[WIP] Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean Ride - 100,000 Bricks and real water

[gatorzip02]

Ahoy! It has been 12 years since I last posted a MOC on Classic Pirates.  I'm back and excited to share my latest project.  I am re-creating the entire Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean ride.  This has been done a few times by other builders on a smaller scale, but this one will be very large at 5x10 baseplates with over 100,000 bricks, and most importantly it is going to use real water to move the ride boats through the attraction.  Yes, it will even include a drop hill. 

I started about two years ago by drawing up plans for the ride.  Here is the design I finally settled on for the display.  It isn't a perfect recreation of the actual ride, but a close approximation.  All of the major scenes are included (in order:  ride loading area in a fort, bayou, skeleton caves, fort and ship battle, dunking the mayor in the well, auction scene, pillaging pirates, town burning, jail scene with dog and key, and finally Jack Sparrow breaking in to the treasure room).  

 

I really struggled with how to contain the water and move it through the ride.  I was originally going to try and seal the Lego with some sort of caulk/glue but I really didn't like the idea of ruining that many bricks, and it would make design changes almost impossible.  I decided to build a custom table for the display and cut out the path the ride would take.   

 

I then laid a sheet of pond liner into the cut-out paths and placed a brick-built canal over the top of the pond liner to completely hide it from view.  I built the canals all in black to make the water appear black like it does in the real ride.  I played around with making a Lego lift system to make the water flow, but after a few months of trial and failure, I finally just decided to use a pond pump.  I hope you will forgive me.   

 

I was invited to join a community Pirate build for Bricks and More in Belgium, so I decided to build out the fort and town scene first and display them separate from the table (no water) as part of the larger community display.  It was great motivation to get started on the build.  I always wanted to build a star-fort so I used some creative liberties to include one in the display.   I had a great time displaying at BAM and met some of the incredible ship builders from this forum.  Here is our community build (I'm on bottom left) and my contribution.  

 

 

After BAM, I displayed solo at Bricking Bavaria in Nuremberg.  By then I was exhausted and took a couple month break from the project.  Then I started hearing about Skaerbaek Fan Weekend in Denmark and decided I was going to set a goal of displaying the completed ride at SFW 23 (September 23-24).  This motivated me, and I have been diligently working to get it done in time.  Here are a few pictures of the current status.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've got the ride function working.  Here is a YouTube video I posted showing my first test run a few months ago.  It took quite a bit of tweaking to get it running reliably.  By the end of that week, I got it to run for 30 minutes without touching it.  

I've got a little less than two months to go.  I haven't started the swamp section yet, the main skeleton cave, or the portion of the town that is burning.  Lots to do and so little time, I'll keep updating as I get closer.  Is anybody on here planning on going to SFW this year?  If you are, I'd love to meet up.  

 

Sorry for the long post, thanks for reading!  

 

Joel

"BrickBuccaneer"

 

[Oky]

Wow, very impressive! What you have so far already looks amazing! As a Disneyland frequenter and fan of the ride, I’m loving this. I hope you don’t rush the rest of it just to get it ready for the convention and I look forward to seeing how this develops. 

[Yperio_Bricks]

I've never been to Disneyland and probably never will , so i can not compare your layout to the real world ride but holy moly, the whole layout is so impressive! I love the fort and town One of the best forts i've seen! And i also love all those little scenes you build like the pirates in the jail.

[Murdoch17]

I feel Dug would be a bad jail guard - he would see something chase-worthy and be like SQUIRREL! 

I was on Disneyland's PoTC ride just before the first film came out, and it looks very close to what I remember, so great job on accuracy!

Fun fact: They originally used real skeletons of bodies donated to science in this ride, since fake ones in the 1960's looked cheap / bad. They THINK they've got them all removed and replaced now...

[Rogue Redcoat]

I love all the little scenes, and how massive it is :)

[mspl]

Seeing a partial video of the finished build run around the internet from aggregators and reposters.  Do you have the full video posted somewhere?