Here’s a post from the blog of C Martin Croker (TV’s Zorak from “Space Ghost” and “The Brak Show”) from a little over a month ago, about the changes recently made to Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

I haven’t seen Disneyland’s new version yet, but I have ridden Walt Disney World’s, and I agree with him on just about every single point he makes. It’s kind of frustrating, because to me it seems like the whole thing is the best of a bad situation.

Technically, they did a great job. The new animatronics are very well done, the best I’ve ever seen of trying to emulate a real person. They’re integrated well into the scenes without overpowering them. (In the Florida version, the end scene is completely replaced, but that was always an anti-climactic and weak scene).

And I’d even say that as a concept, it made sense — the movies have been huge successes, and the first was genuinely an “instant classic.” (I didn’t like the second one as much, but it could still work if the third one delivers the pay-off).

But it just doesn’t fit all that well. As the blog says, you’re left wondering “who’s that guy wandering around the Pirates ride?” But if they’d tried to do a Marc Davis-style characterization of Capt. Jack Sparrow, I can guarantee you it would’ve just come across as a failed animatronic of Johnny Depp. So you’re stuck with never touching the ride except for refurbishments, or trying something new and getting criticized for not being “true to the original vision” or only being out for cheap marketing tie-ins. It’s not a position I’d want to be in.

Like I said, I haven’t been on Disneyland’s version yet. According to Croker’s blog, the bits voiced by Paul Frees got the boot, which worries me. That was my favorite aspect of the ride.

P.S. I just saw in that Wikipedia entry that Paul Frees was the voice of K.A.R.R. in Knight Rider. Which is so unbelievably awesome.

I got this weekend off, so I’m cramming into two days all the stuff I imagined I’d be doing when I first heard I was going to be spending a month at Disney World.

Even though I’ve been to Disney World more times than a normal person would admit to, I still see something new every trip. This time (as a guest, anyway), it’s been the water parks. Today I started at Typhoon Lagoon and found my new hands-down favorite thing to do in the entire resort. It’s called Castaway Creek, and it’s a river that runs around the entire park with various places you can get in or out. You get on one of the inner tubes and let the current take you gradually around the entire length of the river, under bridges, past waterfalls, through caves, and into a misty rain forest area.

It’s awesome. From now on, whenever anyone asks what I’d rather be doing, my answer is “lying and floating.” I intentionally left my watch and cell phone back at the hotel, but I estimate that an entire circuit around the river takes thirty minutes, and I must’ve gone around two and a half times at least.

I also rode the new “Crush’n Gusher” water coaster they’ve installed, and it was fun enough but no big deal. I would’ve hit the other slides and then taken another couple of hours in the river, but they closed the park on account of approaching thunderstorms.

The thunderstorms finally hit once I was on Big Thunder Mountain at the Magic Kingdom. (I’d stopped by Epcot and rode Mission: Space, and it was every bit as headache-inducing and uncomfortable and anti-climactic as I’d remembered). The rain washed out any hope of riding anything else, since it drove all the people into the ride queues and I didn’t feel like waiting, but it cleared up long enough for the fireworks. All totaled it was a pretty good day. Still not as fun as going to the parks with other people, but there’s something to be said for doing whatever you feel like doing on your own schedule without having to wait (or make them wait for you to finish smoking).

Tomorrow I’m planning on riding Expedition Everest again, then heading to the other water park Blizzard Beach. At the moment, I’ve got the kind of tired that comes only after a day filled with age-inappropriate activities, so I’m going to dream about fireworks and inner tubes and Gary Sinise spinning me at 4Gs.

The Orlando Sentinel put up a video covering the Team Possible game at Epcot, and it came out pretty good. You can watch it here (assuming you’re running Windows; I can’t figure out how to get it to play in Safari).

The video has a lot of interviews with the VP of Imagineering R&D talking about the game, interspersed with shots of kids playing it and of several of the effects in action. I’m still planning on going through the game with a video camera sometime next week, but I doubt I’ll do as good a job capturing the effects as the professionals did.