I think that the main problems here are twofold. One, the art in the center of the playfield looks terrible now and Two, that JJP took consumers' money after saying that the triple disks would be in the game and then eliminated the feature.

I personally have no problem with them eliminating mechanisms that were destined to have major reliability issues. The game is still cool without the three disks, but the way this feature was hyped and promised and then eliminated is a problem. As others have mentioned, JJP definitely should never have unveiled Pirates at Expo. Showing the game for the first time closer to the actual production date will serve two purposes, generate more hype and eliminate the removal of features issue in the future.

I'm not sure why the chest opening and closing is causing so many problems, other games have similar features that seem to be fairly reliable. Still, eliminating the chest mech was the right thing to do if it constantly breaks.

I'm sure that this is not the end of the story with Pirates. At the very least I would think that JJP will redesign the playfield graphics to make the brown blob in the center look better. I wouldn't be surprised if they did something else to appease irritated customers on top of that, though I don't know what that would be.

This is all fairly irrelevant for me because I am not a NIB JJP buyer. That's too rich for my blood. I'm more of a used game or at most Stern Pro sort of buyer.
I would like to buy a used WOZ some day.