Behind the Attraction: Pirates of the Caribbean
During the summer of 2021, Disney+ finally added the kind of content that theme park fans have craved.
Behind the Attraction debuted on the service and provided us with a glimpse behind the curtain, the proverbial backstage area, at various Disney attractions.
After more than two years, the series has returned with a half-dozen new attractions, starting with arguably the most iconic.
For the first time in a couple of years, let’s go Behind the Attraction to discuss Pirates of the Caribbean, the signature theme park ride.
The Chicken or the Egg
We don’t waste any time in revealing a big secret about Pirates of the Caribbean.
A cast member backstage opens a door, and voila! We’re looking at a ride boat.
Generally, the only way you see this un-themed section is if you experience a ride evacuation.
This kind of off-limits theme park access explains why fans are so curious about Behind the Attraction.
From the start, narrator Paget Brewster leans into the “chicken or the egg” nature of the attraction.
Yes, Pirates of the Caribbean won the hearts of fans long before Johnny Depp starred as Jack Sparrow in the film franchise.
Still, the two stories have become inexorably linked. Now, tributes to the films are integral to the ride, which exists at most Disney theme parks.
So, while one precedes the other by decades, Disney recognizes that future generations won’t distinguish that fact.
Speaking of generations, the show looks back to Walt Disney’s vital influence on Pirates of the Caribbean.
As a boy, Disney fell in love with Robert Louis Stevenson’s signature story, Treasure Island, which became the eventual impetus for a Pirates attraction.
Disney also adored Emilio Salgari’s Queen of the Caribbean, which would provide the setting for this ride.
In between, Disney created a movie based on Treasure Island, one that co-starred Robert Newton as Long John Silver.
Newton’s portrayal of an engaging, likable scoundrel with a novel style of speech single-handedly established pop culture perceptions of pirates.
Yes, when you talk like a pirate, you’re really talking like Robert Newton. His performance in Treasure Island established that conversational style.
The Pride of New Orleans Square
The episode details the odd series of events that fundamentally altered the nature of Disney’s pirate-based attraction.
Originally, Uncle Walt had preferred a “little, small pirate thing,” which is to say, a wax museum.
In the aftermath of the 1964 New York World’s Fair, Disney pivoted to the all-encompassing water ride we all know and love.
Disney turned this attraction into a Disney World’s Fair’s Greatest Hits. It would include the It’s a Small World ride mechanic of a boat on a guided path.
Disney would also employ Audio-Animatronics (AAs) to make the pirates seem lifelike.
Behind the Attraction notes that Jean Lafitte would have played a large part in the “little, small pirate thing.”
You’ll only notice one little, small pirate thing about him on Pirates of the Caribbean, though. Guests launch from Lafitte’s Landing.
You’ll forget about Lafitte quickly, though. A popular ride element occurs almost immediately when guests slide down consecutive waterfalls.
Imagineers used this trick to distract away from the fact that Pirates of the Caribbean exists beyond the “berm,” the park’s technical boundaries.
Walt Disney established train tracks as a means of isolating the park from the surrounding Anaheim area. So, those tracks create the berm.
Alas, New Orleans Square could only allow a small portion for Pirates of the Caribbean, nowhere near enough for what Walt Disney envisioned.
A brilliant Imagineering trick, the waterfall deployment, distracts guests from thinking about how they’re traveling beneath train tracks to exit the berm.
So, the original crown jewel of New Orleans Square mostly resides outside New Orleans Square.
Heroes of the Caribbean
Behind the Attraction chooses a handful of deserving Imagineers to champion in this episode.
The story recounts the tale of how ride-cart expert Bob Gurr earned a spot in Pirates of the Caribbean lore.
Disney assigned Gurr the task of assembling the various Audio-Animatronics.
While Gurr’s background may have come from Autopia and the monorail, the Disney Legend proved more than up to the task.
As Gurr recounted, “We can make a goat, a President, and a pirate out of the same bag of parts.”
Yes, that’s a horrifying thought. Still, his comments underscore how all AAs are, at heart, machines with moving parts. Therein lies a second problem.
Someone at Disney earned the responsibility of dressing those moving parts. If you’ve ever worked with machines, you know the struggle.
The repetitive motion of machines causes wear and tear. That’s why cars require tune-ups. Otherwise, they break down over time.
Similarly, your car sometimes suffers leaks when a part breaks. With an Audio-Animatronic, such an issue would lead to a horrifying sight for guests.
You’d watch a pirate dripping oil, and nobody wants that. Even worse, the oil would impact the costume.
Enter Alice Davis, a Disney Legend who would eventually save the day in a shocking way.
Davis created all the outfits for the various Pirates of the Caribbean. During the design phase, she recognized the danger and planned ahead.
Davis told her bosses that she should make duplicate costumes for everyone since the cost wasn’t much more, and accidents were likely.
Executives at Disney at the time informed Davis that one outfit per AA would be plenty. She ignored them and designed two.
Fire in the Water
On a fateful day six weeks after the attraction opened, Disney experienced a fire.
This concern had been ongoing since the beginning, as Walt Disney wanted to burn a village to demonstrate the pillaging ways of pirates.
For reasons I’ll explain in a moment, the fire’s cause wasn’t what you’d expect, though. Still, Pirates of the Caribbean burned.
This catastrophe forced a closure for the following day as everyone assessed the damage.
Thankfully, the sets remained intact, save for one problem. Many costumes had been lost in the fire.
Disney would have kept Pirates of the Caribbean offline for several days or possibly weeks while rebuilding the costumes…except that Davis had ignored her bosses.
To their joy AND fury, Davis had gone ahead and created two costumes anyway. She was right, while her bosses were wrong.
In archival footage, the late Mrs. Davis gleefully notes that Disney requires three costumes per AA now.
Remarkably, she wasn’t the only member of her family who proved significant to this attraction, either.
Marc Davis, the other half of the married Disney Legends, worked on it as well.
In some ways, this episode doubles as a loving tribute to them and other Disney Imagineering icons.
For example, the fire effect so familiar to Pirates of the Caribbean fans isn’t a fire at all.
Instead, Gurr marvels that Yale Gracey had created the effect with a low-tech solution. According to Gurr, Gracey used:
“A piece of a cloth with a light coming up out of the bottom and a fan.
“(Gracey) could take physical materials and reduce it down to the simplest thing. So, it’d be real easy to build it and maintain it, and it looked so real.”
Had Disney created a real fiery set, the entire building might have burned down during that one fateful day in 1967.
The Many Variants of Pirates of the Caribbean
This episode also discusses why Pirates of the Caribbean doesn’t look the same at various theme parks.
For instance, Walt Disney World fans may not even realize that Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland comes with a double dip of waterfall plummets.
The Magic Kingdom version lacks that feature due to the Central Florida water table, which allows for only a single drop at the start.
So, this version of the Pirates of the Caribbean map proves flatter.
Florida fans should be happy to have the attraction at all, though. As the episode points out, Disney originally intended something different.
After all, Florida signifies the northern border of the Caribbean. Since it’s already there, why would it want a pirate attraction, right?
That was the thought process in 1970, but fans revolted at the notion of not having the latest ride.
So, Magic Kingdom opened without Pirates of the Caribbean in 1971.
The planned substitute, Marc Davis’ Western River Expedition, never came to pass, though, as fans demanded action.
Instead, by 1973, the construction walls around Adventureland indicated it would get what New Orleans Square already had.
That December, Magic Kingdom’s version of Pirates of the Caribbean would debut.
Similarly, Tokyo Disneyland’s iteration opened with the park itself in April 1983. The water table there only allowed for one waterfall plunge as well.
By the time Disneyland Paris planned its version, Imagineer Tony Baxter had come up with a splendid new idea. He wanted a sword duel!
Yes, this park’s Pirates of the Caribbean features something none of the others does, an AA sword fight. You can watch it here:
While the broad strokes remain the same around the world, each iteration of Pirates of the Caribbean looks and works slightly differently.
That’s especially true of…
Battle for the Sunken Treasure
In 2016, Shanghai Disneyland opened with an E-ticket attraction unlike any other in the world, even though it had Pirates of the Caribbean in the name.
Four years before then, Disney had acquired Lucasfilm and, along with it, Industrial Lights & Magic (ILM).
That’s the legendary special effects team who had worked on – you guessed it! – the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise!
Disney boldly plotted Treasure Cove, a full Pirates themed land building on its iconic attraction.
Bob Weis, the recently retired President of Disney Imagineering, assembled an entire team to create this land.
Weis chose Luc Mayrand to lead the project, and the Imagineer worked with Bill George, Hilcia Pena, Amy Jupiter, Bill George, and Ric Turner to create something unprecedented.
This group has become the modern answer to those Disney Legends of the 1960s in building the definitive Pirates of the Caribbean ride for the 21st century.
Mayrand’s vision for the next-generation Pirates called for the attraction to go underwater.
Yes, this version submerges guests…without getting them wet.
In fact, Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure bypasses a longstanding tradition for this attraction.
You still ride in a boat floating in the water, but magnets control your trajectory now. It’s a much more elevated system than underwater rails.
Imagineers know where you will be and when, allowing them to tell a complex story in real-time, one with modern special effects worthy of ILM.
“We Should Have Gotten the Live Chicken”
Hilariously, the one sticking point involves a recurring gag with Pirates of the Caribbean, the presence of chickens.
These creatures have been around since the beginning, but Disney lacked the budget to create CGI chickens. I swear that’s what the episode says.
So, Imagineers used greenscreen tech with live chickens to insert them into a scene for comedic effect.
Little touches like this explain why Disney has dominated the theme park industry since its inception.
Such details also explain why Behind the Attraction is a must-watch series on Disney+.
How else would you know to look for the chickens during the climactic battle? Here they are!
And I didn’t even discuss the water problem that a team of engineers had to solve to prevent boats from scraping the bottom!
You’ll have to watch the end of the episode for that! Here’s a link to episode 2-1 of Behind the Attraction on Disney+.
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Feature Photo: Disney