Disneyland plusses its Pirates of the Caribbean ride
Disneyland did not just repair its Pirates of the Caribbean ride while it was down for refurbishment this spring. They plussed it.
With the ride's reopening today, Walt Disney Imagineering is revealing the new pirate character that it has installed on the classic indoor boat ride. The new character helps provide more detail to the story that Disney created with its Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Ever since the theme park ride opened in 1967, skeletal pirates have been sitting on piles of treasure in the grottos after the waterfall from the Blue Bayou. The Pirates of the Caribbean films explained that the pirates became skeletons due to a curse on that treasure.
Now, on the Anaheim ride, Disneyland guests can see that curse in action.
Using WDI's new projection technology, a pirate changes from human to skeleton as guests float by and watch. The tech uses forward projection upon an articulated animatronic face to create the transition effect. Here is the "making of" video from Walt Disney Imagineering, which shows the effect.
I first saw this tech in action during one of my off-the-record visits to WDI earlier this year. It's a far step beyond Disney's first attempts at using rear projection to animate animatronic faces - a technique that WDI has backed away from by replacing the Audio Animatronic figures on EPCOT's Frozen Ever After ride, for example.
With this enhancement, I now am fully onboard with the original Anaheim installation being the best version of Disney's traditional Pirates of the Caribbean ride, followed by the one at Disneyland Paris. But, as always, data collection will need to continue indefinitely for me to be completely certain of that decision.
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Replies (9)
Man, this looks pretty awful and messes with the flow of the attraction in a big way. I wish these guys would quit tinkering like this.
@robert: in the actual on-ride experience, does the face project so brightly as it does in this video? I’m not averse to this tech, but if the projection clearly illuminates the face beyond the scope of the show lighting it can take me out of the immersion.
I tend to disagree Jacob. As Walt famously said, "Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world." Making changes to attractions given new technology, techniques, and evolving tastes is a necessity in every theme park. A theme park is not a museum, even though some fans want stuff to be the same as it was decades ago.
I don't have a problem with good tinkering! This is bad tinkering and is part of a pattern that makes me skeptical they're capable of good tinkering.
I'm not against tweaking classic attractions in principle, but at some point I think it does approach Lucas' Special Editions of Star Wars. Sure Greedo says Maclunky now -- but what is the additive effect?
IMO this seems terrible. I’m fine with adding stuff to classic attractions, whether it be the hat box ghost or the pepper’s ghost pirate right before the battle scene on POTC, but this just looks terrible. Really kills the mood of how still/haunting everything is and makes the battle scene hit less hard.
I hate it. No more tinkering, please.
It looks like they dropped a Fortnite character into Pirates. Also, the audio track is terrible. They could've introduced this type of projection mapping at other attractions, like, I dunno, a certain attraction in Florida with a big, broken animatronic that isn't currently doing anything.
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A reminder way back in the 70s when WDW putting in Pirates, Marc Davis wanted an effect like this but tech not there yet. Good to see it finally coming.