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The Haunted Mansion is a Disney theme park attraction in the form of a dark ride. There is a Haunted Mansion at each of the Magic Kingdom-style parks around the world; Disneyland in California, the Magic Kingdom in Florida, Tokyo Disneyland in Japan, Disneyland Paris in France (albeit with the name Phantom Manor) and at the yet-to-be-opened Hong Kong Disneyland in China.
As the opening spiel says: We have nine hundred and ninety-nine happy haunts here, but there's room for a thousand. Any volunteers?
Originally conceived in the mid-1950s by Walt Disney as a walk-through ghost house, artist Harper Goff was tapped to conceptually design the attraction. The house originally had a rural American design and was intended to be at the end of a crooked path that led away from Disneyland's Main Street area. Eventually the decision was made to place it in the New Orleans Square section of the park, and thus the attraction was themed as a haunted antebellum mansion. The Haunted Mansion's design went through a lot of changes before it was built; at one point Disney's concept was to have the ride be entirely walk-through and empty out at a restaurant with a theme of "The Museum of the Weird." (This would be similar to other rides like Pirates of the Caribbean which is paired with The Blue Bayou restaurant.) Plans were designed for this concept, but then abandoned.
In what might be considered to be an odd twist to a supposedly abandoned structure, the exterior is as new and the surrounding grounds meticulously maintained. Designers wanted to make the exterior of The Haunted Mansion look like the stereotypical haunted house but Disney himself overrode the idea, claiming "we'll let the ghosts take care of the inside. We'll take care of the outside."
On August 9, 1969, the Disneyland version of the attraction was finally completed, and it has remained mostly unchanged since then. Guests stand in line outside the mansion, and are led into a spooky parlor by castmembers dressed as maids and butlers. The guests are brought into an octagonal room, where the door they entered by becomes a wall, and the chilling voice of Paul Frees taunts them:
Your cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding, almost as though you sense a disquieting metamorphosis. Is this haunted room actually stretching? Or is it your imagination, hmm? And consider this dismaying observation: this chamber has no windows, and no doors. Which offers you this chilling challenge - to find a way out!
As the voice speaks, the walls quietly seem to stretch upwards, elongating the paintings on them to reveal the fates of previous guests. (For instance, one man is seen to be standing on a keg of dynamite.) The lights go out, lightning and thunder effects fill the gallery and, in a rare instance of Disneyland "dark humor," a glimpse of the earthly remains of the "Ghost Host" is shown dangling by a noose from the ceiling rafters above. The room is, in fact, an elevator with no roof that is being lowered slowly to give the illusion that the room itself is stretching; this brings the guests down to where the ride begins, below ground level. The ceiling above is a piece of fabric called a scrim, which conceals the hanging body until it is lit from above.
When the walls finally do open, guests are ushered into an art gallery with paintings that change from normal to "spooky" every few seconds. A simulated thunderstorm rages outside while the grim busts of a man and woman placed at the end of the hall seem to turn their heads in relationship to the viewer's perspective. The effect, patented by Disney, was achieved by reversing the images, much like a mold. Lighting effects give the illusion of a positive image.
The next part of the attraction consists of a continuous track of "Doom Buggies" in which the guests sit as they are brought through the mansion. The "Doom Buggies" are actually Disney's Omnimover system which "pan" the riders to focus their attention on specific scenes much like one would pan a motion picture camera. The special effects they are shown were groundbreaking for the time. In one scene, the Doom Buggies pass a ballroom where ghosts dance with each other in mid-air; there is an attic with the ghost of a spurned bride, a crypt and a cemetery, halls which appear endless and a mystical fortuneteller named Madame Leota who appears as a disembodied head inside a crystal ball with musical instruments floating in the air around her. Finally, the guests are shown that a "hitchhiking ghost" has hopped into the Doom Buggy with them.
An important part of Disney history is located in the ballroom scene of the original Anaheim attraction. The pipe organ on the far left of the scene is the original prop from the studio's 1958 release, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Prior to the construction of the Haunted Mansion, the organ had been on display in a shop in the "Main Street, U.S.A." area of the park.
Though the setting is spooky, the mood is kept light by the upbeat 'Grim Grinning Ghosts' music which plays throughout the ride. The music was composed by Buddy Baker and the lyrics written by F. Xavier Atencio. The deep voice of Thurl Ravenscroft (best known for voicing Tony the Tiger in television commercials) sings as part of a quartet of singing busts in the graveyard scene. Ravenscroft's face is used as well as it is projected onto one of the busts, specifically one with a detached head.
 Just prior to Halloween, the Haunted Mansion closes for its conversion to Haunted Mansion Holiday.  The front of the mansion during Haunted Mansion Holiday. The other incarnations of the ride are very similar, but have their differences. The Haunted Mansion is the only ride to appear in each of the Disney theme parks in a different location in the park. The Magic Kingdom's version of the ride is located in Liberty Square and has a New England facade, likely because the intention there was to base the attraction around the story of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. The Disneyland version is located in New Orleans Square. Tokyo Disneyland placed the Mansion in Fantasyland. The version at Disneyland Paris is in Frontierland and is named The Phantom Manor and features different music, an Old West theme, and a more cohesive storyline than the other three Mansions (an opening narration by Vincent Price was recorded but not used, and is available on the Haunted Mansion soundtrack). The versions in Florida, Paris, and Tokyo all still have a stretching octagonal room to greet their guests, though in these three the ceiling actually raises instead of the floor moving; there was no need to use an elevator in those Mansions.
In 1999, a retrospective of the art of the Haunted Mansion was featured at the Disney Gallery above the entrance to The Pirates of the Caribbean. When the 2003 film The Haunted Mansion was released, a retrospective of its art was featured in the gallery as well.
Beginning in 2001, the Disneyland attraction is changed for about three months just prior to Halloween until just after the new year into "Haunted Mansion Holiday," a theme based on the 1993 Tim Burton stop-motion animation feature, The Nightmare Before Christmas.
On October 21, 2004, a bidder on a Disney-sponsored auction on eBay won the right to be the first non-Disneyland employee to have his name added to an attraction. Cary Sharp, a doctor and health-care attorney from Baton Rouge, Louisiana placed a winning bid of US$37,400 to become the "1000th ghost" with the addition of his nickname, a joke epitaph and the signatures of Disney "imagineers" on a tombstone to be displayed in the attraction. Its placement was guaranteed for ten years and will remain as a permanent exhibit. According to the Los Angeles Times, the opening bid of $750 was placed by horror novelist Clive Barker. Sharp, who had only visited Disneyland once before, placed the bid in good faith as a way to entertain his friends and never expected to win. The tombstone is located in the finale and can be seen just as the "Doom Buggy" enters the graveyard gates. The name on the tombstone is "Jay."
The money has been donated to the Boys and Girls Club. Half went to the local Anaheim chapter of the main charity while the other half went to the Baton Rouge chapter.
Recent changes
With few exceptions, the attraction has remained largely unchanged since its 1969 opening. When the 2004-05 "Haunted Mansion Holiday" overlay was removed, two significant changes were made at the same time. The first was to the portraits in the gallery scene. The portraits were originally backlit and "morphed" from normal to haunted scenes. Today, they are darkened and the morphing occurs in stroboscopic synchronization with the simulated thunderstorm outside. One portait, that of a young woman who morphs into an old hag, has been replaced by that of an aristocratic gentleman, rumored to be the mansion's owner Master Gracey, who morphs into a zombie, arguably a more frightening change.
The other change is to the seance room. The disembodied head of fortune teller Madame Leota which spoke from within a crystal ball mounted to the table now hovers and moves around the table. The effect was one of the attraction's most sophisticated from the onset and involved a complicated projection system invented and patented by Disney specifically for the Haunted Mansion.
See also
External links
- DoomBuggies.com (http://www.doombuggies.com/) - Fansite with very detailed information on the history, special effects, layout, etc.
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