I saw "Pirates Dinner Adventure" in Buena Park, California
Last week, on my birthday, I attended the pirate-themed dinner theater production "Pirates Dinner Adventure" in Buena Park.
For my husband's birthday last year, we attended the Scottsdale Medieval Times - a dinner theater production with jousting and swordfights. It was my third Medieval Times attendance. The first occurred when I was about six, and the second was in my late twenties. The second time I saw it was here in LA County, in Buena Park... in a building only two doors down from Pirates Dinner Adventure!!
I'd been told by friends that it was "worse" than Medieval Times. But last year, after seeing Medieval Times for the third time, I knew that I had finally reached the point in my life where I would probably appreciate a "worse" Medieval Times even more than a "good" Medieval Times. There's also some people online claiming that they are actually run by the same company, though I haven't been able to completely prove this with the thirty minutes of research I just did before writing this post. I wanted to be able to compare and contrast! I wanted a weird meal! I wanted to see a pirate do a backflip or whatever!!
PDA takes place in a kind of theater-in-the-round arena, just like Medieval Times. Instead, however, the stage in the center is a kind of imitation pirate ship surrounded by a small moat of water. Most of the stage is taken up by rigging, which the pirates climb constantly during the show. They also swing around on ropes, and do acrobatics stunts, and perform two different aerial silk routines. These pirates are constantly moving!! The acrobatics are fun to watch! I can't say that everyone in the arena had a great view of them, but I certainly had an amazing view of every stunt. (I was sitting in the "Purple Section.")
The main appeal of the show, like Medieval Times, is the stage combat. The performers are extremely good at it - the whole thing is just wall to wall backflips and weapon stunts and punching and swordfights in the rigging and stuff like that. If anything, there is just more stage fighting than in Medieval Times.
I looked up as little as possible about the show, though, so I was absolutely shocked when they started singing. It is a musical! I did not expect that. Unfortunately, it is an amazing stage combat show, but it is not a good musical.
Like Medieval Times, you are assigned one pirate to root for. Medieval Times is a tournament, and you never know exactly which knight is going to win. However, PDA is a musical, which means it is a story, with a plot. It has an obvious protagonist from the very beginning, which makes the "rooting for your pirate" gag a lot less interesting. It's obvious almost from the very first conversation in the show whose pirate is going to "win" the night.
That said, the pirates do a lot more crowd work than the knights in MT do. The pirates spend the pre-show walking around in their section, telling jokes, and interacting with kids. They do this primarily because the show is highly interactive!! and they need to recruit various people from the audience to participate in it.
PDA advertises itself as the "most" interactive dinner theater production. I ended up getting asked to participate in the show two separate times. The first time was silly, but not un-fun. I, my husband, and a third audience member had to run up to the edge of the stage and play a little game to compete against the other teams. (We lost.) The second time I was asked to participate, it was some kind of... gender-segregated march?
I had to walk out of the arena with a bunch of other women, put on a vest that matched my pirate's color, and grab a fake chest of gold. Then we had to re-enter the theater in the middle of some important-seeming plot event, go up on stage, "shake the booty" in the air, and walk out.
I really disliked doing this because the chest of gold was very large, and it made my arms tired! Additionally, my guess about the plot hadn't been wrong - the the most important plot event in the story occurred while I was outside the theater. I had to run back in and get the entire third act twist explained to me by my husband. I would have rather seen that plot twist than "participate" in the show by waving a chest in the air!!
We're pretty sure most kids in the audience also participated two separate times. Much more than MT, the show is committed to entertaining kids specifically, and I suspect that they've stuffed the show with kinda-stupid interaction opportunities in order to make sure that everyone in a family has a chance to be involved if they want to. I won't spoil the end of the story but it's a very silly-stupid event focusing primarily on children. Afterward, one pirate in the show announces something like, "we have to thank the TRUE heroes of the night... YOUR CHILDREN!!!"
A ton of kids came in costume as pirates. In the picture above (their faces are all turned away or obscured, so I feel justified in posting this) you can see maybe five or six pirate kids all being inducted into the pirate crew by the captain. I do think that the reason I've heard bad things about PDA is that it is catering directly to high-energy kids who are willing to go onstage during a live show - and not to adults, or to kids who are too afraid to go onstage!
The food is mid. There's nothing to say about it. You get a quarter chicken and some cafeteria quality steamed veggies. And a salad. It's fine. It's whatever. It's just nutrients. You are here to see pirates do backflips.
Like medieval times, though, you can pay an exorbitant amount for a light-up commemorative glass with a double-strength fruity cocktail in it. Which we did do.
My final complaint is that the plot is extremely regressive, to the point where it kind of got hard for me to watch. The pirate crew has only one woman - the protagonist's mom - and the plot features two princesses (one human, one mermaid) who seem genuinely emotionally distressed to be on the pirate ship. The pirate crew spends most of the show tormenting these women! You can tell who the protagonist is because he's basically the only pirate who is ever even remotely nice to them. It is really crazy how badly this brings down the entire mood of the show. Every time the princesses were onstage and upset, I was wincing.
It's hard to root for a pirate who is menacing a genuinely-emotionally-scared captive!! I don't care how realistic it is!
The pirates who fight and do stunts were also all men. I was extremely surprised to see no, like... seafaring wenches among them? No messy, backflipping pirate ladies who love crime and punches and partying?? Post-One-Piece, you gotta have some pirate ladies! I was surprised to not even see the tropiest example of one.
If I were writing this show, I would cut the menacing-princesses shit entirely. I would rewrite the plot so that the human princess decides immediately that she wants to be a pirate, and then I'd have the rest of the pirate crew say, "you're not cool enough to be a pirate!!". That way you'd still have tension between her and the crew, but the sense that she's being menaced would be gone. Also, the princess would then also be able to do backflips on the giant trampoline in the middle of the stage. I believe this would be a win for everyone.
(Of course, this would be a comprehensive rewrite of the entire story, but I think it's bad enough that it needs one!)
Should you attend Pirates Dinner Adventure?? I don't know! If your kid loves pirates I think they'd love this show. While it made me wince, I can't tell if the menacing-princesses stuff is bad enough to bother avoiding it. I'm an adult who writes entertainment products for money; I can't help but think about this stuff. It's possible that the plot will barely make an impression on kids because they'll be too busy interacting with the show.
I do think that it was objectively "worse" than Medieval Times - it is less spectacular, it's a bad musical, and the call-to-action of rooting for your pirate is just less effective when there's a clear protagonist. But the stunts are great and there is just MORE combat performance throughout the runtime. In the end, I am glad I went, if only for completionism reasons?
But check this photo out. These are the cool guys who DO attend Pirates Dinner Adventure:
Who's that? Yes, you guessed right... these are the Santa performers of Southern California!! Our showing of PDA was attended by something like 30 mall Santas and their partners!!!!!! Apparently the Santas have a very involved social club!
They were all dressed as pirates, and you could REALLY tell that some of them were wearing components of their Santa outfits. I saw a guy with a white vest that was clearly Santa material, repurposed for piracy. These guys were loud as hell and they deserve all the wins they got in the show's various cheering contests.
At the end of the night, I saw them all get on their coach bus to go home.
Anyway, that's why you should go see PDA: you will have a Southern Californian Experience. (You should probably go to Medieval Times first, though!)