Say Ahoy! to the Next Generation of Audio-Animatronics at Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean

New tech can now be found in an old favorite at Disneyland as Pirates of the Caribbean becomes a showcase of the latest advancements in Audio-Animatronics.

What's Happening:

• Guests visiting Disneyland Park will notice a bit of new magic that has been installed at the iconic Pirates of the Caribbean attraction in New Orleans Square.
• The classic attraction closed earlier this year for a bit of a refurbishment and is reopening their doors today, June 26, where guests will see a noticeable change to one of the rides most favorite scenes.
• Located in the treasure-filled grottoes at the beginning of the attraction, a skeleton captain that sat atop a hoard of gold doubloons and treasure has been replaced with a next-gen Audio-Animatronics figure.
• Devotees may recall one of the earlier episodes of the new webseries, We Call It Imagineering, that focused on the research and development department. While the robotic Olaf largely stole the show from that episode, a new projection-based Audio-Animatronic figure was also featured. We got to see things happen to the face of the figure in real time thanks to the new tech.
• Now, we're seeing that in play aboard Pirates of the Caribbean, where guests will sail past this pirate sitting atop a pile of cursed gold, transforming from a "flesh and blood" buccaneer into a cursed skeleton right before the eyes of passengers aboard the ride.
• The tech helping bring this to life comes from the partnership between Disney and EPIC games using the Unreal engine.
• You can see more of how this all works and how the new figure fits into the attraction with a new video from Walt Disney Imagineering, featured below.

Initial Thoughts:

• While this is a big advancement for Audio-Animatronics, wasn't there just a big hullabaloo about projection based faces on Audio-Animatronic figures? Resulting in the replacement of projection based faces on Frozen Ever After at EPCOT.
• Also, wasn't there also a recently another big deal made - recently being several years ago - about the restoration of an effect in Pirates of the Caribbean that similarly showed (using mirrors) a cursed pirate become human again before we head into the battle scene and town and see all the pirates alive again. Does this effect remain?
• It's definitely a neat idea, with Pirates seemingly being a good place to test the tech. Perhaps we will see built with more intention in the near term, but right now it does feel kind of shoehorned into place storywise, and maybe messing with a decades-old mythology. Of course, die-hards will argue that changed with the movies, the redhead, or even back at earlier changes in the 90s.
• So maybe it does fit after all, as now that we think about it - Pirates seems to be the story playground anyway.