The Haunted Mansion, Disney World, etc.

When hinges creak in doorless chambers, and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls...
Whenever candlelights flicker where the air is deathly still...
That is the time when ghosts are present, practicing their terror with ghoulish delight...

Ever since I first rode it so many years ago, the Haunted Mansion has frightened, enthralled, and fascinated me in turns. It may be the most memorable, successful theme park ride of all time, and is an experience that was crafted with love and care from the very beginning. It's one of the few truly original creations of the Disney Parks, and I love it to pieces. So this thread is all about the various Haunted Mansions.

The first time I rode the Haunted Mansion, I was a rather easily scared 7-year-old, persuaded to give the ride a try by my dad. In Disney World, the ride is sort of off by itself, linked to other areas of the park by only a thin walkway bordering the Rivers of America, something that gives the Mansion its own, weird space. This is the sort of thing that awaited me- a monstrous facade.



As I walked through the graveyard, reading the macabre tombstones, I wondered just what kind of ride this would be. I was aware that the ending was at least a little funny, but I didn't know just would I would have to see to get there. I was further unnerved by the cornily creepy ride attendants- one older man with long hair (a bit like Riff Raff) closed the entry to the Mansion just a few feet before we entered, scowling "Don't worry...we'll make room for all the bodies."

I entered the parlor, and was immediately confronted by one of the things that really bugged me as a kid- a rotting man. There is a changing portrait in the entry hall of a young man who rots away in front of you- setting a grim tone. (On subsequent rides we usually got rushed through this part- I was lucky the first time)



The infamous stretching room really unseated me- no amount of prior contact with happy colorful cartoon critters could soften the blow of a corpse hanging from the rafters. From then on, sight after sight just horrified me: the corpse trying to escape from his coffin, the books floating through the library, the hallway of pounding, breathing doors, Madame Leota's weird spirit seance, and ESPECIALLY the silent, Beating-Heart Bride that reached out for me as we passed her in the attic. The Ballroom and the Graveyard were a slight respite, but my dad claims I could barely stand to watch the whole thing. When we finally stepped out into the evening air, all I had to say was: "Is that it?" I loved it, despite being scared out of my wits.

Of course, over time, the mansion has become less scary, but it still impresses me just how creepy and dark the whole thing is. The fact that it has survived more than 40 years of Disney's censorial history relatively unscathed is surprising. Of course, a number of changes have occurred- rarely for the better. But you can read about that as well as more than you ever wanted to know about the places at these sites: http://www.doombuggies.com/
http://longforgottenhauntedmansion.blogspot.com/

I love blathering about this stuff, so I'll be cribbing some info and posting it here with my own unwieldy editorializing over the next few weeks. For example, I'd like to profile one of my favorite figures in the Mansion: The Beating-Heart Bride.



As I said, I was creeped out from the first with this girl- there's something awfully grim about her. She just stares, her heart loudly thumping as you pass through her abode, and as you pass right by her to fall into the graveyard, she raises her arm out toward you- ick. I suppose there's nothing overtly menacing about her, but those glowing eyes and pale hands just creeped me the hell out. By the time I rode the Mansion, she was a little tamer- her face was bluish and she had a slight smile, but still, very creepy...which makes it all the more sad that she's gone. There is a bride now, but she has a speaking part, and she's corny as hell. The menace is now overt, but she's much less scary.




Anyone feel free to chime in! Do you have any experiences with the Mansion? What was your first time like? If you've never gone, would you like to? What do you think of the changes, and would you make any yourself?

When I was little I lost it at the body hanging from the ceiling of the stretching room and my family had to cart me out in hysterics.
Looks like now I'll never be able to relish this place the way I always wanted to. :C I imagine that if I knew at that age they'd end up changing it at all, I'd have grown some balls and rode it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Lw-hc_FQ4
This video was the most I ever saw of the haunted mansion, assuming that it's the same video from a VHS I used to have.
Sure looks like it...

It's usually a shame when Disney decides they need to change something, especially by removal or replacement. I can probably count on one hand where the changes were definitely beneficial.

One of the more positive changes in the mansion was in the gallery of changing portraits. I've already spoken about the effect that the aging man in the foyer had on me, but Disneyland has had a full corridor of changing portraits since day one.



From day one, there has been a fine old ship that is torn apart in a raging storm, a brave knight who decays into a screaming ghoul, and a beautiful young woman who becomes the hideous Medusa. There has also been a woman who becomes part cat, but her appearance changed drastically when they updated the hall's lightning effects. At the same time, a portrait of a woman who ages into an old hag was replaced by the one of the rotting man from Disney World's foyer.



The changes were made to accommodate a change in the way the portraits transformed. Previously, they morphed slowly through several states, regardless of the lightning flashes in the windows. Now, the macabre features only show up when the lightning flashes through the window, mandating that all the transformations be based on a white coloration. While I do feel the design of the old cat lady was eerier, and the repetition of the rotting man from Disney World is a bit cheap, I like the new effect, and it's more dramatic.



Now, Disney World's only changing portrait was, for many years, the rotting man in the foyer. In 2007, they added the others, but at the cost of these lovely paintings, usually known as the Sinister Eleven. The effect they featured is corny on paper- the "Scooby-Doo" style eyes follow you- but in practice is sort of unsettling, helped greatly by the fantastic and charismatic portraiture. Most of these, in fact, originated as full-on changing portraits. The skeezy-looking fellow with a goatee and sack was once this werewolf:



Alas, the Sinister 11, once heralded as mascots of sorts for the Disney World mansion, are now scattered, often in barely visible places and robbed of their following eyes. I'll miss 'em.

Fun fact: Lots of people want their ashes dumped into the Haunted Mansion after their death. The Disneyland staff has to make daily rounds after-hours to see if any remains are clogging up the ride, and actually have an entire procedure for removing them.

Very true- and both American mansions, at least, have a history of unexplained happenings and sightings of people who shouldn't be there. Probably just a quirk of the atmosphere, but still...



Today's topic: The shrouded ghosts at the Mansions. The place is just lousy with 'em. They're riding bicycles, peering out of tombs, and flying through the sky and into the ballroom windows. One is even famous as the "Grim Reaper", a large and eerie figure who follows you with his gaze at WDW alone. They're actually one of the few links to Disney's canon at large and their animated films. These wraiths and ghouls are very likely based off the mass exodus of the dead in Fantasia, and the ghosts Ichabod Crane imagined on his flight from the Headless Horseman.



However, one of these ghosts has been removed over the years from both the Disneyland and WDW mansion. He had an unusual distinction- he was the first ghost to take visible form at Madame Leota's seance. Known affectionately as "Purply Shroud", he was one of the few ghosts to well and truly bite the dust- taken out completely without any sort of replacement. It's a rather minor move, and to be honest, not that important to the Mansion, but a few still miss ol' Purply Shroud. He's still fluttering away in Tokyo:

Man, that facade is a lot more extensive than the one at Disneyland.

The only fun fact I know about the Haunted Mansion in California is that the pipe organ is actually the same one that Captain Nemo plays in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." Unfortunately they didn't retain the original pipe configuration:

Growing up in Southern California, I went to Disneyland -- and hence, rode the Haunted Mansion -- many, many times.

The Haunted Mansion terrified me when I was a kid. Not the bride (though she did terrify my sister), not the portraits, not any of the particular set pieces. I was just scared of the screaming things that popped out at you. The graveyard, therefore, was probably the scariest part of the ride for me, since that was where most of the screaming jumpers were, popping out from behind gravestones.

I think they've now changed it so that the pop-up ghosts aren't quite so sudden and startling as they used to be, though it's not impossible that they're still exactly the same as they always were and I just remember them as being scarier than they ever really were.

Once the Haunted Mansion broke down while I was on it, right in front of the singing busts in the graveyard. This is the best possible place to be on the Haunted Mansion when it breaks down.

The pop-up ghosts, as they're often called among Mansionites, are surprisingly contentious among those who take the mansion seriously. Some think they were too outdated and transparent even at their introduction in 1969, a blemish on the artfully constructed tricks and turns. Others think they're one of the most memorable parts of the mansion, and one of the few to provide a real, high-voltage scare, as Nix affirms. I agree with the latter camp as well, so we may as well talk a bit about those bouncing, leaping, ghouls.



It's generally agreed that the pop-up ghosts were on some level, a tribute to the old carnival "spook rides" and "ghost trains" that once had a place in every amusement park and boardwalk but are now all but dead. They follow that same, simple, quick-and-cheap aesthetic of the carny days. However, the effect was once more impressive than it is today, for several reasons.



As is evidenced by the subtitle of the Mansion's theme song, "Grim Grinning Ghosts", the pop-up ghosts once supplied a running gag between all the graveyard scenes. At the end of every verse of the song, they would pop up- not necessarily all at once, but all before the vocals began again. I could give or take this, although I admit it gives the attraction a better flow, it does make the ghosts more predictable. What is more conclusively a loss was the removal of individual lighting effects for each ghost. At one time, they weren't visible until their respective lights came on, hiding them better until the rider was about to come by. I can't imagine why they removed this, except possibly as part of the "softening" that occurred sometime in the mid 2000s. In one of the most egregious changes to the Mansion, the screams were totally removed from the pop-up ghosts.



What a lot of people don't realize is that the attic scene once had pop-up ghosts too. At first, they were dressed much as the ghosts in the graveyards were, and served a visual connection to the threat of the bride. They were a visual connection to her implied past as a killer, and the dark events that provided the dark core of the mansion. When they first fiddled with her in the mid-90s and made her a little bit more sympathetic-looking, they changed the pop-up ghosts as well. They put them in weird little tuxes and had them moan and shout "I do!" in a mocking manner. The scene had a radically different feel, but it worked in its own way. When the Beating-Heart Bride got swapped out for chatty Constance, the pop-up ghosts finally vacated the attic.

If I rembemer right the theme for the haunted mansion was sung by the voice of tony the tiger.

When I was little, we all went to Disneyworld. I begged my mom to let me go on the Haunted Mansion ride. Eventually, she consented and had me go with my grandfather. I came out of the ride bawling (I was about three at the time). My mother gently reminded me that none of the ghosts were real, and I uttered the single stupidest sentence of the 20th century; "No, no, the ghosts on the bottom were fake, but the ones on top were real!"

Huh, okay, so it's not just my imagination or distorted childhood memories, the pop-up ghosts actually were toned down to make them less scary than they used to be. All right then.

Personally, while I'm certainly not a fan of all the changes in the Haunted Mansion (I definitely preferred the original Bride), I'm not sure the softening of the pop-up ghosts is altogether a bad thing. The graveyard is full of all sorts of entertaining stuff already, and it's easier to take everything in without being distracted by ghosts suddenly popping up and screaming at you. Although actually, if they only popped up between verses, I guess that wouldn't be so bad -- I don't think as a kid I ever noticed the pattern in their timing.

Ah, I'd thought I remembered there being some pop-up ghosts before the graveyard, but I wasn't sure I was remembering right. Actually, to tell the truth, when I was a kid, the attic and the graveyard sort of merged together for me (probably because I was too busy trying to steel myself against the terror of the pop-up ghosts), to such an extent that for a long time I remembered the Bride as being in the graveyard, and was mildly surprised later to discover that she wasn't.

Yes and no. No, he didn't sing the theme throughout the ride, or alone. The Haunted Mansion theme is purely instrumental, with no lyrics, until the graveyard scene, and in the graveyard it's sung by many different characters (voiced by many different people). The most famous characters singing the theme song in the graveyard, however, are the collection of busts I mentioned in my last post in this thread, sometimes known as the Phantom Five -- and yes, Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of Tony the Tiger, did voice one of them. (In fact, he not only voiced it, but played it visually as well (his performance was filmed to project onto the bust), so you can actually see Thurl Ravenscroft's face in the Haunted Mansion -- he's the second bust from the left, the one with the detached head.)

So yes, Thurl Ravenscroft did sing the theme to the Haunted Mansion, but along with many other people.

Another fun fact about that same room (the Great Hall): The transparent disappearing ghost effect is actually done with mirrors, sort of -- the ghosts you see are just reflections on a big sheet of glass, the animatronic figures that cast the reflections being located above and below the track. (If you pay attention as you go through that room, you'll notice that none of the "ghosts" are actually at the same height as the track; they're all either slightly above or below it.) When the ghosts disappear, it's done by just turning off the light on the animatronic figures. However, the designers forgot to take the mirror-imaging into account when designing the animatronic figures, so if you look closely at the dancers you might notice that the women are leading the men!