Interview: Imagineer Bob Baranick on the rehabbed Pirates
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Up until August 31st Bob Baranick worked for Disneyland Design Studio, the Disneyland inpark wing of Walt Disney Imagineering  His projects included Tarzan's Treehouse, the earthquake finale added to Big Thunder Mountain a few years ago and the Haunted Mansion upgrade of 1996. He is perhaps best known for his work on the major Pirates of the Caribbean rehab of 1997 (chronicled in Rick West's most recent issue of Theme Park Adventure Magazine), also known as the Politically Correct rehab. On August 31st Bob resigned WDI to pursue other projects but he remains as a consultant and recently worked extensively on the recently completely, two month Pirates of the Caribbean rehab. Bob was kind enough to take us through this latest rehab scene by scene:

LaughingPlace: So what's new in Pirates?

Bob Baranick: That's really an appropriate question because Tony [Baxter, Senior Vice-President of Creative Development at Walt Disney Imagineering] and I have kind of been struggling with the whole issue of the fact the attraction's been down for eight weeks and are we doing anything that's going to be a big bang? Is there going to be some marketable piece? As a matter of fact the marketing guys and Cynthia Harris [Executive Vice-President of Disneyland] were out there the other day trying to scope it out and see if they could do something about marketing it. But the truth is it was just a genuine rehab. It was restoring the attraction to what really should've been for the last several years. We accomplished that. But we knew we had to do something extra so we threw a couple of little surprises in, so I hope they work. I know they will for fans of Pirates, they'll be fairly obvious. But for the common guests I'm not sure.

LP: Take us through the attraction and the changes made in each scene.

BB: Probably the first one that's noticeable are the fireflies in the Bayou. That's a restoration of the original process because the effect that they had tried several years ago was supposed to be maintenance friendly and it wasn't any more maintainable than the original technique and looked pretty horrible. Eventually it just wore itself into something that wasn't noticeable at all so we put back something that I think looks more like fireflies. I'm really happy with it. That's the first.

Then after drop two you're into the new caverns that are all lit. And I was trying to get something that is Rainbow Cavern like since we don't have the Mine Train anymore. So it's kind of a mix of colors, but in theory it's colors that you would get from the minerals and the rocks that were shimmering, not anything too bizarre but real pretty.

Something I'm really excited about is the skull and cross bones we got in the one cave. That's something I wanted to do years ago but we just never had the time. Now we have a new guy at the park that's very technologically oriented and so he was able to come up with a way to that. That's Tom LeDuke and he's a special effects wizard, so I think what you're going to be noticing at Disneyland over the next several years is a lot of different types of projection effects and things, that'll be his specialty.

The next one would be the hurricane. We re-lit and did some new effects in there and we still have to tweak those a bit. Those may be a little overpowering, kind of shocking.

Then you get into the big fort bombardment scene and that's where we really did a number. My favorite's obviously the two fort soldiers which was quite a battle. I actually had to get Tony's help on that one, that was huge. For what it is, it's kind of sad that something has to be so political. But it was worth it. You've probably heard those audio tracks forever. We just played off of that. I wanted to create two characters that almost had a personality. So I picked Henry Calvin and Gene Sheldon [Sergeant Garcia and Bernardo from Zorro]. They both have a personality and a character. It's like they're still trying to defend the fort but they're about to give up and they're terrified. We reprogrammed all of the animation all the way through from the ship captain on, it's all brand new. The cannons and the splash blasts and all of that stuff is new.

LP: The Hidden Mickey made by the ship's captain isn't there anymore.

BB: That was intentional and I expect to get a lot of criticism for that, but I was very adamant about losing that.

LP: Because you didn't like the way it looked in general or you didn't like the Hidden Mickey?

BB: It wasn't so much the Mickey as it was just horrible, horrible lighting on that figure.

LP: Did you do anything with the projected shadow Pirates fighting in that scene?

BB: Yes, we have a new projector.

LP: Anything else in that scene?

BB: Lot of cloud projections and pretty much brand new lighting.

LP: Were there cloud projections in there already or is that completely new?

BB: There were, but it's different, totally different. We did a more dramatic version of them. I also tried to work a little bit with the fog to get it more into the tunnel, but we're not there yet. We don't want any fog in the middle of the bay. Mostly in the tunnel and a little bit over by the burning lighthouses.