Food

FUN FACT: The Enchanted Tiki Room was originally planned as a restaurant. This idea was scrapped when it was determined that people might be leery about eating while sitting underneath birds. This has been your Disneyland Trivia Fact for the day.**

The standard menu for a luau is pretty well established, online recipes are plentiful, and there's no need to go into it in any detail here. You only really need one foodstuff to absolutely define your luau as having an Enchanted Tiki Room theme, and that, as mentioned above, is pineapple.

Okay, one-and-a-half foodstuffs.

Pineapple is not at all hard to come by. As of this writing, my grocery store has whole ones on sale for a staggering sixty-nine cents apiece. But just in case you can't find fresh pineapple, it's readily available in canned form—rings, chunks, crushed—and you can also sometimes find packaged pineapple spears.

But I think we all know what the real pineapple-based draw of an Enchanted Tiki Room theme is: the Dole Whip.

If you have a soft-serve machine (and don't mind purchasing and storing industrial-sized quantities of ingredients), you can order the actual dehydrated mix that Disneyland uses for theirs, and add pineapple bits, pineapple juice, and maraschino cherries as needed for your serving options. But if you don't, you'll have to go with something a little more improvised. I haven't had an opportunity to try the many, many Dole Whip recipe recreations devised by ingenious online folks, but of the ones I've perused, this one strikes me as the most promising. Please note that, unlike the actual Dole Whips, this one does contain dairy—definitely something to keep in mind if any of your guests are lactose-intolerant or vegan!

There is another item I recommend serving, more for thematic resonance than for any overt connection with the Enchanted Tiki Room, and that is bowls of mixed nuts—especially tropical varieties like Brazil nuts, cashews, and those oh-so-Hawaiian macadamias. Nuts are appropriate for almost any party as it is, and they are a favorite food of parrots, both wild and pet.

Music

Let's get the obvious out of the way: Don't just play the Enchanted Tiki Room soundtrack on endless loop. It's fun stuff, but it's very brash and only 17 minutes long and will probably annoy your guests by the third go-around.

Instead, put together a playlist at least one to two hours long (depending on the planned length of your luau) and include music from the Enchanted Tiki Room, and put the whole thing on repeat and/or shuffle. The rest of the music should of course be Hawaiian melodies on ukulele, steel guitar, etc., and you can go as familiar or as obscure as you wish. There is tons of it out there. If you were so inclined, you could make an entire playlist of the recommended length just from music that has been used in Disney theme parks and resorts—not just the Enchanted Tiki Room show soundtrack, but the waiting area music (it plays before the Dole video starts up), Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Bar at the Disneyland Hotel, the Polynesian Resort in Walt Disney World, and perhaps Aulani (though I have no specific knowledge of any loops or soundtracks played there). Once again, I recommend Mousebits as your main source for Disney theme park audio. They have a truly impressive Enchanted Tiki Room collection, including karaoke versions of the songs, which would be great to sneak into your playlist even if you find the sung versions too intrusive. YeahDisneyAudios is another awesome source for downloadable tracks, some of which I've never seen anywhere else.

Of course, if your guests are amenable, an Enchanted Tiki Room sing-along could be a fun party activity. The song lyrics are pretty easy to find online; distribute copies as needed. 
EDIT: Cory Gross in the comments recommends "Exotica" lounge singing, often used for atmosphere in real tiki bars. He cites Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman, and Les Baxter as examples of artists in this genre. Thanks, Cory!

“Tiki culture” has been enjoying a small revival of late. May—just a couple of weeks away—is National Luau Month. It's the perfect time to host a fabulous Enchanted Tiki Luau of your own. I hope you can use the above tips to fill your partygoers with pleasure and glee...otherwise, the consequences are pretty dire.

Till next time, aloha-oe!

* I can make up words if I want to.

** And if you're enough of a Disneyland fan to be reading this blog...you probably already knew it.