“When he lifts and picks it up and looks at it, it casts a spell over him that freezes him in time,” Disneyland Imagineer Alfredo Ayala said in an official video released Friday. “And then, the weight of his arm after he turns into a skeleton drops the coin, releasing him from the cursed treasure.”
According to Ayala, the pirate then picks up the coin again and — this time — becomes frozen forever as a skeleton.