Crew Roster
Joshamee Gibbs
Bo’sum
Clubba
Dog Ear
Grapple
Jack (the Monkey)
Jacoby
Katracho
Ragetti
Kochler
Mallot
Pintel
Maximo
Ketchum
Searus
Crimp
Simbakka
Twig
Weatherby
Matelot
Cotton
Cotton’s Parrot
Scratch
Anamaria
Nipperkin
Kursar
Ladbroc
Duncan
Marty
Quartetto
Moises
Le Jon
Tearla
William Turner
Monk
Fans of the Pirates film franchise will recognize many of these names, including Captain Jack Sparrow’s right-hand man Mr. Gibbs, Jack (the monkey), and of course young William Turner.
The second page of the journal lists the crew of Queen Anne’s Revenge:
Queen Anne’s Revenge
Capt. Edward Teach
Crew Roster
Angelica—First Mate
Quartermaster
Scrum
Gunner
Salaman
Ezekiel
Cook
Purser
Garheng
Derrick
The Cabin Boy
Captain Edward Teach is none other than the infamous pirate Blackbeard who was portrayed by actor Ian McShane in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011). A large mural of Blackbeard is painted on the opposite wall along with a map that designates locations familiar to fans of the Pirates movie franchise, including Tortuga and Port Royal.
A final magical secret found in the Tortuga Tavern provides a good dose of Disney nostalgia. Tortuga Tavern replaced another restaurant known as El Pirata y El Perico (“The Pirate and the Parrot”). If guests pay close attention, they will see the marquee for that restaurant, a sign for El Pirata on a wooden keg, hanging in the rafters of one of the Tortuga Tavern dining rooms.
More Adventureland Magical Secrets
The six Tiki god statues that sit across the walkway from the Magic Carpets of Aladdin were originally the creations of Imagineer Marc Davis, who worked extensively on both the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean attractions in Disneyland and Walt Disney World. As part of a refurbishment several years after the statues were installed, Imagineers replaced the original wooden structures with statues made of fiberglass and also gave them the ability to “spit” water at passing guests.
Tucked to the left after passing beneath Adventureland’s entrance from Main Street, U.S.A. is a small retail cart with a thatch roof and a sign labeled “Bwana Bob’s.” This small stand is a tribute to none other than Bob Hope! Hope starred in the 1963 film Call Me Bwana. He was long connected with the Disney company, and even dedicated Disney’s Contemporary Resort in 1971.
Many guests do not notice the small bird depicted atop the sign for the Sunshine Tree Terrace. This is the “Orange Bird,” a character created in 1970 by Disney as the mascot for the Florida Citrus Growers, the original sponsors of the Tropical Serenade and the Sunshine Pavilion. When the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, the Orange Bird could be seen walking around the Sunshine Tree Terrace and interacting with guests. The Orange Bird was notably the first non-animated film character created for the Disney theme parks. When the Florida Citrus Growers’ sponsorship ended in 1986, the Orange Bird’s presence in the park also ended.
Real History
Like so many other Magic Kingdom lands, the story of Walt Disney World’s Adventureland begins with the original version in Disneyland. Adventureland was one of the five original lands in Disneyland. It opened with that park on July 17, 1955. At that time, Disneyland’s Adventureland consisted of the Jungle Cruise…and not much else. The Swiss Family Treehouse and the Safari Shooting Gallery did not open until 1962, with Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room following in 1963. A small, confined walkway led through the land, and that area of the park remains congested even today. Imagineers used the lessons they learned in California when designing the Magic Kingdom’s version of Adventureland. The walkways and guest areas in Florida are much wider. This afforded Imagineers more room within which to immerse guests in foreign locales.
Adventureland opened with the Magic Kingdom on October 1, 1971, but it looked much different than it does today. On opening day, Adventureland only included three attractions: the Swiss Family Treehouse, the Jungle Cruise, and the Tropical Serenade. It also included the Safari Arcade, which included a variety of electronic shooting games, but that venue closed only a year later in 1972. It was the first attraction permanently closed in the Magic Kingdom, and was replaced by Col. Hathi’s Safari Club, a shopping area with a tropical flare selling chimes, shells and handbags. Today, this area is home to the Island Supply Company, which sells a variety of sunglasses.
Pirates of the Caribbean was not an opening day attraction at the Magic Kingdom. In fact, this fan-favorite attraction in Disneyland was never even intended to be included in the Magic Kingdom! But as soon as the park opened in 1971, guest demand for a Pirates of the Caribbean attraction overwhelmed cast members. This story is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2, but needless to say the overwhelming guest demand had the desired result. Disney included Pirates in a major expansion to Adventureland, a project that was completed in December of 1973. Known as “Caribbean Plaza,” this Adventureland addition greatly expanded the land’s area and also provided a much-needed connection to Frontierland. Before this addition, the primary walkway through Adventureland led to a dead end.
Adventureland underwent another major change in 2001 when the Agrabah Bazaar section was added. Inspired by the film Aladdin, this expansion included the addition of two new shops, the Agrabah Bazaar and the Zanzibar Trading Company, as well as the Magic Carpets of Aladdin attraction.
chapter two
Pirates of the Caribbean
I’m dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly, it’s the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they’re going to do something incredibly…stupid.
—Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Pirates of the Caribbean is a classic Disney dark ride that takes guests on a swashbuckling voyage past numerous scenes of rowdy pirates sacking a Caribbean town. The attraction has entertained guests at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World for more than four decades. It is equal parts rum and tongue-in-cheek humor, and combines classic Disney storytelling, an immersive queue, numerous audio-animatronic characters, and a famous theme song to create nothing short of a Disney Imagineering masterpiece. In fact, Pirates of the Caribbean was so overwhelmingly successful that it set the bar for all future Disney attractions.
The original version of Pirates of the Caribbean opened in Disneyland in 1967. Thanks to both an extremely positive reception by guests and the promotion of the attraction on Disney’s popular weekly television program Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, Pirates became a cultural phenomenon and the most popular attraction in Disneyland. Notwithstanding this immense popularity, Disney made the strange decision to not include Pirates in the original plans for its massive Florida Project, Disney World. Instead, Disney tasked one of its most brilliant Imagineers, and the man principally responsible for creating Pirates of the Caribbean, with an ambitious goal: create the greatest Disney attraction ever. Disney wanted to “out-pirate” its previous masterpiece with a grand concept known as Thunder Mesa. As you will see, the immersive storytelling details and theming of Pirates of the Caribbean are only surpassed by the true story of how Pirates finally washed ashore in Florida. While dead men tell no tales…fortunately I do!
Backst
ory
Starting at the End:
A Time Travelling Tale of Right and Wrong
Most guests assume that the backstory for Pirates of the Caribbean is simple: a group of fun-loving pirates are on a quest to raid a Caribbean port town for treasure, women, and rum. That is certainly a reasonable assumption. After all, the attraction does take guests on a journey past vignettes depicting a pirate ship attacking a city’s portside fortress, and rowdy buccaneers raiding the city and ultimately setting the entire town ablaze. However, Pirates of the Caribbean is in fact a morality tale that shows what happens to pirates who plunder and pillage, and that is a fate of death and torment. Confused? In order to understand this story, you have to start at the end…which actually takes place at the beginning.
The simple “pirate attack” backstory that most guests assume is accurate is based on one fundamental misconception: that all of the scenes depicted in the attraction take place in chronological order. One of the first scenes in Pirates of the Caribbean is known as “Dead Man’s Cove.” In this scene, several pirate skeletons are scattered along a sandy beach. All of those skeletons clearly encountered bad circumstances, as they each have swords pierced through them. Even though Dead Man’s Cove is at the beginning of the attraction, Disney Imagineers actually intended for that scene to show the ultimate fate that befalls the pirates. In other words, if the scenes in Pirates of the Caribbean were in chronological order, Dead Man’s Cove would be the very last one.
After passing by Dead Man’s Cove and Hurricane Lagoon, which also shows a cursed pirate skeleton at the helm of wrecked ship, guests go down a small waterfall and are transported “back in time” where the attraction reveals the series of sins that ultimately led the pirates to their grim fate. Author Jason Surrell explained the development of this backstory from the earliest blue-sky concepts for a Disney pirate-based attraction:
In its various incarnations as a walk-through and ride-through attraction, Pirates of the Caribbean was always designed to be a collection of loosely related vignettes that would transport guests back to the golden age of piracy. As the concept developed in Marc Davis’s sketches and storyboards, then later in the scale model and X Atencio’s scripts, the experience ultimately evolved into the story of a pirate crew that lays waste to a Caribbean seaport in search of hidden treasure. Little do they know that the treasure carries a terrible curse and that the pirates must pay for their prize with their very souls, spending eternity in a graveyard of haunted caverns.
Imagineers and guests alike have speculated as to exactly when the story takes place. The entire experience is officially considered one long journey from 1860s New Orleans [for the Disneyland version] back in time to piracy’s golden age in the late 1700s. But some prefer to think of the Grotto and the Caribbean seaport as existing in the same time period, with the attacking pirates simply being the latest crew to come searching for the cursed treasure, ultimately destined to suffer the same grim fate as the poor souls who have come before them in the haunted caverns.
—Jason Surrell, Pirates of the Caribbean, From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies (2005), p. 87.
The confusion over the correct time periods depicted throughout Pirates of the Caribbean would have been avoided had the following dialogue, which was originally intended for the Dead Man’s Cove portion of the attraction, been included:
GHOSTLY VOICE #1: “Hear ye a dead man’s tale o’ a dastardly deed. Brave seamen, these…Helped bury the gold they did, then silenced forever. Har! So thought that black ’earted divil!...But stay, I told their tale ‘afore…now I be tellin’ it again. Here be where the gold…Dead men tell no tales!”
GHOSTLY VOICE #2: “Dead men tell no tales, harrr, heh-heh-heh! Look there upon these pirates bold, take heed whilst I tell ye the gruesome details o’ their slight misfortune…and the treacherous act what did them in. Unsuspectin’ rogues, unmindful…Dead men tell no tales!”
—Id. at p. 79 (emphasis added)
This dialogue makes clear that the Dead Man’s Cove scene takes place in present time, while the remainder of the attraction depicts “the treacherous act what did them in.”
On April 30, 2013, the Disney Parks Blog provided further credence to the “morality tale” backstory of Pirates of the Caribbean by virtue of a series of posts about the stories behind some of the most popular attractions in the parks. The very first entry in that series was a backstory for the Disneyland version of Pirates of the Caribbean, and read in its entirety as follows (emphasis added):
The story begins …
After boarding a small boat at Lafitte’s Landing on the outskirts of New Orleans, you pass an old shack with an elderly man playing a banjo on his porch. The strums of the banjo are intended to give a feeling of isolation in this remote backwater area. Soon, your boat plunges down two waterfalls—the second taking you back in time.
You enter Dead Man’s Cove, where you meet pirates who died long ago and seem to be frozen in time. Your boat then journeys into the Ghostly Grotto, where you are transported further back in time to the days when the very pirates you met in Dead Man’s Cove are invading a small Caribbean seaport village in search of the town’s treasure and the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow. As you wind through the town, you find Captain Jack lurking around in search of the treasure himself. The boat passes an auction, where the pirates bid for a bride (go ahead—you know the line), as more pirates ransack every nook and cranny of the village just around the corner.
To escape the burning village, you float past the town jail and into the arsenal where pirates take target practice all around your boat, completely oblivious to the dangers all around them (including the barrels of gunpowder). When you find Captain Jack Sparrow at the town’s treasure vault, he offers you—his shipmates—a share of the booty (after he takes his cut … of course).
As you venture up the waterfall at the end of your voyage, you return to the time and place where your journey began, but with some words of warning in case you decide to visit again …
This Disney disclosure makes it clear that Pirates of the Caribbean is not a celebration of robbing and looting. Instead, it is a story about what happens to Pirates who pillage and plunder, with Dead Man’s Cove being the result, and the scenes that follow being the cause.
Pirates of the Caribbean Film Franchise and an Updated Storyline
Pirates of the Caribbean is unique in that it inspired an entire movie franchise, which, in turn, inspired many changes back to the attraction itself. The movie series started in 2003 with Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. The original Pirates film recounted the tale of blacksmith orphan Will Turner, who embarks on a journey to rescue the love of his life, Elizabeth Swann, with the help of enigmatic pirate Captain Jack Sparrow. The cursed crew of the Black Pearl, Sparrow’s former ship, and its new captain, Hector Barbossa, hold Swann captive. The movie starred Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, Orlando Bloom from Lord of the Rings fame as Will Turner, Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Swann, and Geoffrey Rush as the notorious Captain Hector Barbossa. The film was a runaway success for Disney, grossing approximately $650 million worldwide. To date, four Pirates sequels have been released: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017).
Following the phenomenal success of Curse of the Black Pearl, Imagineers decided to make a series of changes to the Pirates attraction that would incorporate both Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Hector Barbosa. While the individual scenes of Pirates of the Caribbean are discussed in detail below, from a storytelling perspective, a new purpose was given for the pirate attack and raid on the Caribbean town: Barbosa and his crew are looking for Captain Jack Sparrow. Although Barbosa only appears one time (captaining the Wicked Wench as it attacks the fort), Captain Jack appears throughout the attraction, including in a revised finale where Jack is celebrating his vi
ctory in a treasure room filled with gold and jewels.
Based on the these revisions, the backstory for the attraction again appears to be simple: Captain Barbosa and his crew of scallywags are chasing after Captain Jack Sparrow, who ultimately proves too cunning and ends up with the town’s treasure. However, this assumption is based on the same “chronological order” misconception discussed above. The Disney Parks Blog “backstory” post (which even references Captain Jack Sparrow) makes clear that guests unquestionably go back in time following the Dead Man’s Cove scene. That certainly begs the question of which pirates end up as murdered skeletons in the Cove? Captain Jack Sparrow? Barbosa? That is now up to guest interpretation. But my own personal belief is that Jack Sparrow makes it out unscathed (of course he does!), while the other cursed members of the Black Pearl meet their doom.
Storytelling Elements
The Queue
Exterior Façade
Pirates of the Caribbean is located in the Caribbean Plaza section of Adventureland. Caribbean Plaza harkens back to the 17th and 18th century Spanish and British colonies of the West Indies. The structures in Caribbean Plaza reflect this geographic region and time period, including the use of brown stucco exteriors and red clay tile roofs. This setting stands in stark contrast to the theming of the original Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyland which is set in 1860s New Orleans.
The Magic Kingdom version of Pirates is housed in a distinctive show building that is themed as an old Spanish fortress from the 17th century. A sign just inside the building’s canopied entrance identifies the structure as the “Castillo del Morro.” The roman numerals at the bottom of that sign specify that the Castillo del Morro was constructed in 1643, which ties in perfectly with the overall setting of Caribbean Plaza. El Castillo de San Felipe del Morro, a real 16th century Spanish citadel that was constructed in San Juan, Puerto Rico, inspired the structure’s design.
Adventureland, Tomorrowland, and Fantasyland Page 4
