Scaring, delighting and occasionally soaking park guests since 1967, the Pirates of the Caribbean remains one of the most recognized theme park attractions ever built. Long before a certain Captain Jack Sparrow showed up, the ride carved out its own legend on pure spectacle and some seriously impressive engineering.
When it opened on March 18, 1967, the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride was billed as the most expensive and technologically sophisticated amusement park attraction ever constructed, with a price tag of $8 million. Guests at Disneyland’s New Orleans Square boarded flat-bottomed boats called bateaux at Laffite’s Landing, drifted past the Blue Bayou and plunged down a waterfall into a world of ghostly caverns, cannon fire and brawling buccaneers.
The whole voyage lasted about 15 minutes and included 119 life-size Audio-Animatronic figures — the same technology Walt Disney had been developing since the early 1960s. A 1967 article from LIFE magazine called the pirates “a brawling band of computerized robots that look and move about like real people” and pointed out that the park was pulling in nearly a million visitors a month at 75 cents a head.
The ride moved through a full pirate raid on a Caribbean port town — cannonballs flying, buildings burning, buccaneers chasing the townspeople through the streets. Scenes included prisoners trying to coax a dog over with a bone (hoping to snag the keys to their cell) and a village auction where pirates bid on women. That last scene — known as the “Take a Wench for a Bride” sequence — became one of the more controversial fixtures of the original attraction, and was eventually revised.
By 1997, Disney had redesigned the scene so the women were replaced by pirates auctioning off stolen goods instead. The ride changed again in 2006, when elements from the wildly successful Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise were added — including animatronic versions of Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, along with Captain Barbossa and Davy Jones.
For longtime fans of the original, that update was a mixed bag. The ride’s bones stayed largely intact, but the addition of movie characters shifted the experience from its own self-contained swashbuckling world into something more recognizably tied to a Hollywood franchise. The original facade of the attraction also changed over the years — early photos show a simpler exterior before an additional structure was built to handle the overflow of visitors waiting in line.
We’ve pulled together a collection of vintage photos and original reprinted articles that capture the Pirates of the Caribbean ride as it looked and was written about in its early years — including pieces from LIFE and the Chicago Tribune from April 1967. It’s a look at the attraction before the updates, the movie tie-ins and the queue expansions, back when the whole thing was brand new and audiences had never seen anything quite like it.
Disneyland’s big new pirate ride: Pirates of the Caribbean (1967)
Cutlasses to all hands and prepare to take the town! In the costliest and most technologically-sophisticated amusement park ride ever built, California’s Disneyland has evoked the blood-curdling buccaneering past of the Spanish Main.
Called “The Pirates of the Caribbean,” it is a 15-minute boat ride through the sacking of a town, marked by as harrowing a series of misadventures as the likes of Captain Kidd and Jean Lafitte ever visited upon their hapless victims.
The Disneyland cutthroats are a brawling band of computerized robots that look and move about like real people, but lack even the spark of human decency that pirates are supposed to have had.
Though the ride cost $8 million, the prospect for profit exceeds anything Blackbeard ever dreamed of in his yo-ho-ho days: nearly a million visitors a month are paying 75 cents apiece for the fun of being scared out of their wits.
Photos: As the Pirates of the Caribbean ride starts, visitors see three nightshirted residents of a Caribbean town who have been captured by pirates and react with much quaking and eye-rolling.
While rampaging pirates put the town to the torch, jailbirds try to coax their turnkey closer. One offers a bone, another whistles, and the third curses the cur.
Pirates of the Caribbean ride a thrilling audio-animatronic experience (1967)
For high adventure and imagined reality, none of the new additions will delight Disneyland guests more than setting sail with the rowdiest crew of blackhearted buccaneers ever assembled, the “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
Already taking its first adventurers on a voyage to the Spanish main, “Pirates of the Caribbean” is the most thrilling of all audio-animatronic experiences.
Action begins from the moment guests step aboard flat-bottomed boats called bateaux in the eerie moonlight of the “Blue Bayou.”
A splashing slide down a waterfall plunges adventurers into ghostly caverns filled with echoes of buccaneer days in Dead Man’s Cove, the Crew’s quarters), Captain’s lair, and the Treasure Cave.
The imagined pirate-inhabitants suddenly become real as the boats emerge into the middle of a harbor battle between a mighty privateer ship and the battered fortress of a Caribbean put.
To port and starboard, pirates in life-size, three-dimensional realism are busily plundering the village in an often-humorous recapturing of history.
Dunking the mayor in the well to discover the town’s treasure, auctioning off its not-so-reluctant maidens, merrily chasing the womenfolk thru the village, then setting fire to stores and warehouses with blazing torches, make up the fast-moving action.
“Unobserved” Disneyland guests barely avoid the conflagration by entering a subterranean tunnel which carries them past prison cells and into the town arsenal where flame-licked kegs of gunpowder are ready to blow up at any moment.
Escape from the inferno climaxes the 15-minute voyage as Disneyland guests return to the quiet of the Blue Bayou and its enchanting plantation garden restaurant.
In all, “Pirates of the Caribbean” includes some 119 life-size three-dimensional figures brought to life through “Audio-Animatronics” for the 15-minute adventure voyage.
The original exterior of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride
The Pirates of the Caribbean facade is seen here (probably in the late 1960s), before an additional structure was added to hold the lines of visitors
Disney’s old Pirates of the Caribbean ride (1971)
Vintage Disneyland postcard: Starting out on the Bayou
After boarding your boat at Laffite’s Landing, your boat would drift off past the Blue Bayou and into the darkness.
Dead men tell no tales
Psst! Avast there! It be too late to alter course, mateys… and there be plundering pirates lurking in every cove, waitin’ to board. Sit closer together, and keep your ruddy hands inboard. That be the best way to repel boarders. And mark well me words, mateys… dead men tell no tales!
Yo, ho, ho! Scenes from the old Pirates of the Caribbean ride
A skeleton pirate with heaps of treasure
The galleon, Wicked Wench
Puerto Dorado on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride
Chasing a woman/wench
Auction: Take a wench for a bride vintage Disneyland postcard (scene now removed)
Pirates setting the town afire
The Pirate with pigs
Pirate Old Bill and some cats (and rum)
Prisoners trying to bribe the dog with the keys
Yo, ho, ho! A pirate’s life for me
