Creating the exciting sound design for the ‘Pirates in Batavia’ amusement park ride

We often talk about how sound enriches films, TV series, and games, but it also adds to the experience of amusement park rides. Can you imagine Disney’s Magic Kingdom “It’s a Small World” ride without that catchy track? Or their “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride without the storm sounds and cannon shot effects?

Europa-Park in Germany has its own famous pirate ride called “Pirates in Batavia.” And like its American counterpart, this water ride features a soundtrack that immerses passengers into the world of pirates. Here, DELTA Soundworks co-founders Ana Monte and Daniel Deboy share some behind-the-scenes details on the challenges and creative opportunities that came from working on this amusement park ride!

The Pirates in Batavia are back!

You’ve designed sound for an amusement park ride? Awesome! Can you tell me a bit about the ride?

Ana Monte and Daniel Deboy (AM and DD): Europa-Park is Germany’s biggest amusement park and the second most popular theme park resort in Europe (after Disneyland Paris). They have been around since 1975. One fan-favorite and the park’s oldest ride, which opened in 1987, was the 8-minute dark ride “Pirates in Batavia.” You can, however, imagine the sadness and shock when, in 2018, fans found out the ride was burnt to the ground due to a horrible fire. Thankfully, no one got hurt!

The family-owned park vowed to rebuild the beloved ride and so they did.

Some key facts about the ride:

Area: 14.319 m2
Water volume: 2,000 m3 (1.8 million litres)
Animatronics: over 100, with 8 saved from the previous attraction
Duration of the attraction: approximately 8 minutes
Capacity: 1,800 people / hour
Construction time: 24 months
Decoration: Over 8 tons of authentic decoration from Indonesia
Manufacturer: Mack Rides GmbH & Co. KG

An overview of the ride’s floor plan – Image courtesy of Europa-Park / Mack Rides

DELTA Soundworks co-founders Ana Monte and Daniel Deboy on-site at Europa-Park

Who was your point-person for this project?

AM and DD: We’ve been involved with the park’s media production company, MackMedia, for a while, having produced the sound for a couple of their movies.

Our first collaboration was doing the complete sound production for their short film Pandora which promoted their yearly Halloween event “Horror Nights – Traumatica.”

So instead of creating a traditional ad, they created two short films.

Later, we were hired to do the sound for two teasers that promoted the return of the pirates to the park. The park wanted to let fans know that the ride was being rebuilt, but decided to expand the storyline around the life of the pirates. So instead of creating a traditional ad, they created two short films.

The shorts feature an animated otter which is the main pirate’s sidekick. Jopie, the otter, was quite the challenge to create the sound for since he had to be realistic and not too cartoony, but at the same time should sound cute and not annoying.

On the first teaser, he only shows up at the end and does about three seconds worth of sound. So for that first teaser, Ana recorded her cat who does an adorable squeak sound when she is hungry.

Jopie, the otter, was quite the challenge to create the sound for…

For the second teaser, we were wondering how to solve the Otter problem since Jopie makes more sounds. Foley artist to the rescue! We told our Foley artist that we were having a hard time with the Otter sound and when he sent us the Foley session, he just said, “By the way, I had a random idea for the Otter sound. It might work; it might not. Just see.” So with a lot of editing and a talented Foley artist-turned-animal-voiceover-actor, the Otter’s voice was created.

Why do we talk so much about the Otter and what does this have to do with the amusement park ride? Well, the animated Otter was our golden ticket to getting the project!

What was the direction for the sound on the ride? What were you asked to create?

AM and DD: Fast forward a couple of months after the final sound mix for the second teaser. We got a call from the project manager overseeing the reconstruction of “Pirates in Batavia,” saying, “Hi! I heard that you guys did the sound for Jopie. We’ll have a couple of animatronic Jopies on the ride and we were wondering if you could create some sounds for them?”

For the ride, Jopie was again quite the challenge because he would stand next to the hero pirate…and would have several conversations.

We were initially asked to create the sound for Jopie’s animatronics and some other animals like the villain’s pet monkeys. For the ride, Jopie was again quite the challenge because he would stand next to the hero pirate, Robbemond, and would have several conversations. Once again, we contacted our Foley artist who had done a great job on Jopie’s voice for the teaser and we were able to create a recording session where Jopie expressed a series of emotions. These sounds were edited to fit the lines spoken by Robbemond and Jopie.

Photo courtesy of Europa-Park

What were your goals for sound? How did you want to use sound to make this ride an even better experience?

AM and DD: Our objective for the project was to take “Pirates in Batavia” to the next level of immersion. The ride is set during a pirate raid on Jakarta (known as Batavia until 1942) in the 17th century at the beginning of the Dutch colonization of Indonesia.

The team initially contacted us for some basic sound design. We made a counter-offer for the creation of a whole immersive environment with complex ambient sounds that would place the park guests inside the story. We explained how sound could elevate the ride and we came up with a sound concept for several scenes that take place within the 8-minute ride.

…we did some research on Indonesian languages such as Bahasa Indonesia and Javanese to make sure the wallas we were using had a correct “rhythm” to the language pattern.

We did a lot of research to have a feel for the ambience and how it might have sounded back then. We also did a lot of research on the fauna of Indonesia to make sure the animals sounded accurate. Last but not least, we did some research on Indonesian languages such as Bahasa Indonesia and Javanese to make sure the wallas we were using had a correct “rhythm” to the language pattern.

One of the scenes is an Indonesian stilt village with a lot of background activity. Even though all the sounds coming from the village are muffled, the Indonesian language has a different rhythm compared to English-speaking background sounds that you can find in libraries. So it was important to us that those background conversations felt right.

Since the ride caught on fire, we weren’t able to visit the original ride for inspiration.

Another great resource was YouTube. Since the ride caught on fire, we weren’t able to visit the original ride for inspiration. We weren’t able to hear how the sound could be improved. But thanks to YouTube and the fans of the park, there are a lot of on-ride videos of the old ride and this was a great help.

For the technical implementation, we received architectural plans and were able to see how many loudspeakers each room had and where they were hiding, which ones were used for the animatronics and which ones could be used for the ambient sounds. The sound system is highly complex with over 300 loudspeakers.

Photo courtesy of Europa-Park

Did you have to create numerous assets? Or one long sound file that plays for the duration of the ride?

AM and DD: Yes, I guess you can call them assets. Most of them were created as loops containing one element of the scenery — for example, birds in a jungle or pirates fighting in a battle. Some of them were triggered sounds such as a gate opening or a cannon shooting. For the animatronics, we basically delivered source material to the programmers of the animatronics’ movements and they’d sync it up.

Photo courtesy of Europa-Park

AM and DD: Most sounds were delivered as mono files and integrated in the control system of the ride, where a DSP takes over the playback and routing to the dedicated loudspeaker. Sounds could also be mixed to several destinations.

The files were mastered to a common level as a starting point, but we were able to adjust it in the DSP and add EQs at this stage to address the playback properties of the loudspeaker in its position. Kraftwerk LT — the Austrian company responsible for the audio-visual solution of the ride — did a great job calibrating the speaker system. Still, this is obviously far from an ideal listening environment that you’d have in a studio or home setup.

Photo courtesy of Europa-Park

How did you create this sonic experience? What was your DAW? Did you custom record sounds? Any useful sound libraries?

AM and DD: We created this sonic experience with a combination of tools. We designed the sound using Pro Tools. For the mastering, we used Reaper since it’s a great tool for exporting multiple assets at once. We also used the game engine Unity. Since we do a lot of immersive audio design for virtual reality, we used our tools to test out sounds in real-time to get a feeling for the environment.

As for sound libraries, yes! A big shout out to BOOM library for supporting us with their two libraries: Medieval Life and Historical Firearms. We also used Pirate Game Sounds from Audio Alchemist.

Photo courtesy of Europa-Park

What were some challenges you faced in creating the sound for an amusement park ride?

AM and DD: The sound creation was quite a unique approach if you come from film, but if you come from gaming (and in our case VR), we are used to the acoustics changing as you walk through a certain environment. This ride wasn’t that different.

So you can’t just send your client a stereo file of all the things happening in the scene since it will just create a cacophony.

You sit on a boat that floats through different scenes. The beginning of the scene will sound different from the end of the scene. If I’m in a jungle and I have a monkey shout next to me in the beginning, I won’t hear it that much at the end. So you can’t just send your client a stereo file of all the things happening in the scene since it will just create a cacophony.

Also, keep in mind this production happened this summer during the COVID pandemic and while the ride was still under construction, so we couldn’t just go and check out the sounds anytime we wanted. Plus, many of the loudspeakers weren’t even installed.

Photo courtesy of Europa-Park

AM and DD: There were definitely some challenges regarding environmental noise. For example, when we “mixed” the final sound, there was no crowd. Also, some features of the ride weren’t fully functioning yet such as a waterfall in the jungle scene, which obviously created a lot of sound once it was turned on. The water flow creates a constant background noise that we underestimated. When the water stream to move the boats was turned on, it masked quieter sounds and therefore limited the dynamic range.

These and more issues had to be kept in mind when we did the final mixing, but we could only truly hear the final mix on the grand opening day.

Photo courtesy of Europa-Park

Once the ride was operational, were you able to test and rework your design to better fit the playback environment? Or to tailor your soundtrack to the ride even better?

AM and DD: A lot of changes happened on location. We were given time to mix the sound one week before the grand opening. So for two days we rode the ride over and over and over again and made adjustments as we went. We had a colleague wearing fisherman pants and pushing us around on a boat from scene to scene. If a certain scene had disturbing sound elements, we would jump out of the ride, re-export things out of Reaper, load it onto the system server and re-start the tweaking.

Photo courtesy of Europa-Park

What are you most proud of in terms of your sound design for this ride?

AM and DD: We are honestly most proud of being able to convince the park that sound design would be an important upgrade to the old ride. Parks know the importance of music and invest a lot in the score, which is great! But sound design also plays an important role in the ride experience, making it even more immersive.

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