True-Life Adventureland
Disney's New Caribbean Beach: Theming Without a Sense of Time or Place

You may have seen this article in the Orlando Sentinel about updated theming to the Caribbean Beach resort. The illustration depicts beds styled like boats. A table themed as a giant compass. It's decked out top-to-bottom in Pirates paraphernalia, yet I think this room has the concept of Pirates' theming all wrong. Here's why:

Do you imagine that the pirates of Pirates of the Caribbean sleep in beds styled as boats? Did they do that in the movie? Of course not, so why is that the case here? It's the equivalent of the Cinderella Castle Suite offering up a giant glass slipper as a bathtub.

You could argue that what I'm asking for might demand an unappealing level of realism—do people really want to stay in what passed for a bedroom on a pirate ship?—and, of course, nobody wants that. But it seems like there's a middle-ground that would feel like a room out of the Pirates world while still preserving the "fun" that this concept thinks it's offering up.

Theming, at least the way Disney has traditionally defined it, goes beyond "styling" to communicate a sense of time and place. What time and place does this room take me to? Nowhere, unfortunately, except the Caribbean Beach Hotel circa 2009, or maybe a kid's bedroom. Not the world of Pirates of the Caribbean.