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Drayton Manor Park

I'm pretty sure most rides were created with soundtracks like that at the time and it was a practice started by Disney. Let's face it the entire premise of the ride was the park management coming back from Disneyland, doing Pirates of the Caribbean and saying "I want one of those!"

But having said that (and the obvious 'borrowed scenes'!) it was a great family ride, really big and detailed. It needs a refurbishment with updated animations to stay on top but the park on the whole just doesn't seem to be in the right place to deliver this sadly.

It's tiring when all you hear about the ride (usually from Disney fans) is that it was just a rip off. A rip off yes, but a great family ride for the park. Much better quality than how it ended up with things not working and all the rest of it.
 
Ah, you're misunderstanding what I meant by that. By exclusive I didn't mean 'only Pirate Adventure' used music like that, I just meant that they were made solely for the rides use rather than being borrowed from elsewhere. And the Disney ride definitely does not have the varying themes which is what I was alluding to that you get in PA. Dungeon theme at the start with the chanting. Jungle village theme with the woodwind. Hornpipe theme in the inn. Burning town theme. Battleground theme in the large area. Treasure caves theme. Ghost pirate organ theme (until 2006). There's loads of themes with completely different leitmotifs in Pirate Adventure.
With POTC, as brilliant as the ride is (and obviously superior with originality and animatronics) , the music is hella repetitive. It's either 'dead men tell no tales' or 'yo ho yo ho', ok there's a bit more to it. But it's still not as varying.
 
Sauron97 said:
By exclusive I didn't mean 'only Pirate Adventure' used music like that, I just meant that they were made solely for the rides use rather than being borrowed from elsewhere.
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Yeah know what you mean, the music was composed for the ride and designed to change in sync as you go around. It's a great effect though it had been done before in the UK

But in general I mean the ride is an obvious take on the Disney ride. It's tiresome when Disney fans dismiss anything bearing any resemblence to Disney as "just a rip off" (Disney is also very good at taking influence from other places). But it's worth saying that even for its time copying Pirates of the Caribbean was was quite unoriginal thing to do.

Oh well, it was a fun dark ride and a reinvention could make it a staple ride in the park again. The impressive thing was more its size and atmosphere I thought. Drayton does need to claw its way back with something substantial
 
Ciaran said:
Pirate Adventure will never be turned into a Thomas Land ride, it's well outside the boundary and would cost huge amounts of money. I think they would struggle to make a Thomas themed boat ride to be honest.
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Boats are part of the Thomas canon no?

Boat ride through various scenes of Sodor?

The building itself is in the boundary of the area (and isn't part taken up by a play area?)

They could easily do it...
 
In regards to the music, Pirate Adventure did not have a leitmotif in the rides music what so ever. It did have some good pieces of music yes, but they were totally different from scene to scene with no similarities what so ever. They certainly were not synced either, but they served the ride well.

The leitmotif in POTC is the 'yo ho, yo ho' riff. Which appears in most of the rides scores to varying degrees. But the audio in the ride is extremely different, from the queue, to the station music, to the bayou and beyond, the music in the Disney ride is world class and second to non and most certainly does not consist of a couple of repetitive pieces as someone suggested.

Disney are world class at telling story's, their music helps tell the story. Sometimes you might not even consciously realise it is there, but you get a feel for the overall atmosphere that the scenery, along with the music helps create.

Two obvious examples of POTC music, which you can YouTube. Are the queue line and also the station music. The queue line music does have an extremely faint 'yo ho yo ho' leitmotif, but the majority of the piece doesn't and is very original for that section of the ride. The station music then also has non of the music someone suggested above, but it does have a good pace and excitement too it, complimenting the feeling you feel as you are about to board a boat into the unknown.

Pirate Adventure never even came close to using music like this and in my opinion has nothing on the Disney ride.

The most famous pieces of audio / music from the ride are the 'yo ho yo ho' song and the 'dead man tells no tales' audio, but these are two pieces in a ride that has a very rich and varied sound track.
 
DistortAMG said:
In regards to the music, Pirate Adventure did not have a leitmotif in the rides music what so ever. It did have some good pieces of music yes, but they were totally different from scene to scene with no similarities what so ever. They certainly were not synced either, but they served the ride well.
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You're right! Leitmotif was the wrong word as there is no recurrence of the themes during the ride which slipped from me! You know exactly what I meant though :p . It has well constructed themes associated with each area.
You are however, in my opinion, completely wrong about the feel of the audio for POTC. It's too repetitive for me. In fact, ironically given what we're talking about, its the yo ho yo ho leitmotif of the POTC that I don't like. I've just listened to the original track on youtube. Don't get me wrong, the ambiance is brilliant, but apart from that there's not a lot in the way of themes and tunes beyond 'yo ho'. There are far more distinguishable themes in each scene of Pirate Adventure. I've had loads of people always tells me how much they loved the chanting in the jail scene at the beginning in particular (not people who you'd describe as theme park enthusiasts either) , and the organ at the end was completely haunting. And I forgot to mention the queue line music for Pirate Adventure that played on the ramp and in the lantern lit corridors was fantastic too.

Disney do tell stories very well and yes of course the audio (and dialogue) compliments the story. But the issue with this sometimes IMO is that sometimes the story is being told "at you". Pirate Adventure has very little in the way of dialogue, with the exception of the Captain, a couple of shipwrights talking at the start, and of course the bellringer at the end by the ghost scene; and I think in some ways I prefer this as it gives me room and imagination to figure out what's going on in my own mind.

That being said, the Disney ride overall is obviously of a much higher standard given what was thrown at it and obviously the iconic 'audio animatronics' obliterate the basic animatronics that were used by GLD for Pirate Adventure which were pretty simple to configure. I'm pretty sure a lot of the PA animatronics in there have the same basic/facial designs as well. One of them was called the fireman right? The bald one that was on the plank in the treasure caves and the one that spat out water. I know there were names for each type but I can't remember what they were, perhaps you know?

But yeah, I love the Disney ride, and I notice that you put the DLP variant as your favorite ride; I admit that it is quite possibly the best dark ride in the world designed with utter creative brilliance and in many ways is the ideal themed indoor attraction :) . But I think Pirate Adventure is an excellent British copy of the ride which does things very well, albeit differently in different areas especially when you consider budget.
 
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Haha maybe I was wrong and Pirate Adventure is receiving a mythical status after all :D
I get what you mean though @Sauron97 , and I don't think anyone here is undervaluing Pirate Adventure. It's an inferior take on a Disney classic but (when it was looked after) it was good all the same and very grand ride for a British park. I know lots of fans who really loved it for what it was.

The main problem with nicking ideas from classic dark rides without your own originality is, no matter how good it is, it will always just be compared to the original, which I guess this shows.

Loads of European parks copied Disney, Phantasialand and Europa among them, but they've redeveloped theirs with their own spin in more recent years. It would be fantastic to see Drayton do that. They did it with their Jungle Cruise when they revamped it as Excalibur and it was great, although unfortunately that didn't last for other reasons
 
Yeah weren't they identical originally? (or a mirror layout or something)
Interesting how one has been maintained with a lot still happening and the Drayton one got pretty lacking in its last years
 
Themeparksandy1981 said:


There was another pirate ride built in Europe the following. The story and scenes were different but they used the same pirates as featured in the pirate adventure.
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I think Los Piratas was actually removed and replaced with Huracan, a Zierer Custom Force coaster, in 2013. Perhaps something similar could work for Drayton, utilising some of Pirate Adventure's old dark ride scenes, if Pirate Adventure itself can't reopen?
 
PA was amazing by UK standards of the day (or even now). But this isn't necessarily a reflection of how good it was. Rather, it is a reflection on the sorry state of theming in UK parks. Which has only gone downhill in the last two decades.
 
To put things into perspective, when they built Pirate Adventure, their major rides were the Buffalo, The Python (Pinfari Zyklon), the Jungle Cruise and the cable car. At the time their ride line up was similar in scale to what Pleasurewood Hills has now, although they did have the zoo. And then from that they suddenly popped out one of the largest dark rides in Europe. Imagine if somewhere like Pleasurewood Hills or Lightwater Valley did that today. It was also nice that Pirate Adventure wasn’t just a ride on its own, but they created a small pirate area around it. In that respect, aside from Thomasland, the park has gone backwards away from themed areas.

The Bryans were always open about the fact that they love Disney and wanted to create some of that magic here in the UK. It’s seems a shame if people wrote it off just because it was clearly inspired by a Disney ride.
 
When I owned and ran Drayton Manor plus with member G-Force(on TT forum) we got on well with the owner and he emailed us regularly with park news and updates. Once a year during the closed season we did a Q&A topic and our members send in our questions and we selected the best questions and Colin replied to us. 1 question I remembered someone asked was about themed areas and Colin’s reply was it was hard to theme as every area was connected to each other so they just named them Action park,Fishermen’s wharf,Children’s Corner then became Robinson’s Fruit shoot area,Pirate Cove,Aerial Park and the Zoo. Like I think the area names were only dropped about 4 years ago. Pirate Cove worked well to they removed the Jungle Cruise for Excalibur and now even worst the castle of dreams.
 
TakeYourMedicine said:
Yeah weren't they identical originally? (or a mirror layout or something)
Interesting how one has been maintained with a lot still happening and the Drayton one got pretty lacking in its last years
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No they were two totally different rides with different layouts and scenes. Los Pirates had some scenes completely original to the ride and vise versa. They did however share a lot of the same animatronics, props and even the large pirate ship was the same.

Some of the audio for the triggered effects were the same too. Such as the audio of 'the fireman' animatronice tipping water onto the woman below.
 
DistortAMG said:
No they were two totally different rides with different layouts and scenes. Los Pirates had some scenes completely original to the ride and vise versa. They did however share a lot of the same animatronics, props and even the large pirate ship was the same.

Some of the audio for the triggered effects were the same too. Such as the audio of 'the fireman' animatronice tipping water onto the woman below.
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Were both rides designed by Golding Leisure Design? Pirate Adventure definitely was and the audio, correct me if I’m wrong, was all done by them.
 
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Ciaran said:
Were both rides designed by Golding Leisure Design? Pirate Adventure definitely was and the audio, correct me if I’m wrong, was all done by them.
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Indeed they were. This is why they shared so maslny things. If you YouTube a POV of the ride, it's quite interesting spotting stuff you recognise from Pirate Adventure.
 
DistortAMG said:
Indeed they were. This is why they shared so maslny things. If you YouTube a POV of the ride, it's quite interesting spotting stuff you recognise from Pirate Adventure.
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I thought so. That explains the similarities in the audio and the animatronics. They would have been extremely expensive to create so it was probably cheaper to re-use things that have already been made.
 
Ciaran said:
I thought so. That explains the similarities in the audio and the animatronics. They would have been extremely expensive to create so it was probably cheaper to re-use things that have already been made.
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Pirate Adventure animatronics extremely expensive to make? Not a chance. They are extremely basic as far as Animatronics go, with one or two pneumatic movements at most. Calling them Animatronics is a strech to be fair. More like mannuqins with a few pneumatic actuators and hinges in. They were basic even when the ride was new. The whole ride was built for a million quid. Not much, even in 1990. Besides even if they were expensive, they could have just replaced the faces to make them original, that would have been a cheap way to do it.

I would assume they didn't change anything obviously to save costs yes, but both parks are regional parks in different countries so it didn't matter.
 
DistortAMG said:
Pirate Adventure animatronics extremely expensive to make? Not a chance. They are extremely basic as far as Animatronics go, with one or two pneumatic movements at most. Calling them Animatronics is a strech to be fair. More like mannuqins with a few pneumatic actuators and hinges in. They were basic even when the ride was new. The whole ride was built for a million quid. Not much, even in 1990. Besides even if they were expensive, they could have just replaced the faces to make them original, that would have been a cheap way to do it.

I would assume they didn't change anything obviously to save costs yes, but both parks are regional parks in different countries so it didn't matter.
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I have £2,500 per animatronic in my head for some reason. I’ll have the exact figure somewhere, we interviewed Mark Golding back in January and we learnt a lot from him about Pirate Adventure and other past projects.
 
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