Pirates of the Caribbean - The Ride

Pirates of the Caribbean Ride

Disneyland

Anaheim, California

33 48.678 N 117 55.245 W

Captain Jack Sparrow is in the multiplexes again, back for the fourth movie in the lucrative Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise.  The success of these movies is largely due to Johnny Depp’s wonderful pirate character and some thrilling visual effects.  But, moviegoers, remember their source: the beloved Pirates of the Caribbean Ride at Disneyland.  I first experienced Pirates of the Caribbean soon after it opened in 1967 and I have never been to Disneyland without going on it.  For decades, the ride stayed the same while I got older and more jaded to its charms.  Fortunately, when I rode the old boats with my kids at my side, I vicariously saw it through young eyes again.  In 1997, the hammer of political correctness descended and many changes were made.    Then, in 2006, the movie characters were introduced to the ride in anticipation of the second two movies.  So, how’s the old ride looking after all these changes?  My daughter and I headed to Disneyland to find out.

Walt Disney and Friend

Pirates of the Caribbean was the last ride that Walt Disney personally supervised.  It was originally conceived as a walk-through exhibit by animator Marc Davis, with wax museum-like figures of legendary pirates.  But Walt had always been fascinated with the idea of “living animation” – three dimensional environments in which to tell his stories.  In 1963, as a large pit was being excavated next to the Jungle Boat ride to house the new pirate exhibit, the first ‘audio-animatronic’ attraction, the Enchanted Tiki Room, opened to the delight of the guests.  At the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair, Disney imagineers thrilled fairgoers with a full-sized, animated Abraham Lincoln who spoke, gestured, and even stood up.  Bolstered by the reaction to these attractions, Walt told his pirate design team to start over and build him an audio-animatronic pirate ride unlike anything the world had ever seen.

Blue Bayou Restaurant.    Photo by Express Monorail

It’s a beautiful Tuesday afternoon in May and the Disneyland crowd isn’t too bad.  We quickly make our way to New Orleans Square and get in line at Pirates of the Caribbean.   As we climb into the fifth row of the boat, my daughter asks “are you going to sing?”  I wasn’t planning to, no.  The Blue Bayou restaurant to our right looks like an evening dinner party on the back porch of an antebellum mansion.  Fake fireflies blink on and off as we drift past the old shack where “Oh Susanna” is plucked out on an unseen banjo. The boat enters a dark tunnel where a skull overhead warns “dead men tell no tales” just before we plunge down the first waterfall.  Everybody laughs and screams.  Then we drop again down the second waterfall.  We are now under the spell of the ride as the familiar “Yo Ho” music begins.  Sure enough, some people begin to sing!  “Yo Ho, Yo Ho, a pirate’s life for me…da dum da dum da dum da dum…” Well, they’re singing the part they know, at least. 

Walt asked his team to design the new pirate ride as a flume ride, another innovation introduced at the World’s Fair.  The ‘It’s a Small World’ exhibit achieved very high through-put by loading many visitors into boats which were launched one after another down the ride’s gentle flume.  Because the nearly complete New Orleans Square building wasn’t large enough for a flume ride, Walt authorized the construction of a second building beyond the railroad berm which would be connected to the first building via a short transitional tunnel.  The perimeter train would cross over this tunnel.  Disney’s imagineers now had an enormous building in which to stage their audio-animatronic pirate scenes.  But what were they to do with the old building?  They designed a preamble to the story with the boney remains of pirates in a dark, windy grotto.  This preamble would also mean that the boats would emerge from the narrow grotto into a large, open night scene just as the pirates come to life.

The Treasure Cache

We wind through the windy grotto, past the skeletal remains of pirates who apparently died in the act of fighting, drinking, or examining a treasure map in bed.  In the treasure room, I spot the chest of Aztec coins from the first movie.  As our boat moves into the transition tunnel, we see the first major addition from the 2006 modifications: the image of Davey Jones projected on a mist ‘waterfall’. Suddenly, the whole scene seems to come alive as the boat moves out into a moonlit harbor between a pirate ship and an old fort.  Cannon balls whistle overhead as Captain Barbosa curses the unseen soldiers within the fort.  Captain Barbosa, played by Jeffery Rush in the movies, has replaced the original captain whose ship, the Sea Witch, has been rechristened Wicked Wench.  As we round the fort, I see the silhouettes of two men sword fighting up in the battlements.  I don’t remember this from the old days and I don’t know when it was added.   The mayor-dunking scene hasn’t changed much except that he is being asked the whereabouts of Jack Sparrow – who can be seen peeking around a rack of dresses.  The audio-animatronic likeness to Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack is truly uncanny. 

Johnny Depp and Jack Sparrow

To my knowledge, Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) was the first movie based on the theme park ride.  I groaned the first time I saw the ‘Coming Attractions’ poster but was quickly won over by Johnny Depp’s Academy Award nominated performance and a very clever screenplay. (The Haunted Mansion (2003), released the same year, did not repeat the trick.)  After the success of the first film, two sequels were made to retroactively make a trilogy: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007).  Unfortunately, the screenwriters did some very clever things with the story to make both movies impossible to understand without forking over more cash for repeated viewings. The trilogy made $2.6 billion worldwide and the new movie promises to raise this sum considerably.

The Jail Scene

Our boat floats into the auction scene, the complexity of which still amazes me. Characters on both sides of the boat toss dialog back and forth and move like real people.  The “Take a Wench for a Bride” banner is back after disappearing during an earlier remodel.  Next, we enter the chase scene, which has had the most modifications over the years.  Originally, randy pirates chased pretty women around in circles.  Caving to the needs of political correctness, the 1997 modification changed the scene to women chasing food-stealing pirates.  The Pooped Pirate, as he’s known, used to contemplate a lacy negligee and long to "hoist me colors upon the likes of that shy little wench." while a young maiden hides in the barrel behind him.  In 1997, the negligee was replaced with a drumstick and a cat looked out of the barrel.  Since 2006, the Pooped Pirate examines a treasure map and Captain Jack peeks out of the barrel.  The scenes of the town burning are pretty much as they have always been although I remember a lot more bottles of rum in the pirates’ hands.  Have these too been excised as inappropriate? The boisterous ‘Yo Ho’, now in full voice, doesn’t make much sense without them.  The jail scene, with prisoners trying to capture a dog holding the keys in its mouth, disguises the transition back into the original building.  Finally, the drunken pirates (who still don’t have any bottles) display shockingly unsafe behavior with dynamite as our boat prepares to climb the final waterfall.  I remember a ‘Wonderful World of Disney’ episode in which Walt introduced his new ride.  “If you go down a waterfall, you’ll have to go back up one,” he laughed.  On the way up, a new scene with Captain Jack and a pile of loot finishes the ride.

Is the spirit of the old ride still intact?  Sort of.  The immersive magic of the ride still thrills after all these years.  But the 1997 modifications removed the ride's mild raunchiness and sense of danger, leaving behind what original ride designer Francis Xavier "X" Atencio refers to as "Boy Scouts of the Caribbean”.  I suppose it was inevitable that the ride be modified to include characters from the movies but I find them distracting.  Nonetheless, it's still a great ride that will be enjoyed for years to come.  Uncle Walt would be proud.

Question of the Day: What do you think of the changes made to this ride?  Did they improve or hurt the old ride?