Blue Bayou

**The Blue Bayou** is a location from Disneyland's *Pirates of the Caribbean* ride.

## Description

The Blue Bayou is a wetland on the outskirts of New Orleans, Louisiana just outside of the French quarters' New Orleans Square. It is a serene bayou which has a mystic blue hue from the moonlight's reflection on the water. The bayou is also home to several peoples who live on its waters.

### Features

* **Blue Bayou Restaurant**: The Blue Bayou Restaurant was a stately 19th century plantation-style restaurant of New Orleans Square with a plaza located along the bayou.
* **Canal**: The brick canal within the Blue Bayou held the skeletal remains of the undead pirate, "Captain X". In addition to this was a passage-way which with blended with Captain X's supernatural powers, created a waterfall portal to Dead Man's Cove on the cursed Caribbean island of Isla Tesoro.
* **Laffite's Landing**: Laffite's landing is a riverboat landing located along the Blue Bayou and behind the Royal Street Gallery of New Orleans Square. It held and launched riverboats for regular passage along the Blue Bayou's waters. The landing was named for early 19th century pirate Jean Lafitte who along with having defended New Orleans in the Battle of 1815, was known to use bayou landings for his smuggling operation to bring contraband from the Caribbean into the city from the pirate-haven of Baratia Bay.
* **Shack**: This shack was a shack along the bayou which was home to river-marker and bait-seller Beacon Joe and another unidentified individual who played banjo music, namely: "*Oh! Susanna*", "*Camptown Races*", "*Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me)*" and Jack Sparrow's theme-music.

### Fauna

* **Alligators:**
* **Crickets:**
* **Fireflies:**
* **Toads:**

## History

The Blue Bayou is a wetland outside of New Orleans which New Orleans Square was built adjacent to. The bayou held a large sum of wildlife and peoples while also being believed to have mystical properties. At some point in time, a brick canal deep in the bayou would be constructed and come to hold the remains of the undead pirate, "Captain X" who had powerful dark magic. The skull of Captain X was hung in this canal where it remained animate and had the power to create a waterfall passage to the cursed island of Isla Tesoro and ruins of the pirate lair belonging to the ghostly crew of the Wicked Wench.

In the 19th century, the bayou might have been used by the pirates of Baratia Bay in their smuggling operation to bring in goods from the Caribbean to New Orleans following the cruel President Andrew Jackson's purchase of Louisiana in 1803. This smuggling operation is suspected due to the existence of, "Laffite's Landing", a riverboat landing connecting the bayou to New Orleans Square which was named for the 19th century New Orleans smuggler Jean Lafitte.

## Appearances and allusions

### Rivers of America

The bayou is referenced by Sam Clemens on the Liberty Belle when encountering Beacon Joe on the river in this Magic Kingdom attraction.

## Connections

### Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

Bayou local Beacon Joe is also a resident of Thunder Mesa, having been one of the town's original settlers. In Tokyo Disneyland he sits on the docks of a Big Thunder Mining Company outpost on the rivers near Big Thunder Mountain.

### Haunted Mansion

In 2015, the show Mystic Spirits of the Blue Bayou was hosted in the Blue Bayou where voodoo bokor Dr. Faciiier (a character from the 2008 film *The Princess and the Frog*) summons undead spirits from the bayou which include the likes of many spirits from the Haunted Mansion such as the ballroom ghosts, Sally Slater and Constance Hatchaway.

Jean Lafitte is also connected to the lore of the Haunted Mansion as the result of an unrealized mega-theme developed in the 1990s which intended to use him to tie together Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion and Tom Sawyer Island. Notably he is frequently mentioned in spin-off materials as having been an affiliate of the Haunted Mansion's original owners, typically being the Gracey family.

### Other

* **Tom Sawyer Island**: The Pirate's Lair on Tom Sawyer Island features *Lafitte's Tavern* and newspaper clippings which mention Lafitte as having used the island as his base. Before the pirates themed refurbishment, the island's Fort Wilderness was themed to the War of 1812 which Jean Laffite partook in.

## Trivia

* Different items of Pirates of the Caribbean spin-off materials have different counterparts to the Blue Bayou:
	+ In Disneyland Paris' *Pirates of the Caribbean* it is the Blue Lagoon of Isla Tesoro.
	+ In the film *Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest*, it is the Pantano River of Cuba and home to the voodoo priestess Tia Dalma.
	+ In Shanghai Disneyland's *Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure* it is an unidentified river between a restaurant owned by Hector Barbossa and a cliffside Spanish fortress.
* Unused drafts for the the Haunted Mansion would have had the mansion set in a snake-infested blue bayou used by a, "Voodoo Queen" and her followers for magic rituals. The blue bayou is still frequently affiliated with voodoo.