How times change. Today, Jungle Cruise skippers fire into the air to scare off advancing hippos, but once upon a time, not only did the Skippers shoot hippos, the guests were encouraged to do the same!
Check out this interesting item currently up on eBay, for a Walt Disney's Adventureland Safari Tru-Vue Picture Gun.
From the description:
Here is a really nice vintage souvenir from Walt Disney's Adventureland Safari from the 1950's or 1960's. It is a Sawyer's Tru-Vue Picture Gun. It is similar to a view master, in which you look through a viewer at pictures. However, when you pull the trigger, you advance the pictures. Each picture depicts a scene of a target which you are to pretend you are shooting at. When you pull the trigger to advance the picture, the next picture shows the results of your shot.
Walt Disney's Adventureland Safari certainly sounds like code for "Jungle Cruise" (which judging by the old "Jungle River" posters and old footage I've seen that simply refer to the attraction as "Adventureland," seems not to have had its familiar title at opening.) I asked the seller if the pictures appeared to be real animals or Disneyland artificial. He responded: " Some are photos, but most are cartoons. There is a Hippo & an Alligator in 2 photo sequences. Those look like attractions at the park. The rest are cartoons featuring 2 pictures sequences of a native, an eagle, a snake, a lion, a cheetha, a warthog, a rhino, a lemur, a leopard, a gorilla, and an elephant."
