Top Eight Changes to Pirates of the Caribbean
I have an opinion about the new animatronic on Pirates of the Caribbean. But I'm not the only one and I'm sure you've seen opinions all over the internet since the edition opened last week. So instead of diving into what's right? And what's wrong with this change, I'm going to rank some of the changes that have come to this show out over the last few decades. Some of these are gone now, but hopefully you remember them still. I'll list them with my favorite changes up top, and my least favorite at the bottom.
1. Lift Hill Treasure
This change came in 1996, and I think it added to the story. Where Jack Sparrow now sits in his rocking chair at the bottom of the waterfall, there used to be two pirates struggling to carry a bundle of treasure. As you moved up the lift hill, you got to skeletons that died fighting over the treasure. This made a nice bookend to the show. You enter the pirate grotto and see skeletons, the remnants of greedy treasure seekers who had been cursed. In the middle of the ride, you saw what they were like before they died. Then, you finished with a reminder of what happens to the greedy beholders of the bewitched treasure. It was simple, it added to the story, and it didn't detract from existing elements.
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Pirate Stopping His "Friend" from Pulling Treasure up the Waterfall. Photo from davelandweb.com |
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Pirate Pulling Treasure up the Waterfall. Photo from davelandweb.com |
2. Mist Screen
I was torn about putting this one high on my list. I think the effect is really cool (when it works). It seemed to do much better when it was new in 2006 than it did towards the end of its life in 2018. A missed curtain was used in the tunnel between the treasure grotto and the pirates' attack on the Spanish for it. You would get a warning from one of the major villains of the films. Blackbeard was fine. But with how Davy Jones comes and goes do quickly in the water, this was a good use of technology to tell the story. It's suffered when they were too many boats going through at the same time, because the mist screen didn't have enough time to create a solid projection wall.
The reason I have a hard time saying I liked it, is that I thought the dark tunnel with the foreboding warnings were even better. It's a shame we had to lose them.
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| Davy Jones Mist Screen |
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This change from "Take a Wench for a Bride" to the food auction was done so the ride would match the sensibilities of modern audiences. I want to set that aside, and focus just on the story and execution, not whether it was needed from an ethical perspective.
I think this change was very well executed. This is in a part of the ride where we are seeing pirates interact with each other. They are gluttonous and greedy, and we're able to see those traits in both versions of the scene. Red makes a nice complement to the auctioneer. Her character design and dialogue don't feel out of place. The ride's continuity, the atmosphere, and the story are still intact, and it gave us a new high quality animatronic.
I was at D23 when Marty Sklar explained where this change came from. His description was not a popular one. But I thought the fan reaction was very strong, especially since the complaint was about why it was changed and not the quality of the change. Pirate's and Haunted Mansion are both getting constant updates; at least this time, there was more of a reason than just to tweak something that was already working.
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The Original “Take a Wench for a Bride” Scene |
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4. Captain BarbosaCaptain Barbosa was added to the Wicked Wench during the 2006 update that added Jack Sparrow. He's a new animatronic voiced by Geoffery Rush, the actor from the film. Most of the dialogue is the same. In my book, this is a relatively minor change but ties the movie to the ride. You might argue that it changes the continuity because this pirate Captain is still at the well dunking the mayor. However, it's a different Captain at the auction scene. So before, there were two captains leading those scenes, and now there are three. |
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The Original Black Beard Figure on the Wicked Wench |
The Captain Barbosa Figure on the Wicked Wench |
5. Chase Scene
The chase scenes were altered in the 1990s. Before the update, the pirates were chasing after the women. With the update, the pirates have stolen food and the women are chasing after them to take back what was taken. It changed from a suggestive scene to a comical one. It may be less historically accurate, but this was a good change that made the attraction a bit more family friendly and added some comic relief. Many people will never notice the difference. This was a minor but good change.
The Original Chase Scene |
6. Jack Sparrow
My opinion of Jack Sparrow in the ride has changed over the years. Initially, I thought he was a great addition because I love the movies and I was excited to see him there. As time passes, I keep thinking, "Why is he here?" His appearance as a painting in the queue is fine. Those paintings used to be all historical pirates, and Jack changes that. But the ride isn't claiming to be a history of piracy so it doesn't bother me. When you see the first animatronic, he's hiding among the mannequins and everyone is looking for him. But there's no explanation of why anyone is looking for him. When you see him popping out of the barrel, pirate with a map and the key is convinced that Jack will never find them, so he'll never get to the treasure. But there is no explanation of why Jack would want that particular treasure, and there's still no hint about why the previous pirates were looking for him. When we finally do see him, it appears that he's gotten both the map and the key, because he has the treasure.
Interspersed with these incoherent sightings of Jack are completely unrelated scenes. There's an auction, a bunch of drunk pirates in a burning town, and pirates trying to escape from jail. But this storyline is entirely separate from Jack. The idea of the cursed treasure from the cave scenes still has a loose connection to this storyline. But nothing about the treasure that Jack has found appears to be cursed.
Taking on their own, I don't have a problem with the Jack Sparrow scenes. There's just not a coherent story from start to finish on that ride. Walt famously explained that pirates was designed to be like a cocktail party. You're not expected to hear all of the conversation every step of the way, but you hear it enough in each place to give you a sense for the environment and what's going on. That also makes the attraction feel less static, because you won't necessarily hear the same portions of dialogue each time. It's a far cry from the rewrite ability that comes from changes as drastic as Star Tours sees with each ride through, but it does point in the direction of looking for ways to encourage people to return to the attraction.
Jack Sparrow's presence, however, does not fit with this concept. He's one character sprinkled in just enough to seem like a major character, but infrequently enough that he doesn't pull it together
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7. Octopus Man
I don't like the octopus man.
It's a neat effect, but Pirates of the Caribbean has suffered for years from overzealous Imagineering. The right is fantastic, and a lot of designers chose their theme park careers because of this ride. They want to leave their mark on it. I'm sure there's also pressure for management to keep it relevant and popular because it draws crowds and has such a high capacity.
There's another group of Imagineers (and parks fans) who look back at the original Journey into Imagination as one of the marvelous of dark ride development. One of the most missed effects was the butterfly on the swing that disappeared as you passed it.
The Octopus Man seems to me to be the intersection of these two groups. Someone wanted to bring back the butterfly and thought that the best way to do it was to create a one-man transition from cursed treasure and skeletons to the treasure hunting pirates. He also looks so cramped in the net, I'm not sure if he has legs.
Personally, I thought the mist screen was better for the attraction. And I loved the dark tunnel that preceded both of these versions.
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| Journey into Imagination's Disappearing Butterfly |
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| The Octopus Man |
8. New Animatronic
When Imagineering started sharing the demo version of the projection mapped face, I was impressed. There have been some issues with screen faces (like Anna and Elsa at Epcot), But not every screen has been an issue. The buzz lightyear figures work well. Sebastian, in the undersea scene of The Little mermaid dark Ride looks good. It was more of an issue of how to hide the screens and when to use them than it was about whether you can use a screen.
The figure itself looks really cool. You can tell that it's a screen and it doesn't look the same as a physical skeleton. But the motions are smooth, you can see it changing in real time, and the story beat is a fun one. There is some dimensionality missing from it because the face is still a screen rather than being entirely featured. But it's good enough to be believable.
My concern with the figure is similar to what I think about Jack Sparrow. It doesn't fit thematically with the grotto portion of the attraction. It's really close on the story. The plot point is that there are skeletons that were left behind by the pirates who were cursed by the treasure. This figure lets you see that curse occur for one of the pirates. However, the cycle in his gimmick is built on the fact that he turns back to a human when the skeleton starts to drop the coin. But touching the treasure has never been part of what made them skeletons. The other skeletons in this section of the ride don’t hold the treasure; the curse came because they touched it in the past. The stronger aspect that I don't like is that this area does well at being spooky. After you come down the waterfall, you can hear the ghost voices warning that dead men tell no tales. There's a foreboding feeling from seeing the skeletons that have fought each other, are trying to drive a ship through a storm, and have now been frozen in time amongst the treasure. The lighting contributes to that feeling. The sound contributes. This is a solid atmosphere.
The new animatronic figure is designed to be funny. The skeletal face doesn't look foreboding. The laugh is Goofy. It's a comic gag. He also feels the same role as the Octopus Man. Now you have two independent scenes demonstrating how the cursed treasure can affect the pirates. And the problem with this one is that the scene right before him and the scene right after him of somber. It's a change in tone that isn't needed in this part of the ride.
I want to emphasize that I don't think the effect is bad. I just don't think it belonged here.
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The original skeleton on the pile of gold |
The new animatronic on the pile of gold |
Bonus. Mermaids
This effect never made its way to Disneyland, but it was at the Magic Kingdom. So, shout out to the mermaids lurking beneath the surface. These were added after the release of On Stranger Tides.
What is the ride now?
Pirates of the Caribbean is still a fantastic ride. Like I said before, it's designed to be a cocktail party. You don't have to get the full story on a single ride-thru. The storytellers’ goal is to put you into the world of the pirates. However, the approach to that world is very different today from what it was when the ride opened in 1967. At that point, it was the story of a cursed treasure and the pillaging and plundering that the pirates would do to find it. The tone was consistent, and it was a single experience.
In the modern version, there are new characters. They aren't always explained and don't always need to be. Sometimes they draw so much focus that they feel like they should have a full story, even though they don't. The tone changes from somber to comic to somber to comic to somber to comic. The new animatronic figure as well as the Jack Sparrow characters make it feel inconsistent.
The Imagineers would disagree with me, but the ride now feels like a compilation of piratey scenes, rather than a cohesive pirate experience. These elements are still fun and there is some wonderful engineering behind it. But A change can be good and still not be right.
