Tiki, an off­shoot of the Midcentury Modern movement, flour­ished in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, but began to experience a decline in the ’70s. Thus, by the ’90s, there were concerns at Disney that the Enchanted Tiki Room the pivotal 1963 attraction that pioneered audioanimatronics was no longer in vogue, its singing birds, totems and flowers a relic of another era.

The com­pany explored some early concepts to remake the Enchanted Tiki Room. One idea was to transform it into an ecological, save-the-rainforest show. Another was to redesign it with a “Lion King” theme.

“Let me tell you, we hated it,” says artist and designer Kevin Kidney of the latter concept.

Kidney, who worked in Disneyland’s art department in the ’90s, says he and his long­time collaborator Jody Daily were “terrified” the Enchanted Tiki Room would dis­ap­pear, so much so that they began making fliers to advertise the show and put­ting them up all over L.A.. “We started an underground movement to save the Tiki Room even while we were working on these projects. We tried to frame it in a cool, hip way, like, ‘Everyone needs to go and re-experience this amazing show.’ ”

Thank­fully, cooler heads pre­vailed, and the Enchanted Tiki Room remains to this day a vital piece of Disneyland history.

And now with the mod­ern tiki revival, it’s no longer an archival curiosity. In fact, the connection between Disney and tiki may be as strong as it has ever been, as this spring the Disneyland Hotel’s Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar turned 15.

Trader Sam’s took its cues heavily from the Adventureland attraction, its bar flanked by tiki totems with slowly wandering eyes. And watching over guests and bar­tenders is a re-creation of one of the show’s tiki gods.

“The totem pole on the bar, and Koro up in the rafters above the bar, are all original designs and sculpts for the Tiki Room at Disneyland,” Kid­ney says. “They made new castings for the bar off of the elements from the attraction.”

Kidney and Daily collaborated with Walt Disney Imagineering, the arm of the company devoted to theme park experiences, on some of the early designs for Trader Sam’s. It’s their mug collection, for instance, that was seen in the bar on opening day. And the pair designed a magnificent glowing ship in a bottle, which thanks to a Pepper’s ghost illusion, occasionally looks as if it’s breaking apart and sinking.

Trader Sam’s, says author and his­tor­ian Sven Kirsten, writer of “The Book of Tiki,” is one of the more influ­en­tial bars on the modern tiki landscape.

Though it didn’t kickstart today’s movement, says Kirsten, it often serves as “a gateway,” introducing Dis­ney’s millions of guests to the scene.

Kirsten says Trader Sam’s has rightfully earned its place among SoCal’s most respected tiki bars. And most popular. An unofficial Instagram page devoted to the bar, keeping tabs on its mug releases and off-menu bartender creations, has more than 39,000 followers.

“In the early 2010s the craft cock­tail revival brought forth these socalled tiki bars that thought if they had a tiki cock­tail menu they were a tiki bar,” Kirsten says. “But it was basket lamps and palm leaf wallpaper and that was it. Places like Trader Sam’s and Strong Water and Royal Hawaiian are floor-to-ceiling fully decorated. They’re what a tiki bar should be.”

Before the Disneyland Hotel had Trader Sam’s, the space was home to Hook’s Pointe, which was lightly themed to “Peter Pan.” Yet a bit after the Walt Disney Co. completed a purchase to assume control of the Disneyland Hotel, Hook’s Pointe was ear­marked for renovation.

“We were designing a Carib­bean-style bar where Trader Sam’s is now, and that was where I said, ‘Let’s rethink this,’” said Kyle Barnes, an Imagineer who was instrumental in the creation of Trader Sam’s. Barnes was speaking at a recent event hosted by Disney’s fan club D23 on the history of Adventureland and Trader Sam’s.

“I said, ‘That’s more East Coast. This is West Coast.’ Hawaii and Midcentury really fit together with the tiki theme,” Barnes said, noting that the park’s Enchanted Tiki Room was initially pitched as a restaurant and once sat next to the Tahitian Terrace, a Polynesianthemed restaurant complete with hula dancers.

Trader Sam’s is home to many show elements. In addition to the sinking ship, there are bar seats that will begin to drop the longer guests sit in them. Also, there are two theatrical windows looking out toward a volcano, which will erupt when guests order a specific drink. The ship in a bottle and dipping barstools, said Barnes, were inspired by the Adventurers Club at Florida’s Walt Disney World, while the volcano windows were influenced by Florida’s version of the Enchanted Tiki Room.

The Adventurers Club closed in 2008, but I was fortunate enough to visit it as a child, and it was instrumental in my love of Disney, theater and, well, bars. Full of actors, puppets and walls filled with artifacts that seemed to spring to life, the Adventurers Club was a place of play, and I still remember as a kid being asked by one of the actors to join the imaginary guild. It was a glimpse into a grown-up world full of revelry, silli­ness and colorful cocktails.

Trader Sam’s fills a similar niche for me today, and as part of its 15th anniversary, it added the Adventurers Club signature drink, the sweetly tropical Kungaloosh, to its menu. As a kid, I longed to enter an adult world. As a grown-up, I love an adult world with a child­like playfulness.

Tiki bars aren’t perfect, and have occasionally come under criticism as escapist fantasy that appropriates Hawaiian or Polynesian iconography. As such, Trader Sam’s has changed over the years. Shrunken heads, for instance, that once hung from the walls, were years ago removed.

Progress, and part of Trader Sam’s enduring appeal. “The jokes that we accepted long ago, they were jokes for only a part of the population,” says Kidney.

And Trader Sam’s remains full of absurdities spend some time just soaking up the puns and ephemera that dot the walls. Just be prepared to duck when you see the bartenders reach for a spray bottle.