One lazy afternoon in 1946, Walt Disney and his wife Lillian strolled into a quaint antiques shop in New Orleans. Nearby sat a small gilded cage, gleaming beneath a beam of heavenly light. Perched within was a small mechanical bird who, with the turn of a golden key, magically sprang to life, tweeting out a plaintive tune. Right then and there, Walt thought to himself, “Wouldn’t it be absolutely enchanting to have an entire room full of these things, all singing together in unison?”

Not so fast. Disney fans have long bought into that narrative, content to believe that was the singular event that preordained the existence of Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room. But that’s not how it happened. Not by a long shot.

The actual story, far less tidy yet far more interesting, is one of chaos and confusion, countless challenges and happy accidents. Full of twists, turns and dead ends, Before the Birds Sang Words is the narrative for the rest of us—one that includes tales of 15th-century Gothic cathedrals, clockwork miniatures and nine-inch-tall automatons—magnetic tape, mismatched roofing and faux trees—piles of dirt, bundles of defense hardware and miles of pneumatic tubing. All of it came to a head with the creation of a complex, fully automated musical revue in 1963, a project so revolutionary that nobody working on it was ever quite sure what exactly they were doing.

For the first time in print comes the definitive story of Walt Disney’s beloved Tiki Room, Disneyland’s first Audio-Animatronic presentation and one of mid-century America’s greatest pop-culture masterworks.