Sarangel
<font color=red><font color=navy>Rumor has it ...<
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2000
- Messages
- 3,078
From MiceAge, the (supposed) details of the POTC Rehab in Disneyland:
We'll begin by telling you about one of the worst kept secrets on the Internet, the upcoming rehab of Pirates of the Caribbean. We've been keeping you updated on this topic for months now, and since our last update the project has been officially greenlit and received its funding. The refurbishment dates have also been firmed up, and the ride is now scheduled to close March 6th and reopen 15 weeks later on June 22nd. (The popular Blue Bayou restaurant will be closed that whole time as well.) When the ride does finally reopen in time for summer crowds, Disneyland visitors will find Jack Sparrow has moved in and tweaked the storyline of the 39-year-old ride to align more with the second and third sequels of the blockbuster original movie. Read on only if you want to learn of the surprises Walt Disney Imagineering currently has planned for both the Disneyland and Walt Disney World versions of the ride.
Visitors to Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean next June will find the familiar ride basically unchanged as they approach the building and work their way through the queue. The background music may be updated a bit in the queue and loading area with some selections from the movie, and a major part of the Disneyland version of the rehab is the complete replacement of the audio system with state of the art equipment throughout the massive ride. The audio replacement project has the Imagineers assigned to this task giddy, as they've been able to do wonderful things with the new digital versions of the original 1967 audio tracks.
This entire Pirates project really has WDI excited, as it's the first major remake of an E-Ticket they've done since Steven Davidson made a huge name for himself with his popular holiday versions of Small World and Haunted Mansion. Those Steven Davidson creations caused quite a bit of grumbling inside WDI, as it was a bitter pill to watch an "outsider" (hired by Paul Pressler and Cynthia Harriss no less!) get his hands on two beloved WDI classics. As a member of Disneyland's Entertainment Department not connected in any way to WDI, Davidson earned grudging respect from most Imagineers however when the finished products turned out so well, and the lines for those two aging E-Tickets grew to lengths unseen since Richard Nixon was in office. But with this big Pirates project, it will be WDI's turn to prove they can still work magic with aging E-Tickets.
Upon its return in June the ride will look and feel exactly as it always has as you float past the Blue Bayou restaurant patio. Once you've plunged down the first and second drops though, things will begin to change. The mythical character of Davy Jones plays prominently in both the second and third movie installments, and his ghostly voice will now echo throughout the first section of the caverns as the boats sail past the first few show scenes. The "Hurricane Scene", the "Crews Quarters Scene", the "Captains Quarters Scene" and the "Treasure Scene" will all be unchanged visually except for a few new props used in the movie, but Davy Jones will offer a dialogue via the new audio system that will set up the tale of a marauding crew of pirates who are searching for their double-agent shipmate Jack Sparrow.
As the boats float past the Treasure Scene and into the dark cavern that leads to main part of the ride, the fun really begins as a new projection effect appears on a "mist curtain" above the boats. Davy Jones appears in the mist, looking just as he will in the upcoming movies as a true pirate's pirate with a beard made of wiggling octopus tentacles. It's at this point in the ride that WDI will attempt to explain that the voice that has warned that "Dead Men Tell No Tales!" since 1967 has actually been Davy Jones all along. And just beyond this new effect the rockwork in the soaring cavern area will be rebuilt with a ships crow's nest with a skeleton slumped over the side. But as the boats pass below, shafts of moonlight will hit the skeleton revealing rotting flesh and the animatronic skeleton will lean over the side of the crow's nest and utter ominous warnings to the passengers floating below.
As the boats sail out into the "Battle Scene", and one of the ride's iconic moments, the riders will discover that the original 1967 pirate ship known as the "Wicked Wench" has been remade into the Black Pearl seen in the movies. The familiar animatronic pirate captain will be replaced by a new animatronic version of Captain Barbossa from the movies, and Captain Barbossa's parrot will also make his big debut before he returns repeatedly later on to help the new plotline along from scene to scene.
Captain Barbossa will have dialogue that will accuse the townspeople of hiding Jack Sparrow from him, and WDI hopes to quickly establish that the pirates will begin their rampage through the town all in an effort to root out Jack Sparrow. New effects are also planned in this area that will simulate cannonballs passing overhead through the use of sharp blasts of air aimed at the boats.
As the boats enter the "Dunking the Mayor Scene," the first of three Jack Sparrow animatronics makes its appearance as Jack appears to hide behind barrels and crates. The Auctioneer Scene will play out much as it does now, before the boats sail on to the "Gluttony Scene" where Jack Sparrow appears again. This time, Jack will be hiding in the barrel just behind the Pooped Pirate, and reinvent the gag from the 1960's with the pretty girl hiding and peeking out of the top of the barrel. The Burning City Scene won't be changed much, and the ride's theme song will continue to be featured prominently there.
But as the boats pass by the Jail Scene, Jack Sparrow appears a third and final time on the opposite side of the flume. Here he'll be seen escaping with a bag of treasure as he hums the "Yo Ho" theme song and laughs at his hapless fellow pirates stuck in the jail across the waterway. Barbossa's parrot appears on the ramp back up to the main level, and the voice of Davy Jones also will be added to that area as he laments that we won't be so lucky to escape next time.
The Walt Disney World version will also play out much the same with new animatronics, although that truncated 8 minute version of the 15 minute long Disneyland original will have to squeeze some of the special effects into much smaller spaces and shorter time frames. The Imagineers feel that the Disneyland version of this remake will be the superior version from an artistic standpoint, and Disney will be using mainly the Disneyland version as it hypes the new ride to the national media next summer.
Disneyland will also be playing host to another celebrity-filled movie premiere for the summer sequel, with the refurbished ride's debut playing very prominently into all of the media activities and attention generated by the movie premiere. The rainy and hot Florida weather in June isn't really conducive to a big movie premiere anyway, plus the short freeway drive to Anaheim from west Los Angeles/Malibu always guarantees more celebrities and media for an event like this than could ever be mustered out of the swamps surrounding Orlando. The Walt Disney World remake of the ride will be marketed locally in the East Coast markets however, as soon as the movie is released.
This remake of the ride promises to cause quite a stir, and Burbank and TDA have placed a lot of pressure on WDI to make sure it's all a positive change. Folks in TDA's marketing department are still wince when they remember the last major remake to Pirates of the Caribbean back in 1997 when the local talk radio stations fueled an uproar over the "PC changes" caused by Tony Baxter's inclusion of old World of Motion animatronics that stopped the pirates from chasing the ladies.
