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Magic Meets Adventure is where Disney meets Universal! This is your one stop shop for all things Disney and Universal Theme Parks. As park enthusiasts, Tim and Ayren share their ideas, rankings, travel tips, history, and more to help create an everyday escape into the incredible worlds of magic and adventure!
History of Pirates
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Tim: [00:00:00] Welcome. So we're in the tower. We are ready for takeoff.
Intro: Please stand clear of the door. It looks like you've lost power. There's a wildest ride in the
Outro: wilderness.
Ayren: Hello everybody. And welcome back to another episode of Magic Meets Adventure. I'm Tim and I bring the magic. And I'm Aaron. I bring the adventure. And we are back again today, and , today we've got a history episode for you.
Tim: Yes we do.
Ayren: We've only done one of these so far? That's right. We did one for Poseidon's Fury a few episodes back. Go ahead and check that one out. But today we are going to jump from Universal over to, Walt Disney World. Are we just covering Walt Disney World? Are we doing Disneyland as well? It's
Tim: going to be, it's going to be all versions.
We
Ayren: got the full history. So this one might be a little bit of a longer episode. According to my computer, we have enough disc 38 hours and 49 minutes. So [00:01:00]
Tim: I could talk about this ride for 38 hours and 49 minutes.
Ayren: Is this your number one, your favorite attraction?
Tim: This is my favorite attraction of all time.
Ayren: Gotcha. I always, I can never remember if it's this one or if it's haunted mansion.
Tim: They're kind of tied, but this one edges it out just a little bit.
Ayren: What is it that makes this one? Slightly beat out haunted mansion for you.
Tim: Partially nostalgia I prefer pirates over spooky stuff. Nostalgia.
Yeah. Also, there's kind of you know, a franchise tied to it, which we'll get to As we talk about the history of it because it's there's a long line of haunted
Ayren: mansion movies too. Tim. I mean Yeah, solid
Tim: a solid two right now , and hopefully Do you think we'll
Ayren: ever get a good Haunted Mansion movie? I
Tim: feel like this last one was good.
Ayren: Uh, it actually was, yeah. It wasn't horrible. I went back and rewatched it around Halloween. Better than the Eddie Murphy one. Yeah,
Intro: yeah.
Ayren: That should be oh we should do an episode where we compare the two haunted mansion movies Maybe that'll be our Halloween episode. There we go. We got that could be a lot of fun [00:02:00] But let's go ahead and get into today We are gonna be talking about the history of pirates of the Caribbean
Tim: or Caribbean depending on who you talk to
Ayren: Yeah, Caribbean is the right It's the Caribbean
Tim: area, but it's Pirates of the Caribbean.
Ayren: I'm down with that.
Tim: Or it's Caribbean beach.
Ayren: Yeah, it's so weird, depends on what it is that you're talking about. It's gonna come out different every single time.
Tim: But that being said, this was actually a suggestion from one of you guys when we posted saying hey, what do you want to talk about history wise, and someone suggested Pirates of the Caribbean.
So we are doing that, , because of that. Well, I also have no excuse to talk about this ride. Like I said, this is my favorite attraction of all time. But this was a suggestion. There you go.
Ayren: Go ahead and continue to make those suggestions and we will heed them. Find us on social media. You can find us at Magic Meets Adventure on all the platforms, except for TikTok.
Where will your Magic Meets Adventure pod be? For now, , we'll see what happens with TikTok, and , if that'll still be around, or if we [00:03:00] ever get around to changing the name. We probably won't, but that's enough about us. So let's go ahead and dive into the history of Pirates of the Caribbean. Tim, you want to drive this episode?
Yeah, let's do it. Take it away, man.
Tim: Yeah, we're going to drive all the way in our time travel machine back to 1963. I have no clue what's going on here. That was the sound of our time travel machine. Oh, my bad. Yikes. It's not doing well. This should be the DeLorean. You know, with the Back to the Future song.
I'll try. Don't, don't, don't attempt it. I'm not going to do it. Anyways, that being said though, the early days of Disneyland, there was a little attraction that kind of opened, back in 1963, called Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room. Now, if you don't know the significance of this ride, we will cover the history of it at some point.
Will we? It is a pretty influential ride. You said it, so now we have to. I did say it, so we'll have to do it at some point. But that being said, the reason why I want to talk about this is because there was [00:04:00] kind of this Spectacular thing that occurred with this attraction as guests were marveled by birds Singing and moving their mouths.
It didn't
Ayren: take much to impress people back.
Tim: No, it didn't but this technology is now known as Audio animatronics. This is the first attraction to have audio animatronics in
Ayren: That is impressive, but also it's like so simple, you know, it's pretty crazy to think about.
Tim: Exactly, and so because of that, this attraction is very influential into, well, what we're going to dive into.
See, one of the things that Walt Disney was known for, Is that he wanted to always continue to improve technology, continue to make it better, whether it was at the parks or through movies and all these different things. And so, one idea that kind of stuck out was the idea of a pirates themed attraction.
See, pirates have been featured in [00:05:00] a couple Walt Disney movies. Feature films, one of those being treasure island in 1950 and Swiss family Robinson in 1960. So both of these films featured pirates. Pirates are, I'd say pretty beloved by movie goers
Ayren: and kids. Pirates have like the best PR firm in the world, right?
Like in theory, real pirates, we wouldn't like them.
Tim: No, absolutely not.
Ayren: They're violent. They wreak havoc, but. Everybody's like yeah, let's take pirates and make a children's ride out of it
Tim: and somehow that just it's you know It just works. It just works somehow. And so the original idea was to do kind of a walkthrough wax museum styled Attraction where guests would walk through and see various Pirates and scenes it would actually , be kind of narrowed down to more just like your famous pirates like blackbeard.
Can we have a slight
Ayren: sidebar here? Let's do that. Do you wish disney had more walkthrough attractions? Are [00:06:00] you fine that we Decided to shelf a lot of those.
Tim: I don't think we necessarily need them Some of them are cool. Like I want a journey of waters neat. Okay. Yeah I know you have a specific soft spot for the alice in wonderland.
Oh
Ayren: my gosh. Okay, keep going Keep going back to pirates.
Tim: Yeah, let's , go time travel back.
Every time, , so the original idea was to do walkthrough pirates wax museum style attraction. It was going to feature famous pirates. That idea got shelved, unfortunately, , as Marty Scalar, who's a former Walt Disney Imagineer, one of the big head honchos, , at the time. He's also a Disney legend.
If you don't know him and his work, Google it. He's phenomenal.
Ayren: We should do a history on some famous Imagineers. We definitely should. That would be a lot of fun. Just kind of see what their track records are and what they've contributed to the company.
Tim: Absolutely. One thing he said was, that the story itself can be fractured.
[00:07:00] Some people see one thing and miss another, while another person or another guest could have a completely different experience. So it just created just Issues story wise, and one thing that Walt Disney harped on a lot, and one thing that Imagineers wanted to craft and create was good storytelling. And that's still pretty evident with Imagineers today, wanting to craft good stories.
However the Pirates idea was Popular it was just kind of put to the side. It's like we like this idea We'll set it for later and see if something presents itself, which would occur the next year at the 1964 New York World's Fair.
Ayren: I really appreciate that Disney does that, you know They don't ever really truly throw an idea away they take it and say hey Let's just shove that for a little bit and then maybe we'll revisit it.
Tim: Yeah, and so 1964 World's Fair the most influential World's Fair in terms of the Disney company. Disney was asked to help with a lot of different things. It's where we get Great [00:08:00] Moments with Mr. Lincoln. It's where we get the Carousel of Progress. It's also where we get Aaron's favorite attraction, It's a Small World.
Don't, don't, oh
Ayren: my gosh. Ha ha ha ha. That's where that attraction belongs. You know, like world's fair somewhere where it will eventually be torn down and destroyed. Oof.
Tim: Yes. Anyways. But the idea of it was to create a ride celebrating the children of the world. We won't dive too deep into that cause that can be an episode on its own.
But the sponsorship was with UNICEF and PepsiCo and they created with Disney a boat style attraction that would be able to, Handle over 3, 000 guests per hour.
Ayren: That's huge.
Tim: That's insane a lot of people compared to what would have been maybe 500 or fewer for a walkthrough attraction.
Ayren: It's so fascinating how that works, man I mean, that's a pretty slow moving boat ride and to think about it.
You know, more thrilling attractions, kind of like I think Hagrid's over in [00:09:00] Islands of Adventure, I think has like an 1, 800 person per hour capacity, so it's just really interesting that they were able to, you know, move that many people through in such a slow moving attraction.
Tim: Yeah, for sure.
And so, because of this sort of new technology of using a boat ride system to, you know, Bring people along to different show scenes. This would be the spark to reignite the pirates project. And so the ride itself was based off the antics of a band of pirates in the West Indy islands, during the 17th and 18th centuries.
But the question was, okay, where do we put this attraction? Now you have a few options here. Fantasylands? Probably not. Tomorrowland? Definitely not. Cause it's talking about the future. And, you know, pirates aren't the future. Kind of in the past. They're kind of back there. But pirates still exist. That is true.
In many various forms. But, could you do Adventureland? Absolutely. They decided to put it [00:10:00] in New Orleans Square, which was going to be a brand new land area that Walt Disney was developing, mainly because of his love of New Orleans, which is also where he found a little birdie, which would, of course, inspire audio animatronics.
So, little connection in history there. Which, by the way, if you've ever been to Disneyland, New Orleans Square is It's friggin dope! It's Spectacular.
Ayren: It's up there. Probably my top three favorite lanes anywhere.
Tim: I'd agree with that. . So now work would begin to, go underway for this attraction.
The cool thing is, is also, great moments with Mr. Lincoln would kind of help with this attraction as well as that would be the first full scale human audio animatronic. And because you're dealing with pirates rather than pirates, you know. You're, you're going to have full scale animatronics.
Ayren: They went a long way from just the moving mouth of a parrot to recreating a president.
That's super impressive. In a [00:11:00] year. Yeah, that's wild. That's insanely impressive.
Tim: Yes, absolutely. So there were two, , Disney legends and imagineers who were in charge of crafting these characters. Mark Davis, who is a absolute fantastic artist, did a number of Disney movies. Shifted over to Imagineering, did wonders there, was in charge of creating kind of the drawings for the characters.
So the silliness that you get in the attraction from these characters comes from Mark Davis crafting these characters and the, the ways they dress and look and act, which is really really cool. But then also Blaine Gibson as well. He was in charge of really putting these guys together. He would take Mark's two dimensional vision and put it into 3d models of audio animatronics, which I mean
over 50. Almost 60 years later. That's why they look fantastic. So
Intro: yeah,
Tim: One challenge that imagineers had to face was kind of land size [00:12:00] As we know disneyland is a pretty small area and they already had built the berm where the disneyland railroad is around the park, the issue became, okay, where are we going to put this attraction?
And so here is how they solved it, which is creating a waterfall that would take guests on a bit of a drop down two times,
Ayren: never ready for the drops. I always forget they exist. In this ride, and then I'm like, oh, here we go.
Tim: Yeah, that would lead under the Disneyland Railroad and would have the show building outside of the essential, like, walls of Disneyland.
And so that is where they built the attraction from there. Walt explained in a video series with Miss Disneyland at the time of like, our guests are entering the story as they go through and entering the world of the pirates Kind of time traveling in a sense You did that right on cue [00:13:00] like just like that, he also said that way too I'm,
Ayren: i'm gonna start making that noise whenever I go down the drop on pirates
Tim: I'm, just imagine like someone sitting next to you like what the
So that was one way they kind of figured out how to do You Now, there are other two Imagineers and Disney legends, Bill Justice and Waffle Rogers, who are tasked with programming the pirates, which, in and of itself, is a very difficult task. Bill described Walt's animatronic figures as wonderful and remembers his time spent programming the famous auctioneer character, the most sophisticated character in the show. Which is crazy to think that was the most Yeah. Sophisticated animatronic. Yeah. And you have the shaman whatever on Yeah, well you've come a very long way. Navi River Journey. Yeah. Or Hondo. Or, shoot, take a look at the Tiana [00:14:00] Yeah.
Animatronics.
Intro: Yeah, man, man. That's
Tim: insane. Insane. Insane. This took six weeks to build that animatronic. The cool thing is, is that for the voices of these Rudy Tootie Band Pirates, , comes from some familiar voices. , one of those being Paul Freeze, who you may or may not know as the ghost host of The Haunted Mansion.
Ludwig Von Drake, no, he's not just a Disney character. Found that out very recently. J Ward and Thorough Ravenscroft, who is one of the singing busts in the Haunted Mansion. Yeah. He has the deep, deep voice in there. Is that the guy who sings the Grinch song? He is also the guy who sings You're a Mean One, Mr.
Grinch. He's also the singing bust who looks like Walt. Yes. That's what a lot of people associate him. But nope, that is Thorough Ravenscroft, absolute legend in
Ayren: tony the Tiger too,
Tim: right? He was also Tony the Tiger as well. And Optimus Prime? Not Optimus Prime. Uh, no.
Ayren: Okay, that was somebody different.
Tim: No, that is, Peter Cullen. There you go. Another absolute [00:15:00] legend. But, To create more fun for this attraction, one thing Disney wanted to do was a song. And who did they decide to task with said song? Nickelback! Nickelback. Yeah, it was actually Nickelback, they weren't formed yet, and uh, they uh
Ayren: It was not Nickelback.
Who was it, Tim?
Tim: It was Francis Xavier Atencio.
Ayren: That's a much cooler name.
Tim: Yes, also known as X Atencio, which by the way, had never wrote a song in his life.
Intro: Interesting.
Tim: That was one of the cool things I have learned in like, Taking a little time to research just more about Imagineers. Mm hmm. Is Walt would just go up to people and he's like, I have faith and confidence in you, you can do this.
Ayren: That's incredible, but also could you imagine being on the other side of that?
Tim: Yeah, imagine being X and he's just like, Oh, I have to do this now? Oh, okay.
Ayren: You figure it out, man.
Tim: And so he would of course craft Yo ho yo ho a pirate's life for me bars, which is arguably [00:16:00] bars one of the most iconic Disney songs of all time Not just the parks like Disney songs of all time.
Mm hmm, and I mean his word alliteration On point I can't even like sing half of it. I want to But it's like there's so many a litter so many words that sound the same. It's great You know, he did a fantastic job. This was the most complex Most Essentially insane attraction disney's ever built at the time.
So the best way to kind of put into perspective Would be like for us rise of the resistance. Yeah, or Pandora, you know, man, you
Ayren: watch that early footage of people, you know, checking out this attraction. Their minds are absolutely blown Yeah, it's really cool.
Tim: And which was insane. However, there would be a big hiccup in the road, unfortunately
Ayren: Pirates did pirates attack the ride.
Yeah
Tim: pirates attack the ride. No [00:17:00] Okay,
Ayren: we should also do like Fake history of things where we just make up Kind of like a mad libs style version of history of attractions. I think i'd have a lot of fun with that Maybe we can do dual episodes. We'll release both of them at the same time.
Tim: Which one is the real history?
Yeah, there you go , but unfortunately in december of 1966 walt disney would pass away from lung cancer during this time This was the last attraction he worked on he had his hands on There are videos of him like Explaining the attraction which by the way is probably one of my favorite videos of waltz.
Ayren: Yeah, it's super cool.
Tim: , it's Yeah, it's great.
Ayren: Just cool to see how excited he got over this stuff, you know And how passionate he was and how much his amount like for him You know a lot of this stuff kind of lived obviously in the minds of the imaginaries as well But it lived in the imagination of walt and to see him talk about these things like they were almost like, like the animatronics and the characters in these rides were real people and it's like [00:18:00] he knew them or he was just transporting them, you know, from, from his imagination into the, the tangible physical world, but man, yeah, just super, super cool to see, see his interaction with those.
Tim: And not only did he want to like experience it for himself, but he wanted to take you along with him. Yeah. And he got so much joy from that. I mean, you can see it in just the videos that are, are online. Highly recommend checking out, , just search up Walt Disney Pirates of the Caribbean, and I'm sure it'll be one of the first videos that pops up a hundred percent, but it's great.
So a few months later, , in March 18th of 1967, , just three and a half months after Walt Disney's passing, Pirates of the Caribbean would open to the public at Disneyland. And, it was met. With such high praise. People
Ayren: hated it. No, I'm kidding. They despised it so much that they wrote it again. It was because of the pirates.
They got on there and people stole their wallets and We could easily come up with a fake history of this. But anyway,
Tim: Guests [00:19:00] absolutely loved it It was an instant success. Guests raved about the unique sets, attention to detail And it was one of the most popular attractions in the park As it still is today?
As it still is today. And it still has amazing attention to detail and all those other things.
Ayren: Is this your favorite Disney ride, period? Or just your favorite at Magic Kingdom?
Tim: Period.
Ayren: Okay. Period. Just getting in for a.
Tim: Specifically the Disneyland one.
Ayren: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Tim: I've done Disneyland and
Ayren: Paris and they're both better than Disney World in my opinion, but they're both yeah,
Tim: no, it's cool So some fun facts about this attraction.
There are over 50 animatronic animals Ranging from pigs to donkeys to dogs
Ayren: Tim. Those will be animal tronics. Thank you
Tim: very
Ayren: much.
Tim: That's gonna be a shirt That's gotta be a shirt somewhere. Oh And love it so much there's also 75 [00:20:00] Animatronic humans Those will be human I was waiting to see if you were going to try to do that or not.
So the ride, uh, itself is flooded with over 600, 000. Yeah, it's a boat ride.
Ayren: I'm so sorry, I'm going to let you do it. Do you hear pirates flooded? Like, yeah, it's a boat ride. I'm sorry. Okay, keep going. You're doing a fantastic job.
Tim: Aaron's done. Oh,
Ayren: man. Okay. I'm sorry. It is flooded with 6, 000 what's now? 600,
Tim: 000 gallons of water. Wow.
Ayren: That's, yeah. That'll flood something.
Tim: Just a little bit. It would take three days to drain. Wow. , and to fill for repairs and refurbishment and stuff like that, which is absolutely insane. Is that still currently the case?[00:21:00]
I think so. I'm not 100 percent sure. It didn't say anything history wise that I saw.
Ayren: Gotcha. Okay.
Tim: So we're going to fast forward a little bit. This was 1967. Again, instant success. Guests love it. A lot of people still do, including this guy, who's currently talking to you. , and so, when the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, October 1st to be specific, because, you know, dates, many popular rides were, \ Brought over from Disneyland to the Magic Kingdom,
people wanted to at least on the east coast experience a lot of the same rides So you have stuff like the teacups and Peter Pan's flight and the Haunted Mansion, which you know Wasn't open in 67 and went open for a few years later and \ a bunch of these different attractions There was one noticeably absent
Intro: What's that?
Tim: And that was Pirates of the Caribbean. Oh,
Intro: that's right. The one we're talking about.
Tim: Yeah, the one we are talking about The reason for that is,, Florida is, you know, decently [00:22:00] close to the Caribbean You know, just just just a little bit. You know, it's
Ayren: a hop skipping a jump as they say,
Tim: you know very very close and so they were unsure because of the proximity to the actual Caribbean if Guests on the East Coast would love it the same as guests on the West Coast They were wrong and so guests on Experiencing disney world wanted to see a incarnation of this attraction I like
Ayren: how disney was like we're not gonna do it.
People can go find their own pirates. Why would we yeah
Tim: They did have a different idea though. They were going to do a kind of similar style attraction But it was going to be western themed and in frontier land Where Big Thunder Mountain sits now.
Ayren: Gotcha, that's interesting.
Tim: That was the original idea.
Hmm. Which I believe was called the Western River Expedition.
Ayren: It was called Western Pirates of the Caribbean.
Tim: Instead of Yoho, it was gonna be Yeehaw, A Cowboy's Life for me. It was gonna be incredible. Can't wait to ride it in [00:23:00] 3075. It'll be great. But, they were wrong, and so in 1973, Pirates of the Caribbean opened at Walt Disney World. It is a tad bit shorter compared to the one at Disneyland, and of course other incarnations of the same attraction would open with Tokyo Disneyland in 1983, and Disneyland Paris in 1992.
Tokyo Disneyland opened in 83? 1983. That's correct. Yes. I didn't know it was that old. It was the third resort. And the first overseas, obviously.
Intro: Fascinating.
Tim: Yes, very, very fascinating. So let's do a quick little walkthrough of the attraction. Let's do it. Since we have a little time, since it is opened, you know, at all these parks. Mm hmm. So, of course, we're gonna talk about the Disneyland one, because that is the original. Yes. You start off, of course, it is in New Orleans Square, so you're gonna kind of journey a little through the bayou.
Ayren: This is my favorite part.
Tim: It is really cool. You have a little banjo dude playing, which you don't really see, but it's pretty cool music. [00:24:00] If you look to the right of the boat, you can see the Blue Bayou restaurant, which I can say is
Ayren: delicious. This is the one where that little Has amazing gumbo. The little spot that I'm sorry, I'm getting a little bit ahead of the game here, but Go for it.
You know, how you go down the waterfall and it's like you're being transported? That effect really does You sense that, in this, and it's all because of this opening by you scene, in my opinion.
Tim: Yeah, for sure. And so you will see kind of this brick, entrance with a pirate skull voiced by Xavier Atencio himself, and you will be propelled down a short drop in which you will experience kind of the start of the cave scene.
And then there's another drop. And so you will experience just some caves, which will have a bunch of gold, some dead pirates, which may have real bones or not, who knows. One thing
Ayren: kids love, it's dead bodies. Facts.
Tim: Um, you experience some different scenes, some voiceovers telling you dead men tell no tales, and [00:25:00] some other stories of pirate lore, so to speak.
And, In the current version of the attraction at Disneyland, you have a pirate who is holding a treasure chest, kind of suspended, and part of him is sculled, and then the other part of him is, as you slowly move towards the first show scene, or technically the third show scene, he transforms into a real life pirate.
Which also has a octopus animatronic that is such a cool
Ayren: effect. It is so cool. Especially when you're not expecting it I remember the first time I saw it. I was like, whoa, what
Tim: what? Yeah, it's really cool. It kind of gives that illusion of again that sort of time travel that you are doing in this Yeah Attraction and so that is where we enter into the the Pirate duel between the pirate ship and the fort.
We make our way into the town where the mayor is being waterboarded Asking where the treasure is, you know, like a children's
Ayren: ride, you
Tim: know, like a children's light Don't tell him Carlos. Don't be [00:26:00] chicken Is the voice of his lovely wife then we move past into a few more show scenes back before refurbishment you had an auction scene of auctioning off women , you know like a children's right like a you know Further along down you have more scenes of pirate Again, before refurbishment, pirates were chasing women, , around trying to either steal them or the, you know, other things.
And, , that would go all the way. I know like a children's. Oh man. But then we would get to the scene where the town is burning and all these pirates are so jolly and happy as they sing the iconic song. We then move from that scene into the dungeon where we have. Iconic scene of pirates trying to get convinced the dog to give them the keys one of the most iconic Scenes in a Disney attraction ever.
Yeah, and anything park ride period This is kind of where [00:27:00] the Walt Disney World one ends. The Disneyland goes a little further You kind of have this fort it feels like oh gosh, all the walls are creeping The ceilings gonna collapse and you have a scene of pirates kind of definitely drunk Shooting At random places.
Like a children's ride. Like a children's ride. And then from there you will ascend back up to normal present day. Where you are back at Lafitte's Landing. Which is where of course you disembark and embark on your pirate adventure. So that's the attraction and the ride through of it. There of course have been changes over the years.
The first one being in 1997, where the scene where the pirates are chasing the village women was changed to, giving the women plates of food. So the pirates were chasing the food instead.
Ayren: Like a children's ride. Here we go. Now we're getting there,
Tim: encouraging children to eat their grapes and I'm kidding.
I have no [00:28:00] clue what's our. on those plates. I do know there are grapes, I think. Anyways, that's a random tangent. But in July of 2003, there was a little movie that came out. Disney Studios would release Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl, starring Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, Orlando Bloom as Will Turner, Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Swann, and Geoffrey Rush as Captain Barbossa.
The film was based, of course, on the attraction of the same name, Pirates of the Caribbean, and has many nods to the original attraction. The film grossed, 654. 3 million at the box office during its theatrical run, and was the fourth highest grossing movie of 2003. That's a lot of money. It is a lot of money.
It's both loved by fans and critics alike. Side note, this is probably my favorite movie ever made, ever. Wow. It's between that or a few others. That's bold. But this is one of my favorite movies of all [00:29:00] time.
Ayren: Top ten?
Tim: Mm, like top three.
Ayren: Oh, wow. I was gonna keep narrowing it down until we got there, but you just jumped the gun on it.
No, it's one, it's legit one of my favorite movies of all
Tim: time. That being said, it would spawn, of course, four sequels, the most recent being Dead Men Tell No Tales, which released back in 2017. So, that's a little tidbit on the movies. And because of this, and the popularity of the movie franchise, in 2006, the attraction would get a pretty big renovation to coincide with the movie's release.
Dead Man's Chest, the immediate sequel to Curse of the Black Pearl. This refurbishment saw the addition of a few Captain Jack Sparrow audio animatronics, as well as a Captain Barbossa animatronic on the pirate ship.
Ayren: What are your opinions on that?
Tim: I like the addition of it. Yeah. Granted, I love both the ride and the movies.
So it ties pretty beautifully for me. This feels
Ayren: interesting to me because you know, obviously one of the not issues, it's, there's much [00:30:00] bigger issues in the world, but you know what I mean? One of the, I guess topics of debate among Disney fans is the injection of, IPs into the parks. , and especially as it, as it pertains to classic attractions and stuff like that.
So it's interesting to me that, This attraction, which I would say is in the upper echelon of classic Disney attractions that they would Retrofit it with some of the stuff from the movie. And \ , yeah, this seems to be in I don't remember Entirely what backlash was like back when the decision was made \ , but it seems like it was relatively well received
Tim: Yes, I think so as well, and of course the biggest thing to note is that more people will know the movie than will know the actual attraction it's based on.
I guess that's true. And of help tie a little bit of it together. I can see that. You know, if you have someone who's writing it today and they've watched all the movies, they're probably wondering where Jack Sparrow is. That's very true. Excuse me, Captain Jack Sparrow. Yeah. But that being said, That was added.
They also added a little mist effect that had Davey Jones on it. And of [00:31:00] course, later down the road, when the fourth movie would release, they added Blackbeard to kind of interchange between the two. That effect has been removed since then, though. Oh, well, well. So yeah, in 2012 Disney attempted to add, projections of swimming mermaids into the water alongside the boats.
This was removed in 2015 though, and just didn't work as they initially thought. Not gonna lie. Pretty cool. And of course, tied into Pirates of the Caribbean on Stranger Tides, which had some mermaid sequences that may or may not leave your kids scarred. Just being honest. And so, that would be kind of the bigger, you know, change to this attraction.
In April of 2017, one of the animatronics of Jack Sparrow was removed, so Johnny Depp could make a little cameo appearance, \ promoting Dead Men Tell No Tales for oncoming guests. Yes. Yes. And so there is videos of it. It [00:32:00] is pretty neat and pretty fun.
This was over at Disneyland.
Ayren: I was there at Disneyland one time with some friends and we were convinced that Johnny Depp was in place of one of the animatronics. We like stared this thing down. If not, then kudos to Disney for the fantastic work on the animatronic. But we were like, Dude, we, is that?
Anyway,
Tim: in June of that same year, Disney would make a decision to change the auction scene, and, For reasons. , so you would no longer here. We wants the redhead anymore.
Instead, we would get a auction for, various items of gold. Rum is the main one that they want. Then it would introduce a brand new pirate known as red. \ , she of course is kind of the, I'd say. figure in that area. , and of course there's also a walk around character at Disneyland too.
I feel like, you know, it's a pretty decent, add into the, The attraction as a whole.
Ayren: Yeah, it's probably the [00:33:00] right call. ,
Tim: But this of course change would be for Disneyland magic kingdom and Disneyland Paris, changing that scene to allow pirate red to join the ranks of Disney audio animatronics. And honestly, it's a really solid animatronic as well.
Ayren: It is. What's interesting to me is how they can go back and add in these animatronics later on, but they don't feel out of place. Yeah, they don't feel out of place. They don't really break the immersion of like man. That's a new animatronic That's an older one, you know, so it's pretty well done
Tim: This is regarded, of course, as one of the most iconic Disney attractions of all time.
It's also, I would say, to most people, as well as Disney, this is the quintessential Disney ride. This is also the standard that every attraction is held to for Imagineering. At least, that's what we were told in Oh gosh, what was it? It was one of the series on disney plus.
Ayren: Is it the ,
Tim: It's probably behind behind.
Oh, yeah.
Ayren: There you go.
Tim: It's [00:34:00] probably behind the attraction. Thanks dwayne johnson. Great series, by the way. Yeah. Thanks dwayne But that being said, that is the so far history of this attraction. It is still open. It is still great. Still wonderful. Highly recommend checking it out if you've never done it or haven't done it in a while.
It's always a fun time. . Honestly, great storytelling, great theming. You feel transported into the attraction. And so it is a prop
Ayren: to your attraction. And, I'm on Etsy right now and I just typed in Pirates of the Caribbean top tier merch, too. A lot of really good merch should come out of this attraction.
Tim: That is, that is very true. There's some solid merch. It also spawned, of course, a pretty successful franchise and loved characters. Yes, it also has iconic smells of any Disney attraction, with the water, which is, of course, bromine water to be specific. But, that is the history of the attraction, one of the greatest Disney has ever made.
And Yeah, just such a fun time. Yeah,
Ayren: that's really good. Thanks for that. Tim. That was really good There was a lot of a lot of good a lot of good juicy [00:35:00] nuggets in there. Around yeah this attraction that yeah I think a lot of people do think of the movies before they think of the ride I think for me growing up because I wasn't super familiar with the disney parks growing up.
I fall into that category of people who heard about the movie first and so when I found out there was a ride Um, actually, uh, I don't remember I remember You I was afraid to go on the ride because I thought the pirates were real when I was a kid,
Tim: you know The pirates they come at you and steal your wallet, you know, that's it
Ayren: That's what I thought was gonna happen.
I'm like, I don't want that to happen to me. But uh, no man, that's super cool yeah top tier attraction. As you mentioned quintessential disney what can be said that hasn't been said already? Nope, it's a big old thing. You said it I mean
Tim: it's been said by I will say fans, you know, I think I think
Ayren: I talked about this back on the Paris episode, but I was a big fan of the paris version of this attraction, something about the layout of it It's a lot of the same show scenes, but they're just in a different order and I don't know if that was the part that just made it feel fresh and new to me, but , really really big fan of this.
I agree with you. The disneyland version is [00:36:00] probably the best Yeah, highly recommend it.
Tim: Yeah, for sure. And of course, if you're wondering what the heck, why are we not talking about Shanghai? , that's a completely different ride. Sure, it's themed to pirates, but it's actually more themed to the movies rather than it is to, you know, the Disneyland attraction.
That one's on
Ayren: my, that one's on my bucket list for sure. , mine too, because holy crap, it's amazing. Even watching videos of it, it's hard to wrap my mind around the concept of it. Like, I feel like it's one you have to experience in order to fully understand exactly what's going on there.
Tim: Even then, it feels like you'd have to ride it a few times.
Yeah, probably so. Which, you know, you
Intro: won't, you won't have to convince me to do.
Tim: Me neither. I can ride Pirates of the Caribbean three, four times. Yeah. And I'd be still very happy to go on it again.
Ayren: Yeah, man. It's a good day.
Tim: Yes, it is.
Ayren: You got anything else for us on that?
Tim: If you do want to, check out the ride, if you've not done it in a while, or just want to check it, because why not?
And you have some of the Disney blues. There are plenty of videos on [00:37:00] YouTube that you can check out this attraction as well as the one in Shanghai there's plenty of videos on there probably what I'm gonna end up doing tonight and Yeah, I always have fun talking about this it's a nostalgia fest for me
Ayren: Am I allowed to buy the shirt on etsy that says we wants the redhead?
Tim: I'm not gonna say no I'm wearing a captain jack sparrow shirt as we speak. Yeah,
Ayren: but I don't know if I can demand the redhead That feels like it it also would be you know, this feels like this feels like a great place to end the episode Yeah, that's probably a good point.
I was about to go on a tangent here for a second
Tim: Hold pause. Also, all the movies are on Disney Plus. They are. So go ahead and check those out. You haven't seen them in a while. Yeah. Which you totally should go re watch because they're phenomenal. There you
Ayren: go. Except the last two. They're okay. Well, you can't, you can't, uh, can't knock them all out.
That's true. Well, guys, thank y'all so much for listening. This has been the history of Pirates of the Caribbean. Tim, thank you so much. Tim, let us know, who are you and what do you bring to the podcast? [00:38:00] I'm Tim and I bring the magic. That's right, and I am Aaron. I bring the adventure. Thank you so much for listening to another episode.
We will see you next time.
Intro: See ya. And so, our journey comes to an end. Guess
Tim: that wraps things up. You guys did alright. Carefully raise your left arm and exit the vehicle.
Outro: Oh, and don't forget to retrieve your stolen belongings. We hope that you've enjoyed your visit with us, and that you will come back soon.
See ya real soon! Bye everybody! We really love you! Bye! Be careful getting home!