Thread: Advice for Pirates of the Carribbean Theme

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Hi all. I joined this site last night and I'm addicted. Having sold off all of my haunt props 2 years ago, last year was a rebuilding year and I went with a graveyard/crypt theme. This year I'm switching everything to Pirates of the Carribbean. My front lawn is a graveyard with/ gate. I have tombstones and skeletons. You then enter my enclosed porch and go into a very scary crypt. The problem last year was that the outside of my porch looked like a big black garbage bag. I want to have a large prop in front of the entire porch.
I was considering making a pirate ship but I don't think it would be big enough. A small pirate ship, with a normal sized skeleton, would look kind of lame. I was thinking of making the pirate ship sinking, with the pirate at the wheel, but I'm not sure how that would look.
I did some googling and found this site: http://davelandweb.com. It has awesome photos of the Pirates of the Carribbean ride at Disneyland. I'm now thinking of one of the following:
1. Building the shack at the beginning of the ride, with the cajun in front. I could build the house, the lantern, and probably the guy, but would people get that it's the cajun house from the ride???
2. I could build the skeleton behind the wheel in a storm (see photos). This would be pretty easy.
3. I could build a cave scene with a large treasure chest and pirate skeletons guarding it.
4. I could try and build a partial pirate ship.
Any thoughts? Does anyone know of a place to find more detailed photos of the Pirates of the Carribbean ride?
On a related note, check out the "pirate skull warning" photo...that would be awesome above the entrance to a crypt.

Welcome demichae! Thar do be plenty O' pirates in these waters says I. And many have done pirate themed haunts. We do pirates every year ourselves and I like your ideas. Our haunt is not POTC centric but does incorporate a headhunter village and pirate camp in the mix. I suggest checking out the forums search function and you should find a treasure trove of piratey goodness!

DB

What DB says is way true. Lots of fantastic ideas in here.

For the front of your porch, if you don't/can't go the pirate ship rout, think about a warf. Do it as a side ways view. Like you would be looking under the warf. If your porch has columns make them look like the post supports. The black plastic would just look like darkness under the warf. Be sure to get some of that erosion control mesh (looks like old cargo netting and is great for this pirate stuff) and drape form the top edges of warf/porch.

The warf would work great for an entrance also. Just orient it as if you are walking under it from it's end. Like a tunnel.

See the "Cannonfire at Spanishtown" from your pics. It'd be easy to do your porch like that w/sheet styrofoam.

BTW...The Cajun shack is a good idea too. It's just I've never seen an old Cajun that looks like that. Since I'm from Cajunland I guess I'm a pureist in reguards to that kinda stuff.

Building a boat is pretty straight forward. We did a huge ship for 2006 halloween and it only took us a day to build.

If you go to this link, it has photo's of how we built our ship.

thanks
gym_ghost

http://www.graveyardmadness.com/gallery2/v/2006/Ship/ The server is very slow as we're migrated data from our host to our own server this week.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Gym_ghost: Is there any chance you could post the rough dimensions of your ship, as well as information on how you made the skeletons? Also, I'm having trouble figuring out how you made the front of the ship slow inward, like a real ship. It looks awesome. I'm now leaning back towards building a ship. I'm glad I have a few months left to figure all of this out.

I owe a few people some photos. Since this weekend I am staying around the house - yardwork and such, I will concentrate on getting these things out to those I owe. Look for some details here Sunday.

Thanks
gym_ghost

I've studied each photo of the famous San Bernardino pirate ship closely. It looks like there is a large pallet used as the deck of the ship. I live in a new development and their are lots of houses being built, with lots of scrap wood. I just went down and got a bunch, including the exact oversized pallet in the San Bernardino photos!

My neighbors think I'm crazy, but I think it's a lot easier starting now then rushing at the end. I can do a little here and there, rather then spending every waking second in October working on stuff. I'm going to copy the San Bernardino boat, sans the animitronic stuff. My canons won't shoot and the skeleton won't talk. I will add more detail on the boat though. In the rear of the boat I'm going to add a window with a lit room, and have a pirate skeleton peering through the window. I have no idea how to make a mast, but hopefully one of you will provide guidance.

HeeHee! You done been bit by d bug It's called curb-side shopping or dumpester diving. Housing developements are goldmines But be forewarned, you're pile of booty will likely grow to monsterous proportions.
Be sure to grab scrap pvc and styrofoam. Really anything that looks sorta interesting. If you don't you'll have one of those V8 moments later on.

You know, I was thinking about your sinking ship... you might want to think about making it rock back and fourth. You could do this with some good size air cylinders and mount them to the ship. Program the cylinders to move opposite of each other... thus, the ship is rocking!!! That would be so cool.

Regardless, this morning I was cleaning up my office at home (taking everything to the shop next week) and I found our pirate ship plans. I will clean them up and get them posted for you too use.

Seriously though, I would invest the time and efforts to do the rocking sinking ship. That would be really cool!!!

Gym_ghost