Original subtitles

[birds chirping]

[announcer] Remain seated, please.

[in Spanish] Please remain seated.

[♪ theme music]

[♪ suspenseful music]

[narrator in English] Pirates of the Caribbean,

a beloved attraction

based on a wildly successful Disney movie franchise.

Oh, no. Uh-uh.

The original opened in 1967.

[narrator] Right, uh,

Pirates of the Caribbean, a beloved attraction from the '60s.

A glorious nostalgic ode to Walt Disney's creative vision

and it has nothing to do with the movies.

Oh, see, now that's from the movies.

Hm, well, in this chicken or egg scenario,

it was definitely the chicken who came first, uh, see?

-There it is. -[chickens clucking]

The chickens get a lot of attention.

[narrator] But whichever way you know this Disney classic...

Anaheim, Florida, Paris, Tokyo, and Shanghai.

...it seems that Pirates of the Caribbean has stolen our hearts.

It's one of those attractions that you gotta ride.

[narrator] And conquered the seven seas...

[water splashes]

...from Anaheim...

It actually probably is the ride that inspired me to be an Imagineer.

...to the full-blown technical might of Shanghai's astounding deep dive.

We're gonna take you to the bottom of the ocean.

[narrator] We'll unlock the bounty of riches,

deep within the warm welcoming waters of this true Disney classic

that has endured and evolved for generations.

Smells old.

[narrator] Oh, she's talking about the maintenance manual,

not the attraction.

These squeaky clean pirates have been constantly bathing.

[victim] No, no!

[narrator] Since the late '60s.

-Except for this guy. -[pigs snorting]

But before we plunge into the drink,

we need to start this story on dry land with a young midwestern boy

in the early 20th century United States.

His name?

Walt Disney, of course, and young Walt, it comes as no surprise,

was quite the little bookworm.

Walt Disney grew up on the kind of adventure stories

that you would have expected.

[Rebecca] He loved stories about tales of the West and things like that,

as all boys did at that time.

But Walt was also interested in pirate stories.

-[squeaks] -Ah.

Of course, one of them was Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island

and there was also the book called Queen of the Caribbean

by Emilio Salgari,

and as he grew older, of course,

those were the stories that he wanted to share

in his filmmaking endeavors.

And when he started working on live-action films in 1950...

[mild explosion]

...the story he picked was Treasure Island.

[narrator] The story of young Jim Hawkins,

whisked away on a seafaring adventure in search of buried treasure,

alongside the salty scoundrel, Long John Silver.

The word of a gentleman be good enough for Long John.

And he was such an interesting and layered character

that was both kind of lovable and difficult, but funny sometimes.

[narrator] There was something funny about Long John Silver.

-[laughs] -[narrator] More specifically,

about actor Robert Newton's portrayal of the beloved pirate.

He had such a great thick accent.

Well, blow me down for an old sea calf.

He set the standard for the way we now think pirates talk, the whole...

-"Arrr!" -Arrr!

That whole thing came from a Disney movie.

[narrator] But Walt was doing something else

besides redefining pirate movies around that time.

In the early 1950s, he started developing Disneyland.

[Walt] That's it, right here.

[narrator] A magical adventurous place where pirates would fit right in.

But he didn't have an opportunity to add an attraction

based on pirates then.

[narrator] So when Disneyland opened, parkgoers could make treasured memories,

without having to worry about them being plundered.

But before we walk that plank,

we have to acknowledge the land that pirates, uh... anchors,

New Orleans Square,

which also didn't exist on Disneyland's opening day.

[cheery music]

But that's not to say the park was absent of any southern charm.

In the earliest years of Disneyland,

there was a section of Frontierland that they called Magnolia Park.

Well, folks, as you can see,

I'd like to stay here at the Mardi Gras forever.

[Rebecca] And it was right there on the rivers of America

and had that real southern feel.

It's the real thing, all right.

[narrator] It wasn't long after Disneyland's 1955 opening

that plans were underway to start upgrading the park.

And one of the ideas that they had

was to take that Magnolia Park area of Frontierland

and turn it into a whole new New Orleans-themed land by itself.

[narrator] Some kind of a New Orleans center? Or maybe a...

New Orleans Square.

[narrator] Exactly.

But New Orleans Square is not exactly a square.

[narrator] Yeah, but New Orleans Irregular Polygon

doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

And so it was a very much, you know,

the... the kind of New Orleans Square waterfront south.

[Rebecca] And pirates were a big thing in that area.

[narrator] That's right.

New Orleans is rich with pirate lore,

for example, there's the notorious French pirate, Jean Lafitte,

who helped the US win the Battle of New Orleans

in the War of 1812,

and Walt wanted to feature these historical figures

in this new corner of the park.

One of the things that they thought about was a wax museum

where you could walk through an attraction

where you would see the famous pirates of the past.

And you could see Blackbeard and Jean Lafitte.

[narrator] Yeah, there he is again.

And other famous pirates.

And so Walt...

He asked me to give it some thought.

[narrator] And so this man did.

But this is not just any man.

This is former Disney animator, turned Imagineer, Marc Davis,

who happened to be one of Walt's most trusted artists.

[Bob] He had a unique talent.

You know, he's a fine artist, but he's a gagman.

He could draw a picture of a scene, completely explain what is going to be,

and somebody could just build it from that picture.

[narrator] And so Marc began sketching out ideas

for this nascent pirate attraction, so that someone could build it too.

But it would soon be pencils down for Marc.

Okay.

[narrator] Because in 1963, Walt put a halt to much of the work at Disneyland

to focus instead on an all-new and exciting project outside of the park.

The New York World's Fair.

The entire Disney team has been called on

to develop entertaining and exciting attractions.

The World's Fair was a good example

of how Walt would ask people to do things they've never done before

and never gave it a thought.

[narrator] Take Bob here, for instance.

I'm a car guy.

[narrator] That's because he designed the Autopia cars.

But he's also a dune buggy guy and a monorail guy.

I have my original monorail sketch right here.

[narrator] But that didn't stop Walt from making him an Abe Lincoln guy too.

Walt wants me to do a human being

and it has to be the President of the United States.

[♪ playful music]

Hey, bud, huh?

[laughs]

But we did it.

[narrator] After wowing the 1964, '65 New York World's Fair

with the wizardry of audio-animatronic figures,

Walt Disney and the Imagineers needed to get back to Disneyland

and start working again on all those attractions

they'd put on hold.

Like, that pirate wax museum that had been in the works now for...

-over half a decade. -[clock ticking]

But after all this...

[♪ classical music]

...it now fell to little...

Kinda ho-hum.

And Walt said "Why are we doing this little, small pirate thing?

We should do something really big."

[narrator] Like It's a Small World?

Or maybe even bigger than that?

Because Walt planned to combine all the amazing technology

from the World's Fair exhibits into one attraction.

There was a boat ride system that was developed just for Small World.

And they were able to see how efficient the flume of It's a Small World ran

and how many people they could get through it,

and how they could direct people's attention with the boat.

And Mr. Lincoln, which was the first human audio-animatronic figure.

It's really amazing, and those two things land

then go, "Oh, my God, yes.

A boat ride is the perfect thing to tell this,

and we'll make it full of audio-animatronic figures."

The idea was scrapped, the wax museum idea,

let's put a flume attraction here,

and they had to retool the entire concept for Pirates of the Caribbean.

[narrator] So now, Walt had everything he needed

to make this pirates attraction water-based and highly efficient.

It must have been time for Walt

to blatantly order somebody to get started.

Walt never blatantly ordered somebody to get started on something.

[narrator] Oh, well, okay.

[Bob] He'd walk around the studio lot, he'd walk around the machine shop.

He'd start a little conversation with somebody, it's usually a question.

What we're doing here, what's this all about?

He'd say, uh, "Have you ever thought of what if we did something like this?"

Then he would describe it.

-He'd walk around to somebody else... -[Walt] Marc.

...and give a slightly different version of that.

[narrator] And it turns out the great Walt Disney wandered about

asking a lot of questions to all his very best Imagineers.

What you got now, you have a slow buzz.

"What's going on?"

Well, what Walt had done, he got people who were good thinkers,

to start thinking about something that sounded like fun.

Then he starts to get a little bit more specific.

Then everybody goes, "Oh, that's what he's gonna do."

[narrator] And with that, Walt's rugged band of Imagineers were all hands on deck.

Toiling away, working, experimenting.

Until finally, after three years...

There's, uh, set work, there's gonna be lighting, sound...

-[dog barking] -...animations,

and a vehicle moving around.

It was a very complicated attraction, and no detail was spared.

[narrator] The Pirates of the Caribbean were ready to set sail.

And if you were there for the attraction's opening day in 1967,

which went over rather smashingly, or even today, for that matter,

this is what you'd see.

Starting, of course, from the beginning.

[♪ epic music]

And while old Jean Lafitte never did get his wax statue,

he did get this boarding dock named after him.

And from Lafitte's Landing, it's off into the Louisiana Bayou.

And that world itself is so amazing and so atmospheric,

the elaborate detail just for the beginning of this attraction

is so incredible.

[narrator] But this leisurely moonlit float will be short-lived

because as guests turn the corner,

they're met with the ominous visage of a Jolly Roger.

His warning, not so jolly.

[pirate skeleton] And hold on tight with both hands if you please.

[laughs]

[narrator] Because...

We're gonna take them down a waterfall.

[people screaming]

And then another waterfall.

[Jim] That's a very exciting attraction element.

But there's a very practical purpose.

That's bringing the guests down under the berm.

-[laughs] -[narrator] Of course. The berm.

Sorry, what is a berm?

Disneyland berm is something that we refer to as the original border

that was built when Disneyland first opened.

[Walt] And this embankment called the berm,

is a road bed for our Disneyland railroad.

The berm was Walt's idea

to keep the outside world outside of Disneyland.

[narrator] But in the process of designing Pirates of the Caribbean,

it soon became clear that there wasn't enough space inside Disneyland.

The area that had been allocated for that experience,

was pretty small inside New Orleans Square.

[narrator] And to get around this,

Walt really needed to think outside the box.

Or the berm.

And it was Walt's idea to say, "Well, we can go outside of that barrier

as long as the guests don't know it."

So he had to get outside the train track loop,

we're gonna have to go down drops to get out into the other space,

and that turned out to be a really good way

of getting guests into that experience.

[narrator] Surely, because the last thing that you're thinking is,

"Did I just go under a train track and head outside the park,

and enter a large unexciting building?"

-Because as far as you're concerned... -You go down this waterfall

and it takes you to this whole other world.

[Ric] You're in the caves with the skeletons and the pirates.

[♪ upbeat music]

[thunder rumbling]

[narrator] And making your way through this cavernous ode

to pirates long since passed, you emerge on treacherous waters.

-[pirate] Fire at will! -[cannons firing]

[Jim] Suddenly, you're in this gigantic environment.

There's a whole pirate ship.

-[pirate yells indistinctly] -[cannons firing]

Strike yer colors, ya bloomin' cockroachers!

[Jim] And there's cannons firing,

and there's splashing in the water right next to you.

[explosions]

[narrator] And the Imagineer responsible for this spectacle?

[Walt] Claude?

[narrator] Was the layout man, Claude Coats.

Claude had been working in Disney animation for decades,

as a layout artist,

which is basically the set designer for animation.

[narrator] And as an Imagineer, he did the same thing.

But for attractions.

He brought all that storytelling skill

to the rich environments of Pirates of the Caribbean

that the guests ride through.

[narrator] And populating this rich environment?

[victim] Por favor! No, no!

[narrator] Pirates, of course.

-Pipe him aloft again, matey. -[plays flute]

[pirate] By gum, he'll talk.

[narrator] Who, as we know, all share a common ancestor

in the 1964, '65 World's Fairs, Abe Lincoln.

Man was made for immortality.

[narrator] But while it proved challenging enough

to keep just one audio-animatronic figure running

in great moments with Mr. Lincoln...

There are more than 75 pirates and villagers in Pirates of the Caribbean.

...how on Earth did they upscale to create robust

audio-animatronic figures that worked all day every day?

The answer to that was thanks to this Imagineer.

-The car guy. -[car tires screeching]

So the company took a long look at,

"Can we take designs of individual parts and make multiple copies of them?"

[Bob] By using high-production techniques, we could make a big bag of parts,

something for a shoulder, something for a neck.

Any show we wanna do from Pirates onward, we already had the parts.

[narrator] But it wasn't just pirates' necks and shoulders they needed to create.

[whistling]

[pirate] Come on now.

And, of course, they had to add a lot of animals too.

[Rebecca] There were some 53 animal figures.

[bleating]

There were pigs and even chickens.

-[narrator] Probably built them first. -[chickens clucking]

And besides, with Imagineers rummaging

through infinite combinations of Bob's bag of audio-animatronic parts,

there was no limit to what they could create.

We can make a goat, a president, and a pirate,

out of the same bag of parts.

[animals screeching]

[narrator] Um, we'll leave the character creation

to the great gagman himself, Marc Davis.

And, oh, the characters, such as this fellow.

And these guys? Also Marc.

And who could forget this motley crew?

Also Marc's creation.

When I started working down there, there was nothing that was funny

in any of the attractions that I can recollect.

[Marc] And this was the thing, all the way through

that I have tried to bring in humor.

Marc Davis, of course, was not the only Imagineer

involved in the storytelling.

[narrator] No, they dug up another treasured Imagineer

where the spot was undeniably marked by X.

[beeps]

X Atencio.

I have always been called X.

[narrator] Who made sure you knew

the pirate-filled attraction was more sweet than salty.

And he was very involved with the story.

What you do, is you start thinking like a pirate and say, "Arrr," you know.

[X] And when I finished the script, we needed a song for it.

So X, in his story work, jotted down some sample lyrics,

and Walt said, "Great, a song, that's just what we need."

X thought, "Oh, well, he'll get the Sherman Brothers to write it."

[narrator] However, as we know, what you were known for

didn't always match up with what Walt asked you to do.

Walt would do that to people.

Walt instead said, "You write the lyrics and get George Bruns to do the music."

So I became... I became a songwriter.

[laughs]

♪ Yo ho, yo ho, a pirates life for me We pillage, we plunder... ♪

[narrator] So between X Atencio and Marc Davis,

the tone of pirates was secure.

♪ Drink up, me 'earties, yo ho ♪

♪ Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me ♪

[dog barks]

[narrator] But don't be fooled because there's one Imagineer

who provided arguably the most important material of all.

Alice Davis was one of the most important Imagineers of the time

because she was a costumer.

[Rebecca] Her husband Marc Davis, of course,

invented and designed those characters, and Alice dressed them.

[narrator] A seamless team that needed to work hand in glove

because in the supernatural world of pirate shenanigans,

exposed servos and articulated joints had no place whatsoever.

[Rebecca] One of the things about those characters

is that you have constant moving. They're hydraulically powered figures.

And they move all the time,

and so, of course, the costumes that they wear

would wear out quite easily.

[narrator] And when it came to costuming on a massive scale,

Alice had a world of experience.

Or at least a small world of experience.

And Walt Disney had said he wanted Alice to design the costumes for Small World.

[narrator] But when she was enlisted for the pirates' attraction,

she had bigger plans.

Well one day, she asked, uh, one of the producers of the show,

"You know, it's just as easy for me to make two sets of costumes,

instead of just one,"

and he's like, "No, no, no, we don't have the time.

I don't want the expense."

She said, "Well, you know, the figures leak hydraulics and things,

and it might be a good idea--"

"Alice, just one set will be fine."

[narrator] Hm, well, we'll see about that.

[thunder rumbling]

Continuing through the glorious grottoes and mischievous scenes of pirate antics,

from the iconic dunking of the mayor...

[victim shouting] No! Por favor...

[narrator] ...to these salty sea dogs.

-[whistling] -[dog whimpers]

That is absolutely fantastic.

Well, it's only part of it.

You got a big climactic scene.

But how could you top it?

Well, you set the place on fire.

[fire crackling]

[narrator] At least, well, that was the plan.

You know, it's difficult. Like, "How are we gonna burn a village?

This has to burn day and night."

And there was some concern from the Anaheim fire department.

We can't use real flames. What do we do?

[narrator] Never fear, because the solution could be found

in R&D mastermind Yale Gracey's room of magic.

He had a room. [chuckles]

And it was like a big toy box full of junk.

[Bob] He was like a little kid playing science inventor.

And every time he had something that he was kind of happy with,

he'd sort of stand in the hallway and had that little twink look in his eye,

and he says, "You wanna come in? I've got something."

[narrator] And what he had to show Bob seemed to defy nature itself.

An illusion so masterful that it remains unchanged to this day.

It's the same effect from 1967.

[Tim] And you go into that portion of the attraction, you still, it went on.

[narrator] And Yale Gracey made this magic using cutting-edge technology.

Just a piece of cloth with a light coming up out of the bottom, and a fan.

[whirring]

See, he could take physical materials and reduce it down to the simplest thing,

so it would be real easy to build it and maintain it.

[Bob] And it looked so real.

[narrator] As it turns out, one day, it looked so real it actually was.

The show was open only for about, well, a month and a half.

And there was a fire.

And they had to close the ride down.

And they came running to me

and, "Good Lord, how long is it going to be

before we can get costumes for the figures?"

[narrator] An issue Alice Davis...

"Alice, no!"

...had tried to plan for.

"Just one set will be fine."

[narrator] But the great Alice Davis had everything under control.

And Alice said, "No worries, I went ahead, did another set anyways,

so we have another set of costumes.

We can get this open, you know, as soon as possible."

And they didn't know whether to hit me or to hug me.

[laughter]

But the show opened the next day.

It was only closed down one day,

so now they make three costumes for each figure.

[narrator] Well, for the park guests of the late '60s,

it was hugs all around.

And Disneyland was pirate crazy.

[announcer] With the wildest crew that ever sacked the Spanish main.

The Pirates of the Caribbean.

[narrator] Walt's team had created one of the most astounding attractions

the world had ever seen.

[pirate skeleton's evil laugh]

But, giving it everything they had did come with an eye-watering price tag.

New Orleans Square, with all these things that people could do, plus the ride,

it was a huge amount of money.

[Luc] It was a giant bet, but it paid off

because that put Pirates of the Caribbean on the map.

[narrator] With the staggering success of Pirates of the Caribbean,

people all around the world were saying...

"Oh, my God, I have to go there."

[narrator] And if you couldn't,

friends would be more than happy to tell you all about it.

I didn't grow up in California, but I heard the story many times.

"We went to Disneyland, and I saw pirates.

And I just fell in love."

[Luc] "That was the place for me."

"It was incredible." "It just changed my life."

[narrator] But don't worry,

Luc Mayrand will get his time on the high seas soon enough.

That's another story.

[narrator] Four years after Pirates of the Caribbean's unveiling,

in 1971, the Walt Disney World Resort opened in Florida

and the people there also said...

"Can't wait to go on Pirates of the Caribbean."

[narrator] Followed quickly by...

"Where is it?"

[bird squawking]

[bubble rippling]

[laughter]

It's not here.

[narrator] But at the time, Imagineers thought they had a good reason

for not bringing Pirates to Florida.

They thought it was redundant.

You know, a pirate attraction in the Caribbean?

Doesn't make a lot of sense.

[narrator] Because after all,

Florida is the northern border of the Caribbean.

[Rebecca] You're gonna be in the South.

You don't wanna put something that's Southern or Caribbean-related.

They might be more interested

in something like the Western River Expedition,

which was a Western-themed attraction that Marc Davis had created.

[narrator] That's right.

Disney Imagineers had big plans for the Western River Expedition

which promised to be an altogether more wet, wild,

and Western flume-based attraction.

-But... -In the meantime,

guests at Walt Disney World were saying,

"We want to go on Pirates of the Caribbean."

And they got a lot of complaints.

[narrator] And so by popular demand,

those Western River Expedition plans were set aside.

And in their place, went a Pirates of the Caribbean.

Actually kind of near the Caribbean.

Since Pirates of the Caribbean had already been created,

they didn't have to go through all the development.

They could just kind of construct it and pop it in.

[narrator] But it was getting popped in differently than its predecessor.

In California, you could dig down,

and you can go under the berm, and out into a show building.

Well, because of the water tables in Florida,

you can't go down, you just kind of have to go out.

[Tim] So Pirates in Florida has a little different footprint.

[narrator] And since there's no New Orleans Square

in the Magic Kingdom, it has a slightly different location too.

-[explosion] -In Florida,

it's set in an area of Adventureland

called Caribbean Plaza which was created just for the attraction.

[narrator] But other than that,

and a different queue through a Spanish fort,

no swampy prelude, then only one drop...

And then another.

...it's pretty much the same ride.

A lot of the animatronics that we have here,

are pretty much copies of the original animatronics

that they have in California.

[narrator] And also, like California,

the Florida Pirates 1973 opening was a success,

albeit considerably less unruly.

All of those satisfied fans were proof that the Pirates' attraction was a splash.

On both coasts.

But what about across the high seas on the other side of the planet?

When Tokyo Disneyland opened in 1983, of course, they wanted one there.

[narrator] And by that, he means Tokyo Disney wanted the same Pirates...

♪ Yo ho, yo ho... ♪

...park guests were already enjoying.

[pirate skeleton speaking in Japanese]

[narrator] The only problem was

park guests were already enjoying two of them.

The Pirates of the Caribbean attractions in the United States were so popular,

that they added it to Tokyo Disneyland.

[narrator] So when building their own, they took the best of both worlds,

Disney World and Disneyland.

It starts off like Anaheim, where you're floating through the bayou,

and then you go down the one drop.

[people screaming in joy]

Then it kind of turns into Florida,

where because of the high water table, it can only have one drop.

[Daniel] You can't go any further down.

[narrator] It seemed like Tokyo's classic version

of Pirates of the Caribbean was keeping everyone happy.

But when Disneyland Paris opened almost a decade later,

the technology was definitely changing with the fashions.

And truly amazing to think that just three and a half years ago,

this was all fields of beetroot.

[narrator] As were the ideas on how to add more action to the attraction.

Because while the French Pirates of the Caribbean

boasted many of the same thrills as its predecessors...

[explosion]

[in French] There are smoke and flame effects.

And also water effects.

[water spritzing]

[narrator in English] There was still room to bone up on the excitement.

The Imagineers were looking for ways that they could take it forward

from a technological standpoint.

What have we learned that we could make better?

[in French] Make your offer for this lovely young lady.

[in English] And that was in a time period where we were making a leap forward

with our audio-animatronics figures.

[narrator] A leap forward that Imagineer, Tony Baxter, thought

could add a new edge to the Pirates of the Caribbean.

[♪ classical music]

[Tony] The classic thing if you're gonna define what do pirates do

is a sword fight.

So I said, "If we can get an audio-animatronic pair of figures

to do a sword fight,

that would be a real moment that people would talk about".

And so the challenge that we set to our figure team,

was to say, "Can we actually have two pirates fighting, sword fighting?

Can they actually hit swords together?"

[narrator] Not only could they, but they did.

And sure enough when we opened it, just when everyone gets comfortable,

saying, "I know what they can do and what their limits are,"

you turn that corner and there is a sword fight going on.

A very difficult trick to achieve,

and also we've changed some of the characters in the show.

[narrator] Including the addition of a female swashbuckler.

As the global treasure map unfurled further still,

and Disney landlubbers the world over were singing pirates' praises,

there was one young non-Californian boy who had since grown into an Imagineer.

Among other things.

Producer, art director, creative director,

executive in different ways, and concept designer.

[narrator] Well, he was singing a different tune, or thinking it rather.

I had been thinking in my head, like, "What could be the next Pirates thing?"

Because I love the original line, of course,

but I was always thinking of like, "What would be the next level

or step you would take with that?"

[narrator] And while Luc didn't know the answer to that question just yet,

he would soon find out

because Pirates of the Caribbean in the spirit of the original attraction,

was about to step outside of the park, and onto the big screen.

We have the debut of Pirates of the Caribbean,

Curse of the Black Pearl in 2003.

[♪ suspenseful music]

And of course, you see the little nods and homages all the way through that film.

[explosions]

Come on.

Come here, boy.

[narrator] Nods and homages aside,

the movie itself and the franchise that followed,

don't directly reflect the beloved Disney attraction.

You know, there are many guests,

their first understanding of Pirates of the Caribbean

isn't the attraction anymore.

It is a movie.

And so when they go onto the attraction,

they're going to expect something from what they saw before.

[narrator] And where guests once asked...

"Where's Pirates of the Caribbean?"

[narrator] Now they ask...

"Where's that main character? Why isn't he here?"

[narrator] Well, Jack Sparrow wouldn't be absent from any of the four

Pirates of the Caribbean attractions for long.

Pirates of the Caribbean was adapted with a little bit of Captain Jack Sparrow,

and you know, Captain Barbossa and other things,

trying to get a little bit of the flavor of that movie

back into the original attraction.

We knew that, in the future, we would have kids saying,

"Wait, you mean Jack Sparrow wasn't always part of this attraction?"

[narrator] But it wasn't just movie-based updates.

[pirate 1] Wipe your feathers, dearie.

Show them your flaunt.

[pirate 2] Hey, send them into Davy Jones!

[narrator] Because over the years,

Pirates of the Caribbean has changed with the times.

It's changed many, many, many times.

[screaming]

When it was clear that we needed to look at

how women were being exploited,

just in general, but also in our attraction,

we made pirates chase food and not women.

And when you go into the auction scene, that's where we have Redd.

[pirates] We want the redhead!

[pirates] We want the redhead!

As time progressed, we decided maybe we shouldn't be selling women.

[narrator] And so a thirst trap of a decidedly different nature

-was devised. -[Redd] The gentleman want the rum.

-Don't you, boys? -[pirates] Yes!

And now Redd is our only woman pirate in the entire attraction.

Drink up, me hearties. Yo ho!

I really like that scene a lot, since it got to change.

[narrator] So do we, Katy.

[thunder rumbling]

But even with all the updates,

the world's various Pirates of the Caribbean attractions

are still at their core,

the same exciting adventures that they always were.

But in June 2016, all that would change.

It is my privilege, to present Shanghai Disney Resort.

[narrator] Bob Iger's vision for Shanghai was ambitious,

and overwhelming

for the guy who had to put it all together.

And his name? Bob Weis.

I'm Bob Weis.

[narrator] Who was the perfect man for the job.

I was working at Disneyland as an ice cream popcorn maker,

and they told me we were now gonna also sell balloons.

And the first time I sold balloons I was so stressed out that I quit.

[narrator] However, it didn't take long for Bob to take his talents

with ice cream and balloons, and questionable work ethic,

and apply them to all the great parks of the world.

And much like Luc Mayrand...

What could be the next Pirates thing?

[narrator] When it came to Shanghai, Bob was thinking the same thing.

What could be the next Pirates thing?

We thought, especially with movies,

and so much of the Pirates culture having been expanded on,

it was time to update Pirates.

[narrator] Well, an update might be an understatement.

It was decided to make an entire land based on Pirates.

And do a live show and do the restaurants, and the lagoon,

and really make that into a land unto itself.

And the centerpiece of that land

is a new Pirates of the Caribbean attraction.

[narrator] And to execute this leviathan task, Bob Weis assembled a team.

Yes, let's do this, let's make this happen.

[narrator] And ideally, someone to lead the project

who had been thinking about it for quite a while.

And someone who believed in Pirates in the very beginning,

believed that it needed to match the scope

of what the world's view of Disney Pirates is today.

-[narrator] But who, among the-- -I said, "That's it, I'm in.

This is gonna be fantastic."

[narrator] Oh, yeah, Luc Mayrand's probably a good choice.

I've always wanted to do this. Now's the time to try.

[narrator] And with Luc Mayrand at the helm...

Luc is the creative genius behind this project.

...he'd also be joined by Ric Turner.

I'm kind of a jack of all trades.

He's one of those polymath thinkers that has so many diverse interests.

I do a little bit of everything.

I do illusion design and projection mapping,

and media design, and audio design, and my background is radio and television.

[Ric] I have a degree in computer science.

And without Ric Turner, there are so many things we could not do.

[narrator] Hilcia Peña...

Well, I'm just the architect. [laughs]

A tremendous architect.

I worked through it from early concept design,

all the way through construction in Shanghai.

[narrator] Amy Jupiter...

I'm a visual effects supervisor.

I was responsible for all the media design.

[narrator] And eventually, Bill George.

When we were going into production on Pirates, we had a gift from heaven.

I am proud to announce

the Walt Disney Company is acquiring Lucasfilm.

Disney bought Lucas, and with Lucas came ILM,

and Bill George's genius became completely available to us.

And seemed appropriate too.

Because we had done a lot of the visual effects for the Pirates films.

[narrator] And with Luc's team of talent assembled, the work could begin.

But it was clear that they had pretty big shoes.

Or... [groans]

...boots to fill.

It was a scary project

because the original Pirates of the Caribbean was beloved,

and a lot of people rated it as the best ride in the world.

So how are we gonna beat that?

And you can't be afraid. You gotta dive in.

And absolutely fearlessly put anything down

and think it through and have the courage to put big ideas out there, just do it.

[narrator] Big ideas. Like this one?

One of the core ideas that had always been floating in my head

since I was a little kid was,

those kind of secret epic places in the world

that would be kind of incredible.

That you would see in adventure novels,

you know, like the early century, like, the great cemetery

where all the elephants go to die that no one has ever seen, right?

Or this immense graveyard of ships at the bottom of the ocean.

[narrator] Which led to another very big idea.

I always thought, like, "Wow, wouldn't it be incredible

to take us underwater?"

[narrator] Uh, sorry, underwater?

We're gonna take you to the bottom of the ocean.

That was the one thing that everybody on the team said,

"Oh, that's cool, that's different.

I've never done that. I wanna go there."

That gives us the opportunity to have stuff all around,

either seaweed, there's sharks,

and kind of steering us down, we're following sharks.

[narrator] Feeling very jolly about the Pirates idea,

the team jumped in the deep end, so to speak,

and the first place they'd start was with a fledgling technology

known as "moving eye-point".

You understand what moving eye-point is, right?

[narrator] Sure, everyone does.

It's an incredibly complex series of projectors,

spread around a large dome.

You go in with your back towards this huge 60-foot high, 90-foot long dome.

You can be in a three-dimensional set and as, if my eye's moving this way,

it will pick up the media background

and it will just take me seamlessly to the next thing.

We render from the perspective of the car.

So you're moving the guests' perspective in the media that's playing back from you,

but if you're not looking at it from the actual guests' perspective...

It's got this weird perspective to it.

But when you look at it from the boat, it actually looks 100 percent accurate.

You have to exactly know

where the guest is and where they're moving.

[narrator] Which presumably you can't do in a bobbing boat?

In Disneyland, it's being pushed by water,

and you know, it kind of bounces, and it moves a little bit.

You can't do moving eye-point

with that kind of low-resolution ride vehicle.

[narrator] But luckily...

We had a brand-new idea for a new ride system.

You will be providing then a ship?

[narrator] A ride system that can be described in so many words as...

A boat floating in water, completely controlled by magnets,

so that it's always in exactly the same spot,

no matter how much water's around it.

[narrator] Which sounds impressive.

Maybe too impressive?

We didn't know if it was gonna work.

But we designed it assuming it was going to work.

[narrator] It was a huge expensive gamble.

We're gonna take a chance on this working,

and we're gonna trust our engineers can get there.

[narrator] And so with technology that possibly wouldn't work,

the team forged ahead as if it would.

So from concept design, where things are basically on a napkin,

we start with a visualization and concept art.

A model, and that model just begets another model

which begets another model,

and eventually, we had a big-scale mock-up.

It was modeled in a way

so that we could sit on a little rolling chair,

and roll through the different scenes, and see what these spaces might look like.

Until you're actually in the attraction, on a rolling desk chair...

Pushing it to match the movement of the boat

as we look at the media to go,

"Okay, well, you know, this should go earlier,

that should go later," and we figure it out.

[narrator] But as Imagineers figured out the attraction's clockwork scene by scene,

Luc soon became more concerned

with the clockwork of one scene in particular.

We were working with ILM and Bill George

on the scene where Jack and Davy are fighting together.

[Luc] And I'd always imagined something funny happened,

like chickens jump out.

To me, that's the classic, like, you know, gag moment.

The... [imitates chicken clucking]

[laughs]

But the whole scene is digital,

and we didn't have it in the budget to build the chickens digitally.

-[narrator] This was no poultry... -[imitates chicken clucking]

...uh, paltry dilemma.

After all, Pirates of the Caribbean

had a rich legacy of featured feathers to maintain.

And then I said, "Well, could we use real chickens?"

-[narrator] To which Bill replied... -Yes.

So next thing you know,

we're actually shooting chickens against a green screen,

at Industrial Light and Magic, and I'm directing that.

[narrator] But he wouldn't have long to savor this fulfilling collaboration...

[Luc imitates chicken clucking]

...because back in Shanghai,

it was nearing time to put the water in this water-based attraction,

something Luc had been in no rush to do.

Oh, wait, wait, wait, hang on a minute.

[narrator] For good reason.

You're done doing anything else below the water.

That's the end, so it's a really important,

you know, moment.

[narrator] But for Luc and the team,

more important than just filling it up and seeing if it would work,

this moment represented the culmination of years of work.

You know, after you've been working on a project for six years or more,

I wanted us to register that moment.

You put so much of your life in these things,

and Luc Mayrand had put so much, so much into Pirates.

So when we had the water filled up,

we arrange a little ceremony to connect this attraction

with all of the other Pirates of the Caribbean attractions

in the family.

So I had, um, some, uh, secret agents go into each attraction

to get a little bit of water,

from the flume of Anaheim, Florida, Paris, Tokyo.

He built this beautiful box with these test tubes in it.

[Bob Weis] And then he got the team together.

And we had a ceremony where we christened our attraction

by pouring in water from all of the other ones.

[♪ uplifting music]

And that was very symbolic because it was kind of like,

the water became alive and connected with everything else.

[Ric] That was the most powerful moment of the whole project.

[chuckles]

[narrator] And so, as emotions ran high, along with the rising water line,

the team could finally test their boat system.

When we filled the flume and we started running boats,

everything was great.

[Luc] It's like, oh, good, you know, we had one, two, three boats.

And...

-[narrator] And then... -I can't believe you brought that up.

[laughs]

-[narrator] Well... -I talk about the problem we had.

[narrator] They had a big one.

[clears throat] Um...

When we started adding more boats,

all of a sudden, we were having problems where, like, the water was shallow

at the beginning of, in the first few scenes,

and sometimes the boats would hit the bottom,

and then the water was overflowing at the end.

The ride engineers figured it out right away. It was like, "Oh."

Something that we didn't think of

is if you push boats down a trough of water

using magnets underwater, they kind of act like a pump.

They're actually pushing water up to one end of the ride.

[narrator] With the attraction due to open in a matter of days,

Luc and the team were in deep water.

Or, shallow water, depending on which end of the attraction they were on.

The boats were scraping at one end and then the water's, you know,

overflowing into the building at the other.

What are we gonna do? Well...

[narrator] Well, they did what they always do.

That being...

Classic Imagineering, you know, genius stuff.

[narrator] They pumped it from one end to the other using some pipes.

For soft opening, we were still using our "temporary solution"

until we figured out a way to pipe it

through a back-of-house portion of the building.

But we got it to work.

[narrator] In fact, everything worked

when the Pirates of the Caribbean-themed land,

Treasure Cove, opened on June 16th, 2016.

Filled with a bounty of pirate treasure, and one extraordinary attraction.

Oh, no, not the one you're thinking.

There's an incredible attraction called Eye of the Storm, a fun stunt show.

[narrator] And why so incredible?

In the middle of the show, there's a moment when a wind tunnel,

or a giant hurricane literally lifts the performers

up into the air, not suspended by wires, sword choreography, fighting,

jumping from tower to tower, all through the use of a wind tunnel.

[narrator] But, for as uplifting as the stunt show is...

[in Mandarin] I recommend our guests pluck up the courage

to dive to the bottom of the ocean

with our pirates to plunder the treasure.

[narrator in English] And people did. By the thousands.

Then said...

This is amazing.

[narrator] Yeah, but we probably shouldn't just take Luc's word for it.

[in Mandarin] It cleverly blends all the elements

and gives guests a shocking immersive experience.

[narrator in English] Although it's the world's fifth

Pirates of the Caribbean attraction,

battle for the sunken treasure sure has a lot of firsts.

Moving eye-point media, large-scale media,

boats that are controlled in a whole new way,

it was a combination of all those things that allowed that team

to take Pirates to a whole new level.

[narrator] But a level that wasn't too high

that you couldn't still see where you've come from.

We put in some... some little tableaux that reflect back to the original, right?

[Bill] One of them is...

Three skeletons in a jail cell and a skeleton dog

because they never did get the key.

It's very subtle,

but if you're... if you're familiar with the original ride,

you certainly would recognize them as callbacks.

[narrator] Oh, we're familiar, all right.

Pirates of the Caribbean is among the most iconic attractions

in all the Disney parks.

When I talk to audiences today,

most people will say that Pirates is their favorite attraction.

And most of them have not been to Shanghai,

so the basic premise of going underwater,

going on the search for treasure,

we stand on the shoulders of a classic Disneyland attraction.

One of the last things, I think, that Walt was able to... to think about.

-You believe in pirates, of course? -Oh, yes.

[narrator] It's impossible to know what Walt Disney himself

would have thought of the Shanghai version of Pirates of the Caribbean.

We knew that if Walt was around today,

he would grab onto whatever new storytelling tools we had

in order to tell better stories.

[Ric] And so we went into Pirates of the Caribbean for Shanghai,

we wanted it to feel like you're really there,

like it's really happening to you.

Indistinguishable from reality.

Storytelling with no suspension of disbelief.

[narrator] But sadly, it's impossible to know

what he thought of the original too.

There was one that Walt had his heart set on,

and he followed every detail of it.

[Tim] You see the publicity photos of Walt, he's all over everything.

He's posing with audio-animatronic figures,

he's down there with the heads,

and it looked like he was just having a ball

putting that attraction together.

And all these little streets are gonna be very intriguing.

He did get very far into the development,

and he did see the opening of New Orleans Square.

We had a real jubilee, southern style.

But they hadn't finished the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction yet,

when he passed away in 1966.

[cheers and applause]

And Pirates of the Caribbean opened,

actually, fairly soon thereafter in early 1967.

[narrator] But before the end, Walt was able to see

at least the beginnings of this amazing creation.

[Walt] And you get down here, and look through that little ring,

you get the view that the audience gets.

[narrator] And even more than that, the Imagineers pulled a few strings.

[Rebecca] He had the joy of experience a mock-up version of it.

He was able to sit in a boat where they pulled him through the sets

with the audio-animatronics and the lights, and the special effects.

So he did at least get to experience what the attraction was going to be.

[narrator] Despite never seeing it completed,

Walt Disney's vision for this attraction can be seen all around the world

from the original attraction to Florida, Tokyo, Paris...

[Tim] I was very privileged to take Marc and Alice Davis to Disneyland, Paris.

The one thing they loved the most, was Pirates of the Caribbean.

[Tim] He just lost a gasket. That's it.

That's what we always wanted.

He just thought it was the greatest thing ever,

and he didn't stop talking about it for days.

...and Shanghai.

[Jeanette] To me, it is about what Walt wanted.

Walt Disney said that Disneyland would never be complete,

but he also saw it as a living breathing thing,

that changed constantly.

And that's what Pirates has done, and it's why it's still,

and will always be my favorite attraction of all time.

[narrator] Pirates of the Caribbean is many things to many people.

Like, my first project that I did from start to finish.

I'm really proud of what we accomplished

so it's something that's like dear to my heart.

[narrator] From a wax museum to one of the world's

most successful movie franchises,

between here and there is an adventure.

One of technological discovery and swashbuckling creativity.

From the original team to the Shanghai team,

the crew aboard this multigenerational classic

sets sail with courage and bravery,

and you certainly couldn't call them chicken.

It's a classic like, you know, gag moment.

Well, you don't need to tell us,

-obviously. -[imitates chicken clucking]

Plundering the depths of their imaginations,

looking for treasure, what they found was pure gold.

And I hope that people will enjoy it for generations to come.

[pirate skeleton] Dead men tell no tales.

[♪ closing theme music]