Vampirates! - A Pirate Dinner Adventure Halloween Spooktacular

It seems silly to write about Pirates Dinner Adventure. This dinner-and-a-stunt-show is one of those thematic experiences that celebrates just how decadent and far-gone America has gotten over the last century. It’s kitsch and silly, but there’s something utterly charming about the way it goes all in on trying to be entertaining while also trying to portray a narrative over the course of its two hour run time.

For a comparison, it’s not so different from Medieval Times, though where that show features knights and jousting and horses and sword fights, Pirates Dinner Adventure focuses on pirates, a big giant ship, a bit more stunt work, some musical numbers, and more of a from-scratch narrative. They don’t get to rely on the easy conventions of a grand tournament. In fact, the Pirates Dinner Adventure in Southern California is right next door to the Medieval Times, with a really big Porto’s acting as a demilitarized zone/no man’s land separating them.

But to the idea that it seems silly, there is something rather noble and bold about trying to tell a big audacious story this quickly and through a really mediocre sound system. All the performers have mics, but with ten speaking roles and not a lot of real estate, it’s really difficult to fully convey all of the intricate inner politics that come into play over the runtime. Add in that the show I attended is their Halloween spectacular that takes all of the pirate conventions and just… layers vampires on top of it and it creates a bunch of logistical hurdles that the show doesn’t really manage to clear.

… god it’s delightful though.

Pick a color, any color… that the hosts assign to you when you walk in

What the show has going for it most is the layout.

Medieval Times does this too, where Medieval Times presents itself as some grand tournament where guests sit in different colored sections. Those colors correspond to knights who participate, and it gives the audience something to immediately latch onto, care about, and root for.

Pirates Dinner Adventure does something similar, where the ensemble of Vampirate crewmates all come with a designated color, and they each help to pull spectators through the story as it plays out. There are games in a mini-tournament that help to dictate the story(?)1, but it really feels like they don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. It’s just a bit of audience interaction to break up the ongoing storyline and give something exciting to do.

It’s a bit of a crapshoot. Because the show happens on such rails, it means that audience members might be rooting for either vampirate loyalists or mutineers who plot to overthrow the Vampirate King. Audience sympathies might not immediately align with their color’s actions. Then again, it doesn’t super matter, because even if you get stuck in a section with the best dope ass pirate who ends up the only one who suffers a horrific death in the bloody final showdown2, it’ll still be a good time.

This helps, though, because even if you’re following a bit of a loyalist (as we were, dining in the red section) it helps to figure out where the show is drawing its various battle lines.

The curse of a sound system

That’s not to say it’s easy to figure out what’s going on. Despite the clarity of the colored Vampirates and their loyalties, there’s a whole underlying story involving some random captured pirate-esque badass character named Kate who is trying to rescue her beautiful princess sister (who herself was just trying to rescue Kate) from the Vampirate King. And also there’s revenge for the Vampirate King killing their father, but isn’t there always? By the end of the show, it’s clear that Kate is basically the main character, but there’s this weird aspect to the proceedings that make it like a record skipping at the beginning.

Part of this is the sound system, where everyone has a microphone that will more or less work. But the theater space is so big and the system so old and cheap that it’s hard to pull together all the pieces of crackling dialogue that help to capture the story.

More tellingly, though, this sort of trying to grasp things that happen is one of the more challenging aspects of story-absorbing. Every time a story begins, there’s precious real estate to get readers/viewers/etc. on board and dialed into the necessary emotional connections and overall mythology so they can make sense of the what’s happening/will happen. I find myself tuning out of things early on, trying to focus more on the sense of what’s happening than catching all the particular details3.

Again, sound system makes this hard.

Complicated Vampirate mythology

But that all pales in comparison to trying to get the audience to understand these pirates and how they function as vampires. Sure, it’s a show that needs to be for all ages, but there is a point where the vampire of it all needs blood and feeding for it to pay off the promise of the premise. There are plenty of points at which the show threatens vampire violence, but outside of one big dramatic bite, it doesn’t really pay off the promise of vampire pirates. They’re mostly just normal pirates albeit with some fake fangs and slightly more dramatic makeup to make them look more menacing/undead. It’s not the most effective transformation, but it gets the job done.

What’s funny is that for all my kvetching on this point, the show does deploy its one vampire bite/transformation at the most effective time: in the climax. When (and spoilers for Vampirates!) the Vampirate King has basically slaughtered the whole crew, his son (the Blue Vampirate, who’s had this pretty dramatic love affair with Kate despite relatively minimal real estate) turns Kate into a vampirate herself so she can finally take down his father and save the day. It also means that when she (spoilers again) finally does defeat the Vampirate King it allows her the ability to resurrect the Vampirate crew for a big dramatic final beat as they head off to whatever it is Vampirates do in the off season.

I’m sure there’s more to it than that. There’s stuff with her sister and other stuff with the one lone human pirate who wants nothing more than to become a vampirate and even a story about some random captured(?) siren who gets into a love affair with the Green Vampirate.

None of that matters though.

Because what the show does that’s so mad compelling is the way that it really nails its big moments. Yes all the stunts are spectacular, but when it’s clear that Kate and Blue Vampirate need to fall in love, it brings them together for the first time like star crossed lovers, playing a song from Twilight as a lone spotlight lands on them. When the siren and Green Vampirate start to devote themselves to each other, it’s with a spectacular aerial silks scene that functions as big metaphor sex. The kiss between Kate and Blue Vampirate stops the show cold, a moment of physical intimacy that’s far from the sort of brawling and fighting that the show’s done so much to that point.

It’s clever storytelling technique. I might not remember all the details, but the show knows that with a shitty sound system, these moments of physicality are the ones that make a difference. When the Red Vampirate decides he’s gonna turn on the Vampirate King despite fighting for him seconds before, he does it by dramatically turning around to stand in line with his colored Vampirate compatriots. Simple yet effective.

Empasizing these silent, visual moments gives the sense that Pirates Dinner Adventure should write this show (or really all their shows) without functional dialogue and then work it up from there.

Knowing their audience

All of this, though, is gilding the lily. Unfortunately, audiences don’t super care about the emotional intricacies of who murdered whose father and why the Yellow Vampirate is so adamant about fighting the Blue and Green Vampirates when the time comes. What they will understand are those big moments.

And this is why the show is so quietly brilliant. It’s not pretending to be amazing. Audiences are going to be eating during the show and boisterously talking between cheers for their Color Vampirate. Expecting them to lock in like this is some thinky Sundance film or classic literature is madness. The metric for success is far less. Did people show up? Did they enjoy their time? Are they going to leave thinking that was a great experience? It’s literally called Vampirates. Proust ain’t the author (but can you imagine, though?).

Shows like this have tremendous cultural value in a middle class society. They employ writers, actors, servers, cooks, technical crew, and salespeople. It’s a boon to the local economy. More importantly, it’s supports live theater. And the ask on it is very slight. Make a show that feels Halloweeny yet without too much gory violence but enough action/adventure spectacle that audiences will lock in. Give big moments to cheer and laugh and thrill. And then when it’s done, let audiences get pictures with their Color Vampirate. Then do it again the following night.

Even if the overall footprint is relatively small and it’s not changing the world, shows like this don’t have to. They have to do more or less exactly what this does. And maybe that’ll inspire the next generations to make something like this but even better. Every little bit feeds every little bit. This sort of show is how it starts.

And if I complain that I wanted more violent vampirate biting, blood, and horror… well… that just speaks to my snobbery and wish for a thing to cater more to my personal tastes. We gotta start the kids somewhere. And if this is early days in building that foundation of a life for live theater, it’s hard to not justify starting them on easy mode in the name of building the future.

Only this easy mode has Vampirates.