render_to_string does not find partials (PDFKit controller response)

Ruby 1.8.7, Rails 3.0.4, PDFKit 0.5.0

I'm trying to create a PDF with PDFKit without using the middleware so I can disable javascript (there's an accordion action in there that hides a lot of info that should be on the PDF). However, whenever I try, it fails because it says the partials in my view (show.html.erb) are missing:

Missing partial programs/details with {:locale=>[:en, :en], :formats=>[:pdf], :handlers=>[:erb, :rjs, :builder, :rhtml, :rxml]}

If I remove the references to the partials, it works fine. I've also tried putting the partials in the same directory with show.html.erb to no avail. Here is the code in my controller's show action:

respond_to do |format| 
  format.html # show.html.erb 
  format.pdf {
    html = render_to_string(:template => "show.html.erb")
    kit = PDFKit.new(html, :disable_javascript => true )
    send_data(kit.to_pdf, :filename => "test_pdf", :type => "application/pdf", :disposition => 'attachment')
  }
end

Is there any way to do this and keep the partials?

EDIT: for now I've done this:

# config/initializers/pdfkit.rb
PDFKit.configure do |config|
  config.default_options = {
    :page_size => 'Legal',
    :print_media_type => true,
    :disable_javascript => true
  }
end

This has the disadvantage of turning off javascript for every PDF I generate, but it'll do for now. Any answers on the original question of getting the partials to work still with render_to_string still appreciated.