Little Adventures

*

Pirates

In 1974 I flew to California to teach a group of aerospace engineers how to program in ALGOL, a now nearly forgotten computer language. At the end of the two week course they asked me to go along with them to "MacDonnell-Douglas Night" at Disneyland. The company had rented the place for the evening, and I had a great time checking things out in the company of engineers. We visited all of the popular rides and attractions, ate a lot of junk food and watched a magnificent sunset from high atop a Ferris wheel. I came away very impressed with Disney's creation.

I was especially impressed with the "Pirates of the Caribbean" water ride. For this you board a boat which is dragged along by a hidden mechanism. The ride takes you through scene after scene depicting a pirate attack on a colonial port. In the last tableau the buccaneers are defeated and captured. I'm sure this sort of thing did happen, but the Disney version was closer to a cartoon than any historical reality. Each scene was expertly proportioned and handsomely decorated, and beneath the pirate's clothing myriad mysterious mechanisms made the characters move and tell a story. My group greatly enjoyed speculating on the wondrous clockwork of gears, levers, cogs and computers that could not be seen but were there beneath the surface making everything go. In just seven minutes it was over and we went off to give Space Mountain a try.

* * * * *

During the summer of 1991, I drove my family south from Western Pennsylvania toward Florida. On the trip down we stayed inland along the eastern edge of the Appalachian Mountains and visited famous caves, mansions and swamps. In five days we arrived at my sister Ellen's house in Tampa. From their we traveled daily across the narrow width of Florida to the big attractions in the Orlando area. I had a lot of fun playing the role of tourist dad in theme park heaven. I particularly delighted in the day we spent at Disney World, which lay bright and shiny in the southern sunshine. It was a busy day, and we stood in many a line listening to the multilingual chatter of hot, tired tourists. This was a sleeker version of the Disneyland in California and was endlessly interesting to the eye. One wonderful area after another presented itself as we wandered along the pretty pathways of the place. Just after lunch we lined up and waited to see an old friend of mine.

After an hour’s wait, we finally got into our boat for the "Pirates of the Caribbean" water ride. At the end of it, I came away pretty impressed. Amazingly, it was even better than the original. The pirates were more fierce and the scenes of colonial mayhem were more handsome than ever. There was also a spirit about the place that made me think of every pirate movie I had ever seen. This version of the ride felt just perfect. Here it was, located in Florida, the very area where this sort of piratical mayhem actually took place. The ride is about fantasy pirates, but that fits very well too with what Orlando has become today. Pam and I enjoyed the ride greatly and Pete wanted to go again. So we did.

* * * * *

In June, 1993, we landed at the Munich airport and then drove in a great loop toward our flight home, which was to leave from Paris three weeks later. We visited ancient museums, fabled towns and a kids' paradise up in Denmark called LegoLand. We explored real windmills, giant fortresses and medieval cities. The day before we were to fly home, we visited the brand, spanking new EuroDisney just outside of Paris. What we found on that rainy Tuesday was a place that hadn't found itself. Try as I might I could not get used to Mickey Mouse squeaking in French. The place was pretty empty at first, and we zipped through many attractions with nary a wait. All of the rides were copied from the Florida version, though now they had European touches. We ate Mickey pizza at a huge Bavarian beer hall and then stood in the short line for my favorite ride.

I was disappointed with the "Pirates of the Caribbean" water ride. Like everything else here at EuroDisney, this was a clone of the Florida version but now with even brighter colors and more plastic. The pirates cursed in French, the women screamed in French and the merry pirate songsters sang in French. It just didn't work for me at all. I walked out thinking how strange it was to find this touchy-feely artifact of southern Florida somehow transported to Paris, home of the magnificent Louvre, the marvelous Eiffel Tower and mysterious Notre Dame.