according to our tour guide, she said that the Tiki room was funded by Walt himself...which is why it's the only attraction at DLR to say "Walt Disney's" at the top of the sign.
She also said it was originally a restaurant but they changed that quickly after it opened because after an hour of the dinner show, nobody had taken a bite of their food from staring up at the flowers and birds. The center island where the fountain is was originally a mechanism that was to drop into the floor. CM's would put dirty dishes in, send the mechanism down, and the kitchen would clean them and send them back up. She also said that the wake up Jose thing used to be because the show programming and such was all run from underneath the room and the guests banging their feet on the floor signaled to the CM to start the show. It is now run on two laptops she said.
She also said that some woman (I'm really sorry I don't remember who, but she was important, a relative of Walt's somehow...maybe Lillian???) said that if she came back in X number of years (she would have been 122 after whatever X years was had passed) that the tiki room better be exactly the same. Because of that, the CM said, there are no plans to change it. I'm sorry I'm forgetting details. It's late and that day I was really exhausted so I started to zone out from time to time during the tour.
I hope that gives you some interesting info.

what there is of it, anyway. We also got to see one of the original flowers up close and personal, named Ophelia. We got to open and close her mouth using the mechanism too. It was neat!