NH> Everyone seems to be talking about how Pirates is better at DL than
NH> at WDW and I was just wondering: How is it different? What does it
NH> have that Walt Disney World doesn't? I've been to DL Paris and liked
NH> that one a bit better. I think it was because it had more of an
NH> ending (or more of a story) to it.
                >>
Some attractions are just different at the two parks, but Pirates of the
Carribean at DL is so drastically better that they really don't deserve
the same name. Let me try to describe the major differences (to the best
of my limited memory), and then the other EchoEars can tell us both what
I got wrong:
Ignoring the differences in the facade and outside queue, where the
inside queue at WDW winds down some spooky tunnels through the fort to
the boarding area, at DL you follow along a canal full of returning
boats. This gives you a chance to quiz survivors about the journey,
though few will talk to you for reasons of shock. Behind them is a nice
tableau of stolen treasure with a jolly skeleton to greet you.
Where the boarding area at WDW seems like a secret escape route from the
fort, at DL, it is at the edge of the bayou. Your boat starts off with a
splash, and then drifts quietly through the lagoon. It's twilight,
with the stars just starting to come out, and the tables of the Blue
Bayou Restaurant line the edge of the dock to your right. Fireflies
dance in the dusk under the willows, and a resident of the swamp sits in
his shack picking on a banjo. All in all, it is one of the most restful
and calming scenes in the whole park, and I sometimes wish I could just
tie my boat up to one of the cypresses and rest a spell.
Pretty soon, you see some old walls, like you were floating into some
old sunken fort. The music grows slowly more ominous, and a voice begins
to warn you of the dangers ahead. "Thouroughly warned, ye be," says he.
Then you round a corner to see the speaker is but a skull, and the sound
of rushing water gives credence to his tale ... when you suddenly pass
into a dark cavern and WHOOOSH!! Down the waterfall you go. You hear the
voices of men joined in song, and just as you think you can make out the
words WHOOOSH!! Another waterfall takes you down to the level of the
pirates.
This entry to the pirates' town is all the more effective, IMHO, for the
preamble. The soothing effects of the bayou and slow banjo music form a
stark contrast to the waterfalls and raucous song of the marauding
pirates, and it's this contrast that makes them seem all the more
terrible.
The middle portion of the ride is fairly similar at both parks, the
treasure rooms a little more ornate at WDW, the early shipwreck scenes a
bit better at DL, but largely the same show. Near the end, differences
of substance again appear:
At WDW, the attraction simply peters out and you end up, unremarkably,
back at the boarding dock. At DL, however, your escape is not at all
certain. (The fire effects, when first viewed by Anaheim fire officials,
were so convincing that they required a number of emergency cutoffs be
installed so that in the case of a *real* disaster, firefighters would
not waste precious time fighting fake fires!) At both parks, the final
scene has drunken pirates firing their pistols at a suspended keg of
dynamite--how to get out? In a Disnical way, of course: UP a waterfall!
Like a primitive version of the lift at Splash Mountain--well, really
like the noisy ratchety lift on Big Thunder Mountain, with water--up you
go, out of the inferno, and into the canal that borders the entry queue.
Too excited to talk much to the other guests, you are still a bit too
excited to even breath after your narrow escape. But not too excited to
come back again...
The WDW Pirates can't hold a candle, much less a flaming torch, to the
DL Pirates. Of course, that's just my opinion, but I'm right!
NH> I really have to make the trip to Calif. one of these days.....
Sure, but ... doesn't everybody?
()_()
 (_)  Bruce (yo ho, yo ho!) Metcalf
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