Tales from Adventureland is a trilogy of novels based on the Disney Theme Parks by Jason Lethcoe.
In the late 1930s, young Andy Stanley, the shy grandson of legendary explorer Nedley Lostmore, is brought into the Jungle Explorers' Society while attending the explorer's staged funeral. As Lostmore has been transformed into a living shrunken head (Disneyland's Shrunken Ned), he asks his grandson to assume his duty as the Society's Keymaster, who ensures that the keys leading to various dangerous supernatural artifacts are kept out of the hands of those that would misuse them. Journeying across the world with Ned's eccentric colleagues and the Jungle Navigation Company, Andy must contend with the Collective, a splinter faction of the Society wanting to use ancient powers for world conquest.
The novels include:
- The Keymaster's Quest, featuring the The Enchanted Tiki Room
- The Golden Paw
- The Doomsday Device
The books provide examples of:
- Adventurer's Club: The Jungle Explorers' Society, which utilizes a National Geographic-style photography magazine as a cover for their activities.
- Bookends: The trilogy starts and ends on a funeral.
- Conjoined Twins: Betty and Dotty, joined at the hip, are renowned belly dancers and assassins that are the Society's best swordswomen.
- Disney Death: Andy dies in the final battle, but is brought back to life by Patrick Begorra and the power of the Eternal Tree
- Expy: The Jungle Explorers' Society is one to the Society of Explorers and Adventurers, as Disney didn't allow Lethcoe to use the Society directly.
- Faking the Dead: Shrunken Ned stages his funeral to make the Collective assume that Bungalow Bob, their hired witch doctor assassin, finished the job rather then only shrinking his head.
- Mythology Gag:
- Books in Ned's library include titles from the Skipper Canteen restaurant at the Magic Kingdom
- The Nanea Volcano that Kapu is trapped in is named for a volcano themed water slide at the Polynesian Resort's pool.
- Portions of the Jungle Cruise are adapted directly in the opening chapter of The Golden Paw such as the hippo pool and Trapped Safari.
- The Collective's dungeons are described as having once been used by the Royal Navy to house pirates, with a few dead men still telling no tales within.
- The Collective's abandoned treehouse outpost near the dungeon is a nod to the Swiss Family Robinson and Tarzan Treehouse attractions, with the tree itself being described as a Yesniddendron semperflorens grandis, an anagram variation on the Disneyodendron species name that Imagineers gave all of their fake trees.
- The Dominguez Palm is based on a real tree at Disneyland that belonged to the family that owned the original orange groves.
- The Jujus are taken from the Adventure Trading Company game held at Disneyland in 2014.
- Patrick Begorra originates from Little Man of Disneyland, a popular pre-opening Little Golden Book about a leprechaun that lived in the orange groves before Disney's arrival. A replica of his house was hidden in Adventureland in one of the neighboring trees to the Dominguez Palm by the Indiana Jones queue, hence his inclusion.
- Polly Wants a Microphone: The Tiki Room Birds are depicted as a rare class of sentient talking birds known as the Akamai (Hawaiian for wisdom)
- Robot Butler: Boltenhouse, who doubles as an mechanical body for Ned
- Spin-Offspring: Besides Andy being the grandson of Shrunken Ned, Abigail Awol is the daughter of Jungle Cruise radio host Albert Awol.
- Steampunk: Boltenhouse and Professor Phink's drilling machine.
- World Tree: The Eternal Tree, also known as the Dominguez Palm.
