Dolly Parton sets sail with new pirate show

Published 5:00 am Monday, June 6, 2011

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Dolly Parton has hoisted the Jolly Roger on the South Carolina coast with the opening of Pirates Voyage, the new dinner theater show that takes the place of her popular Western-themed Dixie Stampede.

“We just needed to do something new and different,” the singer said Friday, in town for the first show in the production that features actors portraying pirates and mermaids and also has real horses and sea lions.

“We have been successful for 18 or 19 years but pirates is a great theme — children love it, seniors love it,” Parton said, sitting on the set created in the building that housed the Stampede during its 19-year run.

That show closed last year. An $11 million renovation of the building includes a 15-foot, 750,000-gallon indoor pool. At either end are 30-foot pirate galleons while the sunken wreck of a third ship sits in the middle of the set.

Parton says she started thinking of a pirate-themed show about five years ago.

She said it had nothing to do with the “Pirates of the Caribbean” film franchise, but “that’s a good plus. It’s wonderful the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ No. 4 came out and it’s No. 1 in the world. The timing couldn’t be better but we didn’t base it on that as much as having a wonderful theme.”

“We’ve been talking about this for a few years. We thought it would be more fitting being here on the beach just to have something like that and we didn’t want to build an additional one so we just thought we would convert the Dixie Stampede,” she said.