Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Bar

One of the best tiki bars anywhere, tiki-themed by Disney. The style and sense of humor, as evidenced by the story on the front of the menu, is a bit like a combination of the style & humor of Disneyland's The Enchanted Tiki Room and The Jungle Cruise attractions. With Disney's ability to make the interior of the bar interactive it's incredibly fun to visit!

They had me at the 'Hawaiianette' LP on the wall :) I wish I could drink every drink and eat every meal of the rest of my life here. Look out for our old friend The Florida Orange Bird who has apparently migrated here to live amongst Trader Sam's adventure artifacts!

My new home bar has an enthusiastic mix of patrons and castmembers. Imaginative drinks and decor plus great live Hawaiian music most evenings and an excellent music loop = I'm marrying Trader Sam. He had me at Moonlight Time in Old Hawaii!

I'm normally the last guy you'd expect to see hanging out in a bar, tiki or otherwise, but Gosh this place is fun! The decor has a depth and an attention to detail that keeps me coming back, and each time I've noticed something new. Amazing considering Sam's diminutive size. The spirits and food are good to. It's enough to make one take up drinking.

I visited on August 4th around 6pm. A tiki bar with special effects, for what more could you ask!? The food was excellent, although they only serve "appetizers" we managed to make a meal of it and loved every bite. The Krakatoa was served in a Tiki Mug with a lot of fanfair. The red lit ice cube and ceremony took this well done cocktail right over the top. The waitress was very attentive and patient. Decor and ambiance were sublime.
If you love Tiki you must visit Trader Sam's.

This tiki bar is pretty cool. When I went I got the shrunken zombie hand, krakatoa punch, and thier volcano bowl. Cant remember the name of it. If you order the volcano bowl and a couple of other drinks the ber comes alive with special effects. Wont spoil the suprise if you never been :). The decor is classic disney tiki with other cool swag and nautical themes. So like I said, the bar is cool but the drink quality is not quite there. Overall ok.

I think some of you have been drinking the Disney kool-aid. It's a "cute" bar but not a functional bar. It's way too dark and it's not a place you want to stay for very long. Please keep returning though because those poor cast members need your business.

I go here every chance that I get. Great Food and Great Cocktails. As great as the rum concoctions are, I have to say my favorite on the menu is the Pear-adise Martini. So crisp and light and delightful. If any Tiki fans head to the DL Resort, I highly recommend a visit, especially after a long day of walking and lines.

Disney and tiki drinks!? You better believe it. Quite an enjoyable little place, even though it is too small and crowded. Quite possibly the only "interactive" tiki bar, in which by ordering certain drinks you can cause a lightning storm for a ship in a bottle or have a volcano erupt. The food is limited to pupus, but it was enjoyable enough. The drinks were good, I wish they had a larger selection but the krakatoa punch and shrunken zombie head were great. My only disappointment was that they only had one tiki mug for sale, and it didn't even mention the restaurants name on it. I got one any way, but not sure if it is a mass produced style from tiki farm or someplace similar. The waitress did tell us new mugs were on order that stated trader sam's, so perhaps we'll have to go back!

I really love this place. I can bring in the entire family and relax and have fun. Been thereabout four times, three times with my teenage daughters. They have almost as much fun as I do. Unfortunately being attached toa tourist attraction like Disneyland you do not get the same ohana you get at other tiki bars. That being said I have only run into one group of jerks who thought they owned the place one time. Love the music and decor. Drinks are pretty good and served with a great attitude. Service can be a little slow, but the bar tenders are great, friendly and willing to step outside the formulas to make guests happy. The souveneer mugs are great too.

My wife and I still laugh about the bartender yelling, "the ship is going down!" For those of you who have been, you know what I mean. Great fun!

The Journey Is Better Than The Destination:
Disneyland is home to two of the sacred Tiki relics: The Enchanted Tiki Room and the recently restored submarine rides. For decades tikiphiles have made the pilgrimage to this site and imbibed sacrificial cocktails at one of the bar’s in the Disneyland Hotel across the street while riding the monorail between the two. The monorail was a significant link in this routine since it provided an overview of the tawdry excesses always present at Disney’s borders almost since the founding of the park and always during the life of The Enchanted Tiki Room feature. This was not an unpleasant experience because it always felt like you were traveling George Jetson-style between different fantasy worlds in a fantasy vehicle. That has changed over the last two decades. Disney has dramatically expanded its deep sea squid tentacles into the surrounding neighborhood and sunk billions into altering virtually every piece of dirt it owns and all the public property which connects it.
Approaching Disneyland from the west in the afternoon is today, a completely different experience. The tawdriness is still there, but it ends city blocks from the two theme parks and all the associated other features like the Downtown Disney entertainment zone. Once you enter the Disney campus, because that is a closer analogy, you’ve entered one of the world’s great urban formal gardens designed to suck cash from your wallet. It is a vast green oasis/jungle with massive sound and retaining walls which pushes out the various forms of uncontrollable rot past almost all your lines of sight and sound range. You are no longer going to see a crack hooker from anywhere on the monorail. The monorail experience is diminished because you’re overwhelmed by the palm forest and other massive plantings you’re roaring around in. You don’t notice the transport as much because you’re so awestruck by the greenery flying past.
Trader Sam’s, a recent feature tiki bar, replaces older bars and is part of the entirely redone pool area at the expanded Disneyland Hotel complex. It looks fantastic on the outside and drinking/eating on the terrace to absorb the landscaping is the way to go. The Simba parking lot is the closest to the bar, and will still be a 1-2 block walk if you’re not going into the park. Follow the directions of the uniformly cheerful Disney parking cast, especially when they hear you’re looking for the strongest drinks they serve on campus. Once you’re inside the bar, you’re now inside the Denny’s of tiki bars: you’ll be the only one besides the staff wearing an Aloha shirt. Much like Damon’s in Glendale, a favorite haunt of Imagineers, this is a tiki bar you smuggle your own rum into.
All goodwill not withstanding, no tiki bar is worth its name if it stocks ZERO rum from Barbados, Jamaica or the mighty Demerara; and if you’re outside the US, you also better be carrying a Cuban. This is Trader Sam’s, not Trader Vic’s, which has a simple shrine containing the holy triumvirate of El Dorado 12, 15 and 21-year rums. My Zombie-like creation consisted of Bacardi 8, Zaya and a Bacardi 151 float. It gave me a headache. Had nothing been changed besides the rums, it would’ve drank so much better: El Dorado 8 year, Appleton Estate 12 year and Lemon Hart 151 would’ve cost Disney as much. Because it’s union, seniority is everything. Experienced older barmen have to take orders from kids who are pissed off they gave up their good careers as associate managers at Burger King to become Team Disney. Barmen have to humiliate themselves by dispensing frozen slushy mixes and the interior is a poorly thought out mash-up of a tiki bar and food service joint. It succeeds at neither, although I’m sure it meets its numbers in sales generated per square foot.
The interior is remarkably cheap and unattractive; besides a few forgettable gimmicky features. This is a grave insult to Disney’s own remarkable heritage and mountain of proprietary tiki-themed intellectual property. When it is inevitably replaced, it won’t be a missed feature. You’d never guess that dozens of skilled tiki artisans live within a 20 minute ride from this place or that the ocean is ten miles away. Their business is to schlep tiki mugs and service harried parents trying to frolic in the pools below. It shows no touches from that modern tentacle of Disney which seeks to impart knowledge as entertainment ala Disney University. I guess no one thought it was worth the effort to troll through the style guides from The Jungle Book, Tarzan, Finding Nemo, 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea, that whole series about pirates which has made more money than any other franchise in the 21st Century, et al. to bring some proprietary themed ideas inside the bar with food service. Five minutes at the bar jostling with everyone else is enough to see it all. Music’s OK. Go outside and enjoy the magnificent plantings. You’ll be hard-pressed to find 25-30 ft. Birds of Paradise in Hawaii.