Welcome back to part 4. In this post we're taking a look at the audio for this amazing attraction.

It's impossible to explain the creation of Pirates of the Caribbean without bringing up Xavier Ateno otherwise known as "X" Ateno. He was an imagineer, but got his start as an "in-betweener animator" for Monstro and Pinocchio. Later he moved up to assist on Fantasia. Fast forward a number of years, he did some stop motion work on the toy soldiers for Babes in Toyland which resulted in him working on the toy solders in the parade at Disneyland as well.

Before long he was moved over to full-time imagineer in 1965. X hadn't done much as an imagineer other than working on the dinosaurs for the Primeval World diorama on the Disneyland railroad. When Walt personally tasked him with scripting Pirates of the Caribbean, X had never scripted anything in his life!

To put the script of such a gargantuan project into the hands of a completely untested artist who was not even a writer, was an incredible gamble. X worked on the storyboards with Marc Davis and in the midst of all of this craziness, X knew Pirates would need a song. An idea  struck him for a melody as well as lyrics. Never having written anything before he scribbled down lyrics and brought it up to Walt.

If Walt happened to like it, X decided that he would hand it off to musicians like the Sherman Brothers to complete. Instead Walt Disney told him it was great and instructed him to get with George Bruns to do the music. George Bruns is best known for writing The Ballad of Davey Crockett. Yo Ho, Yo Ho was specifically worded to undercut the idea of hardened murderous criminals into charismatic whimsical rascals, obviously inspired through Marc Davis's concept work. X admitted that all he did was use the kind of dialogue Marc Davis' pirates may have spoken and put it to music.

People still whistle to themselves over half a century later.

Marty Sklar worked out the timing for pirates and dialogue throughout the attraction. The song was performed by the Mellow Men, a quartet founded by Thurl Ravenscroft. Thurl coincidentally voiced the accordion playing pirate, the pirate once balanced a top the dynamite barrel and was in fact the voice for the singing howling dog. If you don't recognize his name, he was an amazing voice actor with a laundry list of credits including Tony the Tiger.

The Mellow Men worked on a number of Disney movies and shorts such as The Three Little Pigs, the elephants in The Jungle Book, and the singing busts inside the Haunted Mansion. They also performed with Bing Crosby, Doris Day and Elvis to name few.

Paul freeze, the ghost host voice in The Haunted Mansion, was the voice of the
auctioneer as well as a few other Pirates.

Welcome back to part 3 of this famous attraction!

After the boats were added to the Pirates of the Caribbean, Claude Coates went on to design and lay out of the actual track pattern, utilizing all of the available space just like he did on Its a Small World. Once this was completed around late '66 he oversaw the production of the show models, literally building the attraction using Marc Davis's very thorough design work.

Harriet Burns, one of the first three original imagineers who designed the buildings for Disneyland and helped build the first model for Sleeping Beauty's castle. Harriet actually created this long, intricate and exact model layout for the entire ride design point of view from the guest perspective in a boat.

The pirate figures placed throughout were essential in tailoring and tweaking the attraction. Both Marc Davis and Walt Disney utilized this modeling method to hone the best possible staging for guests to enjoy. It was featured in Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color as well as some other promotional work.

The full scale figures and faces were created by Blaine Gibson essentially the Disney sculptor at the time. Blaine's modeling team comprised of Peter Kermode and George Snowden. Blaine started by sculpting maquettes of every figure, human and animal, (there are over 120 by the way) nearly all of them from Mark's conceptual drawings. Blaine personally made more than 30 different faces from studying Marc Davis's concepts.

After Blaine completed sculpting the figures they went to the capable hands of Leota Tombs, mostly known as the face of Madame Leota in the Haunted Mansion. She was a truly amazing artist and imagineer on Pirates of the Caribbean and mainly worked on forming, designing and finishing work on the figures along with Harriet Burns.

Walt and Admiral Fowler seated in the front row of the test boats, designed by Bob Gurr, for the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction 1966.

Marc Davis' Pirates drawings went to a whole other level and more artists were brought  in under Marc to flesh out ideas. He no longer had the time to do the work himself. By the time the '64 Worlds Fair had wrapped up in '65, Disney was in full swing creating Pirates of the Caribbean. Walt decided within a year that he wanted it bigger than ever so he added another show building. Due to space restraints, men had to go beneath the berm surrounding Disneyland which also meant that the boats had to go under Disneyland's train tracks. The entire area previously developed for the wax museum was completely dismantled, steel and all, to be redesigned.

No one knew what to do with most of the first building so Walt told WED to put in some caves using the methods and tools they had already developed in the caves for the Ford Magic Sky Highway. The second building was necessary for the addition of a full scale pirate ship and part of a Spanish Fort battle bombardment. Once it was decided that boats would be part of the pirate experience, Bob Gurr was brought in to redesign the boats he had fashioned for the '64 World Fairs It's a Small World attraction. He had his hand in Pirates of the Caribbean as well as so many other things.

Since the boats for It's A Small World were created by Arrow Development, the company was also used to make the boats for Pirates of the Caribbean. Arrow was also used to Fashion The Flume system for Pirates, when you take those drops.

In the fall of '64 Walt, Marc Davis and some others flew up to Arrow Development headquarters to test out the boat in a flume mock-up. Dick Irvine executed the art direction on Pirates of the Caribbean. He was the first to head what is now known as Walt Disney imagineering. Prior to working for Disney he had a robust career in movie set design and all the technical aspects of the day and when you understand that, it starts to make sense why Disney attractions are so often a cut above most of what you'll find at other theme parks. They've always used high-end movie set design layout and lighting etc for their attractions and that started with Dick Irvine.

Irvine was hired not just to be in charge of certain projects or single attraction, but rather the Disneyland and Magic Kingdom Parks as a whole! A lot of the design and force perspective stuff within the parks, is due to Irvine. He personally did the art direction for Pirates in both Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom. Though Bill Martin is also credited for his hand in the art direction, he was the art director of Disneyland's original Fantasyland. Martin also contributed to the Monorail, Sleeping Beauty Castle, Cinderella's Castle, Peter Pan's flight and the entire layout of the Magic Kingdom itself.

Learn more in Part 3.

From the earliest planning stages of Disneyland, Walt Disney knew he wanted a pirate attraction but for one reason or another it never materialized for the opening in 1955. Supposedly concept work by imagineer Herb Ryman was to have a pirate shack along with pirate laundry drying out on a line at the edge of Frontierland.

1957 Walt was back on Pirates again and asked for concept designs and plans for a walk-through museum, this was all while work was being done to create the Submarine Voyage, the Monorail and the Matterhorn. The only preliminary work for pirates in the 1950s is this layout  by Claude coats in 1957.

In 1960 there was a big ship, a Cypress swamp and a burning City. October of 1960 Walt tasked Marc Davis to put together the preliminary work for Pirates of the Caribbean. Walt is quoted by Marc Davis as saying he thought it could be a walk- through. Marc Davis began developing gags, story-lines, staging and interesting scenarios and completely immersed himself in Pirate lore for two years drawing and conceptualizing Pirates.

The enormous amount of work Marc produced during this time, combined with his limitless talent leaves little room to wonder why Pirates of the Caribbean is as amazing as it is! He really honed in on every aspect of the attraction, the character designs, facial expressions, clothing, background, set design, ship design, architecture, humor, lighting, color palettes, idea after idea after idea! He even took it upon himself to revise the layout. Keep in mind - there wasn't a team of people doing all of this, it was just Marc Davis.

The Carousel of Progress would hone the technology of the audio required, along with the animatronics developed in the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln attraction. Guests would experience all of it within the safety of a boat gently weaving through a canal as another world seemingly took place around them similar to It's a Small World.

The working name was the Blue Bayou Lagoon boom or the Blue Bayou boat ride.

We'll cover more in part 2.