Originally Posted by Karen 14th December 2005


I asked Jason a very similiar question and thought it might be fun to see what you had to say about this book and everything that Jason told us from it's conception to today's version of the ride.

So what did you learn from the book that surprised you about the ride or how it came about?

Captainjacksparrow


It was all a surprise to me....I had not a clue how the ride had come about...it was so much fun to read how many different paths that it was headed down and then the one that it actually took.....glad that I read this book...it was so helpful in the history of the ride.

Deppraved


It wasn't so much of a surprise as it was an curious coincidence that there was an actual fire in the burning town scene. But they improved on the effects in that scene after they rebuilt it.

Sally2jack


I haven't read Jason's book, unfortunately, but I'm pretty well informed about the attraction and its conception and history. So I hope I can follow the discussion well enough!

I don't know if this is in the book, so apologies if it's rhetoric, but there's a great story Alice Davis (who designed the costumes) has told on several occasions about the fire. It's cuter when she tells it, but I don't want to misquote, so...

This version was told by Marc Davis (imagineer) to Rick West, publisher of Theme Park Adventure magazine for his Pirates of the Caribbean issue: (Please do not repost, reprtint, etc.)

Marc: ...The fire scene; these again, were Yale Gracey's effects. He came up with a way to have this thing be on fire. It was enormously exciting. About - and Alice can tell you more details of this in a way - oh, two or three months after the attraction had opened, there was a fire in the fire scene sequence. It burned up several of these figures. It was the most gruesome thing you've ever seen in your life! The heat melted everything. The faces all melted, and the glass eyes were there; instead of muscles, they had wires and things down their arms. It was incredible. The thing was, Alice manufactures all of the costumes for the pirate ride, and she wanted to do several costumes at a time. She was told not to. "Well, if you need to do that later, we'll worry about it then." So, Dick Irvine, who was head of the operation there, after this fire, which burned up a number of these characters, came to Alice and he was in a panic, and said, "God, Alice! How long will it take you to manufacture these costumes?" and so on. And Alice said, "if you find a fishing pole that I can put the hats on," you know, the guy that has all the hats on, she said, "I think I can have it ready to open in about half an hour."

She had made the extra costumes. Like she says, it's just as easy to cut out two as it is to cut out one. So she had all these that she had put away, so all she had to do was go in there and open up the cabinet, and there were all the costumes of all the ones that had burned up!"

West: She saved the day

Marc: Oh, she saved the day! This was really something, and the business people couldn't understand it. One thing they didn't understand was, the business people would come to her and say, "How many yards of material do you need?" And she gave them the numbers. But, unbenkownst to them, she doubled it, which you know, instead of one yard, it would be two yards. That wasn't any great difficulty to the financial bit of the thing. So, her girls were sewing two instead of one, and it was no problem at all. I think this is absolutely a marvelous, marvelous situation. Within 24 hours the attraction was open and running as usual."

Karen

Thanks so much for sharing that story with us.