Yeah, I got wind of this last Wednesday. This is so fucked up. I thought it was bad enough that the ride was sanitized to be ultra-PC (I mean come on, pirates chasing food instead of women?).

Have we not learned anything from the truly shit job they do to the Haunted Mansion every year because every disaffected teenager who loves Nightmare Before Christmas. Such total and utter crap.

Gregg, are you INSANE. Haunted Mansion Holiday is thing that gets me to Disneyland once a year. Considering that Nightmare Before Christmas came out twelve years ago, it probably draws quite a few adults as well. I can see why Disney purists would scoff, but I wouldn’t be a Disney fan without HMH.

5000!, that’s funny, because I think what they do to the Haunted Mansion sucks, but I have little problem with what they are doing to Pirates. I don’t have a problem with HMH in theory, but I think the execution is poor. From what I hear, the changes to Pirates will only affect some of the dead areas between scenes in the ride. Trusted sources say that the renovation won’t suck, so I’m happy with that. Although I do play to get to DLand for a bit this weekend or next week to go on Pirates before it changes, just incase.

Does anybody know what day the ride will be closed down?

Terrible news about Pirates!

Who cares if they do change the Haunted Mansion? They change it BACK when the holidays are over. Not so with what they plan for Pirates.

Suck.

I too would like to know how much time we have to take that ride one last time….

I’m just upset that the Disneyland powers that be feel it necessary to change the classic rides to bring new people in.

The ride goes down the first week of March once Haunted Mansion comes back up. I work at the park and I’ll just say wait until it’s up before you start freaking out. The new animatronics are going to be pretty darn cool from what I’ve heard and they don’t really interfere with any of the existing ride elements, they just add to it and solidify the store. Yeah, Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbosa are going to be in there, but I honestly don’t think it’s going to ruin the ride.

To be honest, I don’t think it will ruin the ride. I just don’t see the need to change the source material when both can be appreciated in their current form. For example, what if we were to go back and make just some minor edits in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings just to tighten up the story a bit and include a few cool things from the movies? I think the academic in me prefers to see the original preserved for the sake of cultural heritage, and the creative in me prefers to see new works created (like a movie from a ride) rather than old works altered in relatively minor ways for what seem to be primarily commercial considerations.

I’ve got one of those snazzy SoCal Select Annual passes to Disney, so I head there quite a bit. I empathize with 5000! on this one but… I look forward to the changes/additions.

By the way, a great site to bookmark that gives a weekly update to Disneyland closures, openings, renovations, rumors, and customer service nightmares is mouseplanet.com.