I must apologize for my failure to complete my projected magnum opus on the forty-fifth anniversary of the Pirates of the Caribbean at Walt Disney World. I was just swimming in a pool of laziness and I put it on hold for the midway point between the 15th and the 25th. I figured that it would be a great Christmas gift for everyone involved.
Let's talk about the date. It's "known" by everyone in the Disney-sphere that the Pirates ride at Disney World opened its wooden doors to the public on 15 December 1973.
According to the Eyes & Ears newsletter of 1 December 1973, the opening was set for 15 December 1973, which usually refers to a cast member preview or even a soft opening in the context of when a ride is debuted.
Since the attraction apparently had its grand opening on the 16th according to local Orlando newspapers (which was likely a press opening), it's been suggested that actor Rock Hudson, who was in town for the narration of the Candlelight Processional, did two ceremonies, but the current evidence regarding the opening date points to the ceremonies taking place on 15 December 1973. The 17th of December 1973 was also suggested as an opening date for guests, according to the Walt Disney World News magazine issued for December 1973.
So it's declared, until there is certain evidence to the contrary, the opening date of the Pirates was 15 December 1973.
Okay, let's move on with the plans to celebrate the 45th. I suggested the formation of the Caribbean Plaza Historical Society, which is dedicated to the design and history behind one of Disney World's famous evocative lands.
I also worked on a possible tee-shirt design and I posted about the history of the ride.
Let's take a trip back in time to 1967 when the Pirates had debuted and the Florida Project was underway. So the Pirates were omitted from the serious considerations of WED for the park in Florida. There were several reasons for the omission: it would cost too much, it did not fit into the landscape of the park as it seemed redundant (Florida is too close to the Caribbean), pirates were part of Florida lore (fake pirates in a state where real pirates were more interesting), and Florida was too close to New Orleans for a "Square" land.
The Pirates were replaced with the cowboys of the Western River Expedition and October 1971 loomed closer and closer.
Immediately after the October 1971 opening of the Magic Kingdom, guests who were expecting the same experiences as guests in California were very, very disappointed that the Pirates weren't there. So in December 1971, the Pirates ride was approved for construction and decisions were made to include the ride. April 1972 had the site selected for the Pirates and a May 1972 Ears and Eyes announcement on the arrival of the Pirates (set for summer 1973) with most elements identical to the one in California. The writer of the announcement even included that it was start out in the Louisiana bayou, which either suggests that WED had planned some sort of New Orleans Square atmosphere to that corner of the park or that the writer knew the ride in California and assumed it would be a copy of the original.
Either way, Disney management held a press conference of sorts on 21 October 1972 about upcoming projects for Walt Disney World at the Contemporary Resort. One of the projects was, of course, the being-designed Pirates of the Caribbean and the new version was given a new sub-land called Caribbean Plaza, instead of New Orleans Square, and it was slated to debut during the 1973 Christmas season.
Since construction on the attraction began in September 1972 after the Railroad was realigned for the addition of the show building, it was only a matter of months before construction began on Caribbean Plaza proper.
Torre del Cielo, which is the clock-tower rising above Caribbean Plaza, was finished during the Spring of 1973.
Construction resumed through 1973 and wrapped up sometime around Thanksgiving 1973. A hectic 15 months had culminated in one of the most eventful openings at Walt Disney World. Rock Hudson helped unveil the ride to the world and despite problems plaguing the ride system, which merits its own post, the Pirates were an instant success like their California counterparts almost seven years before.
After we established that the Pirates opened to the public in December 1973 at the beginning of the busy holiday season, it should be noted that Caribbean Plaza was not yet completed for the opening.
According to a cast member who worked the opening for Pirates, the House of Treasure gift shop opened along with the ride and the area immediately following the ride's exit was an extension of that gift shop with sombreros, flowers, and a candy cart. This area became its own gift shop in 1975 under the name of Pirate's Bazaar until it was finally renamed to Plaza del Sol Caribe in 1980. The merchandise in this area had to be secured inside the House of Treasure at night before Disney installed these iron gates.
In mid-March 1974, the northern half of Caribbean Plaza was still under construction and had signs declaring the opening of the shops and refreshment stand as Spring 1974. Between March and May, Caribbean Plaza became explorable to WDW guests and the arrival of the Caribbean Arcade (similar to the Pirate's Arcade in New Orleans Square at Disneyland) in late 1974 completed the Plaza.
In late 1975, the Peg-Leg Parrot WED had designed for the exit ramp in the unloading area was moved to the front of the queue as a Barker Bird, who would remain in that position until March 2006. Over the course of the next two decades, few things would change in Caribbean Plaza.
1992 saw the end of the Princes del Cristal shop and the nearby Golden Galleon when El Pirata y El Perico needed more dining space.
Meanwhile, the preceding autumn (Fall 1991) had the loading area redesigned from holding two operating load flumes into having one operable loading flume. The reasoning was due to the high cost of maintenance and the risk of having a guest losing a finger with the ride system. Understand that a ride system designed and built in the 1970's was designed without the fear of litigious retribution due to guest negligence or misbehavior. In fact, the use of gates to hold guests on the loading dock was not even seen as an absolute safety necessity when the original Pirates opened in 1967.
The date of the PC refurb for the Pirates is not verified. Some say the removal of most of the Chase sequence was done in 1994 during a refurb, but others report the refurb as occurring over the last month of 1996 and the first month of 1997. However, the 1997 PC refurb in California had noted that Florida's version was not due for a change in the scene itself. In fact, sometime between 1997 and 2006 saw its replacement.
After tourism dropped in late 2001 due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, El Pirata y El Perico only operated seasonally and the House of Treasure was closed down before it was converted into the Pirates' League salon in 2009. The Pirate and the Parrot was renamed in 2011 to the Tortuga Tavern, playing into the popularity of the film franchise.
One of the most notable changes to the Pirates and Caribbean Plaza took place in the first half of 2006. After the swashbuckling success of the Pirates of the Caribbean film, plans to tie-in the characters of the film with an already popular attraction were drafted for Florida and California (and the other parks). On 1 March 2006, the Pirates of the Caribbean closed down for the refurb and then it briefly opened for a few weeks in April before being reopened on 7 July 2006. The refurb saw the Florida show resemble the one in California and yet it balanced this with the addition of Jack Sparrow.
Over the next decade, the Pirates would be altered with each refurb.
In 2012, the Pirates of the Caribbean was given another refurbishment and the casualty was the thematic structure/duality of the queue. There were and still are two distinct queues, but the refurbishment saw the addition of a merger point for both queues as part of the Fastpass Plus program. You see that the queue for the WDW's Pirates was designed and planned out in 1972 before it was installed and completed in 1973 and while key elements of the Florida show were drowned out by the Disneyland-centric Imagineering team in 2006, the queue lines remained separate and the architectural layouts (blueprints) dating back to November 1972 reflected the "duality" of the queue lines where the left side was the "Soldier" side and the right side was the "Pirate" side. With a merger point in the queue that required the elimination of the ship-building dry dock scenery, which established the load area as a secret port "outside" of El Castillo, the narrative of the queue has been drastically altered from what was intended in 1972 and 1973. Another aspect of the queue that was ruined, I mean altered, was the rerouting of the right line ("Pirate" side). Part of the original design was the use of slopes and ramps to immerse guests in the queue. So beyond the turnstiles, the queue was once a single hall that split in a courtyard (the room with all the cannons and barrels) with the left side continuing on and the right side taking a sharp turn and sloping down towards a mounted cannon. This line would be elevated once again to create the illusion of a deep, subterranean dungeon before descending upon the loading area. The entry point for the line was reconstructed at the very front of the turnstile area and the subtleties of the queue were lost in translation. Meanwhile, this was the same queue that would accommodate most guests in theory and some suggest its redesign was the result of ADA laws and wheelchair accessibility, which fascinates me, a disabled Disney nerd.
The Pirates continued to be changed with a major refurb in 2015 and a quick Summer 2017 show enhancement that I saw on its first day (the Skull camera before the drop).
Last year (2017) saw the replacement of the "politically incorrect" Auctioneer scene with something less than spectacular. Without going into a raving rant about why I don't like the scene or the decision to change a scene that has both a sense of humor and yet an educational aspect (pirates weren't exactly moral people), I will say that the redesign of the scene doesn't exactly fit the narrative of the attraction well, but it does allude to a somewhat accurate part of pirate history---female piracy. Yes, there were lady pirates who were as successful and as brutal as their male counterparts.
Hopefully, the Caribbean Plaza Historical Society will be successful and even influential in future decisions regarding the attraction.
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