Scooby-Doo! Pirates Ahoy!

'Scooby-Doo! Pirates Ahoy!' is the tenth in the series of direct-to-video animated films based upon the Scooby-Doo Saturday morning cartoons. It was released on September 19, 2006, and it was produced by Warner Bros. Animation, though it featured a logo for and copyright to Hanna-Barbera Cartoons at the end.

Premise
The Mystery, Inc. gang are caught in the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, while vacationing on a creepy eerie cruise, with ghost, pirates, and monsters.

Synopsis
Astrocartographer Rupert Garcia is in his quarters, trying to make sense of an old, bizarre star map which he recently acquired. The ship sails into a sinister fog, and is soon engulfed. A Ghostly Pirate Brig appears next to the ship, and zombie pirates swarm the ship. The crew disappears while Garcia hides in his quarters with the star map. The villainous Captain Skunkbeard enters the quarters, along with his cockney first mate, the aptly named Woodenleg Wally. The pirates cannot find Garcia, who overhears that the pirates are looking for him and the map. The pirates give up the search and scuttle the ship, and return to their brig and disappear into the fog. Garcia escapes to a life raft, and is marooned on the open sea.

The next day, Fred is treating the Mystery Inc. gang to share in his birthday present; a mystery cruise, compliments of his parents, Skip and Peggy. While preparing for the ship launch, Scooby and Shaggy have a creepy encounter with a sinister-looking cloaked man, who the duo are sure is up to no good. The gang meet the bubbly and hyper Cruise Director, Sunny St. Cloud, and the captain, Crothers. The Captain declares they are bound for the Bermuda Triangle, and St. Cloud promises some creepy intrigue. A montage of sloppy "mysteries" that are staged by St. Cloud and Captain Crothers follow, which the gang solves with ease. This peeves the other guests, who have no mysteries to solve, as they are all wrapped up on the first day. Soon they rescue Garcia, who spins his tale of the ghost pirates. The gang naturally assumes that this is a setup to another mystery. St. Cloud and Crothers are obviously puzzled and have no idea who the man is. He is taken below deck as a man in a jetpack appears from the sky and lands on deck. He turns out to be Biff Wellington, an English playboy and billionaire who is known to be fun-loving yet eccentric. He plans to stay on the ship as well.

That night, the gang attends a costume party dinner. The creepy cloaked man appears on stage, who turns out to be Mr. Mysterio, a famous hypnotist. Shaggy and Scooby are picked from the audience to demonstrate his powers, but they prove immune to his hypnotism: yet the audience falls under the trance, except for the gang, Garcia, and Skip, who were looking a different direction. Mysterio dispels the hypnotism and disappears in a puff of smoke. The creepy fog then appears and swallows the cruise ship. The ghost pirates return and wreak havoc, chasing the cruise guests about, who all mysteriously disappear. A thunderstorm also begins. Skip and Peggy are kidnapped, and the pirates retreat back to the brig and leave. At this time, the gang realizes it is not a sham mystery but a real one, and they and Garcia are the only ones left aboard.

With his help, they follow the glowing trail left by the brig and arrive in a secret harbor. There, they find Garcia's old ship, and then are captured by the ghost pirates, who take them aboard their brig. The pirates are looking to find a meteor of mystic power, which fell into the triangle ages ago and could be pinpointed by using Garcia's map. They need both the map and Garcia to find it. The gang is tied to the mast along with Skip, but there are no other cruise guests around.

The brig enters the heart of the triangle, and begins to see ghosts from the triangle: The USS Cyclops (AC-4), Flight 19, even a sea serpent. Amidst this, the gang manages to escape and explore below deck. They find a lot of modern equipment that was obviously used to project the ghost images just witnessed. The ship enters an odd ring of rocks, and pulls up the meteor, which glows yellow.

The gang then engineer a trap, which predictably fails. The pirates then attempt to re-capture the gang, leading to a trademark Scooby-Doo chase sequence, in which the entire pirate crew are captured. Captain Skunkbeard is revealed to be Wellington, and Wally is revealed to be Mysterio. The rest of the pirates are the cruise guests (including the Captain, St. Cloud, and Peggy), shipmates of Garcia, and past conquests of the pirates. Wellington explains that Mysterio convinced him (and likely hypnotized him) that he was the reincarnation of a pirate from years ago, and could use the meteor to teleport back in time. The crew were just hypnosis victims under Mysterio's power. This is because when Mysterio hypnotized the guests, he made it so he could control them, even after they were released from the trance. Mysterio's motive was that the meteor itself was pure gold and he was going to steal it to make himself rich.

At this time, a fierce storm hits, and the gang deduces the forces of the triangle want the meteor back, so they drop it back in the water, and some steering by Fred narrowly gets the brig out of the ring as it crumbles into the sea. The story ends as the cruise guests are now using the brig as a large party boat as they sail back to Miami to drop off Wellington and Mysterio to the authorities.

Villains

 * Captain Skunkbeard/Biff Wellington
 * Woodenleg Wally/Mr. Mysterio
 * Sea Salt Sally/Peggy Jones (redeemed)

Locations

 * Galaxy Gazer
 * Poseidon
 * Bermuda Triangle

Continuity

 * There are several passengers on the Poseidon who previously appeared in either What's New, Scooby-Doo? or one of the DTVs during that period:
 * Lloyd Mbuku from the episode, Safari, So Goodi!, is among the crowd who confront the gang about solving all their mysteries in two days.
 * At the dinner on the cruise, the glasses wearing citizen of the Lost City from Scooby-Doo! in Where's My Mummy? and a Portugese soldier from Aloha, Scooby-Doo! can be seen.
 * Sisters, Chris and Terry, from the episode, Roller Ghoster Ride!, are on board.

Notes/trivia

 * In the end of the movie, Shaggy mentions a run-in with the Abominable Snowman, which they do in the next movie, Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!.
 * In the beginning of the movie the gang asks Freddie how old he will be turning. Freddie, not paying attention, calls out "43" as he counts the pier numbers they are driving by. If one were to count the years Fred existed as a cartoon character, he premiered in Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! in 1969, and this movie was made in 2006. That would actually make him 37 years old. (Although as a cartoon character he perpetually keeps his youth). This isn't an accurate age though since he was already 15-18 when the series started.
 * In the movie, Fred is very muscular. During the pool scene when he's shirtless, you can see his washboard abs, chisled chest and very toned muscles.
 * In the beginning of the cruise, they solve a week worth of mysteries in two days, which kind of make the others guest upset with the gang.
 * This is the first known time we see Scooby and Shaggy resistant to hypnosis, possibly either to do with past experience or the fact they're incompetent making them resist hypnosis.
 * In the film there are monsters that Scooby and the gang have faced in their past, most notably the Ghost Clown from the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode, Bedlam in the Big Top.
 * While selecting a unique costume theme for dinner, Shaggy and Scooby ultimately dress up as Daphne and Velma, respectively. They would do this again in Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King.
 * This is the fourth time the crew has encountered a ghost pirate. The first two times it was Captain Redbeard in Go Away Ghost Ship and then again in The Ghostly Creep From The Deep and the third was Morgan Moonscar in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island.

Animation mistakes and/or technical glitches

 * When the ghost pirates attack the Galaxy Gazer at the beginning of the movie, Rupert Garcia (the astrocartographer) swings his door open into the passage outside. When he sees the pirate ship with cannons at the ready pull up beside, he backs up and slams his door shut from the inside.
 * The only time the Poseidon has its name visible is when it's in dock and that's only with it's original name, Poseidon's Paradise (more on that below).

Inconsistencies/continuity errors and/or goofs/oddities

 * Daphne is barefoot while in the Mystery Machine, but when she gets out she is not only wearing her shoes but also her full-length stockings/tights.
 * The Poseidon was originally called the Poseidon's Paradise both on the ship when it's in dock and by before its abbreviated.
 * Skunkbeard's ship's size seems to change from colossal (while grappling the cruise ship) to the size of a small brig (during the last scenes). A ship from that time period would certainly be nowhere near as large as a modern Cruise Ship.
 * The pirates' motive for attacking the Cruise Ship was a reach at best. One could argue that Skunkbeard knew he needed Rupert to decode the map, but captured Skip instead because Mr. Jones was wearing the castaway clothes. But how did they know he was cast adrift (and not drowned) when his ship went down? How did they know he was rescued by that ship? Wellington arrived after Rupert was taken below deck. Why didn't they come back to search for him when they found he wasn't among the captives? Surely Mysterio could have asked Rupert's crewmates what he looked like.
 * When Skunkbeard and Wally are searching Rupert's modest-sized quarters for him, what are the odds they wouldn't look under that bed?

Home media

 * Scooby-Doo! Pirates Ahoy! DVD released September 19, 2006.