Let's revisit the ranking of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean rides
After visiting Shanghai Disneyland for the first time last week, I want to revisit the question of which is Disney's best Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
Last December, I tackled that question: Which is the best version of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean ride? According to Theme Park Insider's year-end reader survey, Shanghai's Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure ranked #9 on your worldwide best attractions list. Anaheim's original Pirates of the Caribbean ranked #15, while the Paris installation ranked #31.
The Orlando version did not make the cut among readers' top 50 attractions.
Having ridden all of these in person now in the past year, I want to add my thoughts. First, Battle for the Sunken Treasure is a Pirates of the Caribbean ride the way that Mission Breakout and Cosmic Rewind are both Guardians of the Galaxy rides. With different ride systems and stories, no one should consider those DCA and Epcot attractions as installations of the same ride.
Same with Pirates in Shanghai versus Pirates everywhere else. None of Disney's Pirates installations is identical to another. But Shanghai shares little more than a partial title with the other four.
Yet theme park fans compare differing attractions to one another all the time. A comparison of Mission Breakout versus Cosmic Rewind is fair game, so long as it acknowledges all the rides' differences. So is a comparison between Battle for the Sunken Treasure and the other Pirates rides.
That said, after riding it in person, I found that one brief moment at the end of the Shanghai ride diminished it for me. Battle for the Sunken Treasure is an amazing attraction that deserves a high spot on our year-end top 50 list. Its use of media and practical effects create an effective illusion of inhabiting the magical underwater world of the Pirates films. I love the ride, and I am so grateful that I finally had the opportunity to experience it in person.
But... at the end of the ride, an animatronic Captain Jack sends us off by singing a line from "Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me)" - the first time that we have heard the original ride's theme song in the Shanghai attraction.
At that moment, I was filled with a longing to be back on the Anaheim original, or even the Paris remix. I missed the George Bruns/X Atencio theme song, the all-practical sets, and the familiar animatronics. And that's not the feeling I want when exiting a world-class attraction - a longing to have been on another attraction, instead.
That knocks Battle for the Sunken Treasure down a few spots, for me. So, for now, mark me as favoring the Paris version, followed by Anaheim, and then Shanghai. The unrevised Tokyo installation comes next, followed by the abbreviated Orlando installation.
Enjoy our on-ride videos of my top three Pirates rides.
Disneyland Paris:
The Disneyland original:
And Shanghai Disneyland's:
Which one is your favorite?
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Replies (4)
I would love to see a similar exercise done on Peter Pan attractions. While the DisneySea installation possesses the superior ride system (& likely experience), similar to Battle for the Sunken Treasure it's so different as to be nearly incomparable. By contrast, the Shanghai suspended dark ride is the definitive version in my opinion. DLR will always have the original, but the MK version needs to be replaced with the Shanghai upgrade ASAP.
For the record, my PotC ranking:
1. Shanghai
2. Paris
3. DLR
4. MK
I would say both the Shanghai version and Disneyland are equally great. Disneylands is Walt's Magnus Opus for theme park rides. Shanghai is a worthy successor and should be built in Florida for all the people that can't or won't go to Shanghai.
Having ridden Anaheim version last year, still a wonderful experience to capture the feel.
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I've been on all of them DLR's is unquestionably my favorite.
Tokyo's is a nice replica and all, but that's what it is, a replica.
Paris' is much more pronounced in terms of its queue and placemaking and the ride may be just as good, and that's great for DLP, if I were in charge I would've done the same thing, but again to me the "vibe" of the original makes it a unique experience.
WDW's was very obviously built to be open quickly as possible because the park lacked major attractions when it opened, and is just not nearly as good as the original. I feel like if Disney tried to do something like this at WDW nowadays they would get absolutely roasted by the fanbase.
Obviously Shanghai Disneyland's is a totally different experience so you can't directly compare it. I think its a great attraction, but much like you I still prefer the original (although the easter egg or whatever you want to call it isn't triggering to me lol).