Disneyland visitors left stuck on Pirates of the Caribbean ride for 90 minutes after it breaks down

Ride played its Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me) theme song ‘on a loop for 30 minutes’

Creepy animatronic pirates on the Disneyland ride (Disney)

Guests of California’s Disneyland theme park were left stranded mid-ride when the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction malfunctioned midway through.

Families were stuck for around 90 minutes on Sunday night as park engineers worked to get the ride moving - a Halloween experience they hadn’t bargained for.

Local reporter Brian Rokos told Fox News he realised that “okay, something’s really wrong here” when the ride had been stopped for over 20 minutes.

“We are stuck on Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland. Boats have not moved for about 10 minutes,” Rokos live-tweeted from the middle of the attraction, posting a photo of animatronic pirates mid-action.

“I’m starting to think, ‘Am I going to have to be evacuated?’” said Rokos of the ordeal.

A regular Disneyland visitor, Rokos told reporters that it wasn’t the first time he’d experienced a ride breaking down at the park - he’d also had rides on Pinocchio’s Daring Journey and Alice in Wonderland that stopped midway through.

“That’s no big deal because you get off the car and just walk back through the ride and you’re off,” he explained.

“This situation was really different because in the spot where we stopped, it was three feet of water on either side of us.”

He said that after 30 minutes of waiting in the Pirates of the Caribbean waters, the lights, music and animatronics were eventually switched off.

“Riders stuck in the Town Square section of the attraction watched the same repetitive animatronic scenes and listened to the ‘Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me)’ theme song on a loop for 30 minutes before Disneyland stopped trying to restart the attraction,” reported local paper The Orange County Register.

An announcement was made around that time and, eventually, Disneyland staff had to come to the rescue in rubber waders to manually push the boats full of visitors through the rest of the attraction.

Rokos estimates that it took the group around 90 minutes in total to emerge from the broken ride, and that the park provided them with Fast Passes to use for the rest of their visit.

“It was an interesting experience,” he said. “It was one that I’d never had and I don’t really want to have again.”

On the same day, Disneyland Shanghai made headlines for locking thousands of park-goers in while they were tested for Covid-19 by healthcare workers in hazmat suits.

The Independent has contacted Disney Theme Parks for comment.