Guests wishing to join the Pirates League enter the League’s secret headquarters in Adventureland, ask their parents to hand over some “bootie” (possibly in the form of a “credit c-arr-d”), and are assigned a pirate name (in the form of “Captain [first name] [animal],” “[adjective] [first name] [color],” or “Mr. [nonsense word that sounds like a sneeze].” Then, after taking a binding pirate oath by which they acknowledge that their new appearance will be ©Disney, then move into the “pirate’s den” for a complete “keel haul” (the pirate word for a makeover).

Three options are available:

• First Mate Package ($50): Bandana, earring, eye patch, fake teeth, striped shirt, facial scar, sword, choice of false limb, stuffed parrot
• Pirate Princess Package ($75): Just like the First Mate package, but more expensive because it’s for girls and has “princess” in the name.
• Captain Package ($150): Everything that’s in the First Mate package, plus a pirate outfit, a real talking parrot, and a curse from an actual piece of forbidden treasure.
• Pirate King Package ($750): Everything that’s in the Captain package, plus an upgraded sword, a “pirate coin” necklace, the right to “plunder” one car in the parking lot, and never see your parents again.

1. Being the first to run to “a bug’s land” and see if Francis’ Ladybug Boogie is actually working.
2. Riding The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror with an open bucket of popcorn.
3. Running wind sprints through the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail and then visiting Brother Bear’s cave and telling everyone that your totem animal is “a sweat hog.”
4. Activating Toy Story Midway Mania’s devistating “atomic bomb” secret target for a million points.
5. Eating a gigantic lunch and then endlessly riding one of the moving cars on the Sun Wheel.
6. Sitting in Playhouse Disney — Live on Stage! and pretending that you have the mind of a four-year-old.
7. Visiting the Mission Tortilla Factory and asking why the tortillas have to be so flat and lifeless when the bread across the street at the Boudin Bakery is so nice and fluffy.
8. Seasons of the Vine — possibly the most entertaining and instructional interactive edutainment on any Disney property; a true classic that will surely stand the test of time and be heralded as a delight to young and old alike (now closed).
9. Using the computer in Disney Animation’s Sorcerer’s Workshop to see what Disney character is most like Hitler.
10. $1.2 billion in upcoming improvements.

Unfortunately, just a few days after this news was released, Disney announced that it would be firing a significant number of its animatronics-department staff. This marks an end to Disney’s tradition of developing lifelike figures in-house or (in recent years) of outsourcing much of its animatronics work but not telling anyone. The released staffers will be replaced by specially programmed, completely autonomous Wall*E-style robots.

Now that this is cleared up, we would like to address rumors that DCA’s improvements have been delayed/canceled due to a downturn in the economy. Fortunately, few things could be further from the truth! It is true that construction at DCA has been delayed a few months, but this has nothing to do with a lack of funds — at least not in a traditional sense. As Peter Exchequer, former head of Disneyland Resort accounting, told us on condition of anonymity, “To make a long story short, I lost the checkbook. We were all ready to go with moving the park’s entrance and recreating 1920 Hollywood or whatever it was that they were going to do first, and I had purchase orders read for all the construction crews, but when I got to the head of the line at Home Depot to buy all the wood and nails and stuff, I couldn’t find the checkbook. It was really embarrassing. Fortunately I found it just yesterday. It was in the pocket of a suit that was at the cleaners. So now as soon as my successor can get back to Home Depot and pick out all that stuff again, we’re back in business!”

Sad but true! This is easily the most embarrassing delay experienced at the resort since a cast member lost the key to the front gate of Disneyland and the park had to stay closed for a week and a half.

Holidays will also be commemorated as the season demands. Around Christmas time, players will be able to throw fruitcakes instead of pies, and Buzz Lightyear will sport a new red spacesuit and whiskers. You’ll be hurling colored eggs at chocolate farm animals on Easter. On Arbor Day, throwing a dart at a balloon in a tree will earn you double points, as will hitting any target in the Green Army Men scene on Memorial Day.

The attraction is also programmed to react to real-world events. Earthquakes will knock down all targets for a big score, and all on-screen characters are programmed to move calmly toward exits in case of a fire.

• Entrance: As your attraction vehicle moves into the show building, you will briefly turn to face guests waiting in line to experience the attraction. General guests are 100 points, anyone with a Mickey-ears hat is 500 points, and annual pass holders are 1,000 points.
• Practice: If you can bank your pie off the pie of another player and hit Buzz smack in the helmet, your score will not immediately go up, but your hidden score multiplier will be incremented.
• Barnyard: If you hit nothing but carnivores/omnivores during this round, your score will be doubled. Hitting only kosher animals (mainly cows and chickens), your score multiplier is incremented.
• Sheep field: Of you can pop the three-headed mutant sheep’s heads without destroying its body, you receive a bonus of 5,000 points. Avoid hitting the clouds — if you clear their balloons it starts to rain, which may cause a short in your gun.
• Army maneuvers: Hit enemy forces (in green) and avoid friendly forces (in slightly lighter green) for 5,000 points and an increase in your bonus multiplier.
• Aliens: Ring all of the aliens in the central rocket target area to get the “chest burster bonus” and activate “alien autopsy” high-scoring mode.
• Cowboy: You can increase your bonus multiplier if the total number of shots you fire on this screen is divisible by six (as if you have a six shooter).
• Mine: Hit the bat and then hit the target behind the leftmost moving foreground target to release the invisible gas leak. When the canary (in the shadows in the corner) dies, hit it on the way down approximately six inches from the bottom of the screen for a 10-point bonus!
• Final score: When your final score is announced, multiply it by your bonus multiplier for your actual score (this isn’t displayed, but it’s still completely official — just ask anyone).
• Closed curtain: After the curtains close at the end of the game, continue firing your weapon to release a torrent of adorable animated tapeworms.

At the end of the game, players receive their official score as well as a “prize.” The prize is simply an icon depicting the player’s skill level. During one ride, we set a record with one player’s gun and let the other player’s gun sit unused so that the best and worst prizes would be awarded.

Gameplay involves speeding from one target-rich environment to another, earning points every time you whack a chicken with its own egg, trap a harmless alien in an escape-proof ring of power, hit a bar to release the alcohol, or break some of your mother’s good china.

Although the attraction was worth riding a second time, there were a few areas in which Imagineering frankly could have done a much better job. For example, all of the characters depicted in the attraction seemed to be from Toy Story — I didn’t spot a single character from the other movie mentioned in the attraction’s name, Midway. That may have just been a marketing decision, so it might be overlooked.

Not so easy to overlook is the fact that the computer-generated content for this attraction is neither crisp not clear. In fact, the images are so bad that riders are supplied with corrective glasses so that they can have a satisfactory ride experience. Wouldn’t it have been better to spend a little extra money getting everything in focus and doing away with the glasses entirely?

At one point, as the queue is approaching the ride’s loading area, guests pass immediately behind the attraction’s control panel. Glancing at the panel, guests who have detailed knowledge of Disney’s ultra-secret covert corporate intellectual capital protectorate guidelines (volume 2, chapter 6, subsection 3, paragraph 2, second bullet, sentence beginning with the phrase, “Devastating breach of security or confidentiality”) will notice something interesting — this attraction’s self-destruct button does not have a double-action safeguard, meaning that only a single button push is required to wipe the computer core and set off charges in unique or proprietary equipment.

Why might this be? Apparently, the competitive heat between Disneyland and other entertainment destinations in Southern California has increased significantly in recent months. Disney has seen Legoland sign an exclusive contract with a company that makes robotic arms that can be used either as ride vehicles or valet parking attendants, Universal Studios Hollywood just opened its new Simpsons-Themed Disney Parodizer (and closed its short-lived but highly publicized Giant Flaming Kong attraction), and Knotts Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain are both still not bankrupt for one reason or another. This means that the potential for corporate espionage and spying is currently quite high, and explains why those of us attending the attraction preview were photographed, fingerprinted, and asked to verify that we were not associated with anyone on the “Mickey’s Enemies” list.