To fully understand the Haunted Mansion we're gonna need to head all the way
back to its beginning which, surprisingly enough, actually predates the park itself.
Now, the concept of a 'haunted mansion' had been something floating around at Disney
since pretty much the beginning of when Walt wanted to make a theme park. One of
the main reasons it's so hard to pinpoint an actual time when someone
first came up with the idea is because it had pretty much always been there in some
form or another. When the concept was first starting out the idea was for the
Haunted Mansion to actually be a walkthrough-style haunted house with
tour guides taking small groups of guests through the mansion one at a time. It
would still be almost another five years worth of development before the idea of
turning the attraction into a ride was even considered. The initial idea for the
attraction came from Walt who wanted a type of 'haunted' attraction somewhere in
Disneyland. Something that had a bit of a more mature theme and could entertain an
older crowd amongst the other more kid-friendly attractions. In it's early
stages there really wasn't any solid idea for the attraction itself, besides
it being a pretty standard haunted house. Instead, most of the focus was put on
designing its exterior facade. Some of the earliest pieces of concept art for
the Haunted Mansion or, as it was called back then, "the walkthrough ghost house"
were done by Harper Goff, one of Disneyland's main conceptual artists.
Originally the idea was to put the house on the parks Main Street, but on an
offshoot a little bit further back than the other buildings at a dead end.
This also somewhat tied into a few of Harper's earlier concepts that were now
a little bit more simplified. After that, a few different ideas were all
considered for how exactly the house should look, with other WED artists like
Marvin Davis and Sam Kim also pitching out their own ideas for its design.
Eventually they all came to an agreement on a 19th century Gothic style house on
a crooked path leading up from Main Street. However that idea didn't exactly
last for too long after Disneyland officially opened in 1955. Seeing as how
they didn't leave any room for their new haunted house attraction on or around
Main Street they now had to move it somewhere else in the park. After that,
the ghost house was then relocated to an unused area in Frontierland. From there,
the idea sat for a few more years without any real additions or
improvements. It wasn't until about 1957 the attractions concept was officially
picked back up. By that point Disneyland had been open for a few years and was
already very well-received by a majority of its guests. The obvious next step for
the park was expansion. A few months later, Disney began work on their newest
addition; a brand new section of the park by the name of New Orleans Square, the new area
would actually be a rethemed piece of the pre-existing Frontierland with a few
new shops and restaurants. But, if you remember from
earlier the ghost house was recently moved to Frontierland and more
specifically, the same part of it that would now become New Orleans Square. Once
it was decided that the mansion was going to be in the new section of the park, they
began to redesign its exterior to better fit the new surrounding theming. That task
was ultimately given to Ken Anderson who was an animator for the company
Anderson then drew up some new pieces of concept art for the facade now giving it
a more 18th century plantation style, mostly based off the Shipley-Lydecker
house over in Baltimore. Anderson's new concept for the antebellum style house
was then brought to Walt who, liked the design but wasn't a big fan of the
overgrown and dilapidated state the house was in. He didn't really like the
idea of having a run down and decrepit building anywhere within his otherwise
pristine park so, from that point on the decision was made to have the mansion's
exterior be well-kept and preserved while its interior would be old and run down.
Not too long after Walt approved the revised concept, construction began on
the mansion, alongside the rest of the New Orleans square expansion. Over the
next year, Disney constructed the mansion's facade and its surrounding
area. After Anderson had finished designing the exterior of the mansion he began to
focus his efforts as to what all was inside it, over the next few years he
drew up numerous pieces of concept art for various scene ideas he had come up
with. Over time and with the help of some of the other Imagineers on the project
those same ideas later turned into full-blown storylines for the haunted
house. One of the first ideas he came up with was to base the attractions
backstory off a character named Captain Gore; an ex-pirate who was forced to kill
his wife after she found out about his past. After that he was then haunted by
her until he eventually hung himself. Another idea was that the mansion was an
actual real-life haunted house. It wasn't until after Disney had purchased and
moved it from Louisiana to California, that he found out all the ghost stories
surrounding it were actually real. If you've ever been on the ride yourself
you'll know that a lot of these same ideas ended up in the final version of
it. The stories aren't as explicitly stated as they are here but, some of the
elements are there. In 1958, Ken Anderson left the project to work on the
upcoming Disney film; Sleeping Beauty. In his place, Walt brought an Imagineers
Rolly Crump and Yale Gracey. Together the two worked on new illusions and special
effects to be used throughout the attraction. Not too long after that, Rolly
Crump also began work on the attractions post show; a new concept he called the
"Museum of the Weird" which would be an exhibit showcasing different oddities
from around the world. Fast-forward about five years later to 1963 and the Haunted
Mansions facade as well as it's a new surrounding land were both finished in
terms of their construction. The only issue was that the attraction itself wasn't
anywhere near finished. For the most part, work on other projects
ended up getting prioritized over the mansion, and
continually pushed back its development. Namely the attractions Disney was
creating for the 1964 World's Fair. Things like the Ford Skyway, is a small
world and The Carousel of Progress. It wasn't until after the World's Fair was
finished that work really picked back up on the attraction. Around this same time
two more Imagineers joined on the project as well, those two being Marc Davis and
Claude Coats. Both of which were tasked with creating new story elements and
tying the pre-existing ones together. Sometime later that year the world got
its first sneak-peek of the Haunted Mansion on "The Wonderful World of Color", Walt Disney's TV show.
Walt Disney: "Marc, I want you to meet uh, Julie Reihm. This is Marc Davis. Julie is Miss Disney-
land Tencennial, and Marc Davis is the master in charge of our house of
illusions or uh, what do we call it?" " A Haunted Mansion" "Haunted mansion and
supernatural." From that episode, we can tell that effects like the stretching
portraits, the changing portraits, and the infamous Pepper's Ghost were all
established illusions that would eventually make their way into the mansion. Really
all there was left to do now was work out some of the attractions logistics and
they could begin construction on its show building and later debut the
attraction. But the Imagineers pretty quickly ran into a few issues. One of the
biggest problems they faced was capacity. You see, if the Haunted Mansion were
to be a walkthrough as Walt had originally intended, its hourly capacity
would have been extremely low. Only allowing a couple hundred people through
per hour and, in a park as popular as Disneyland was at that point, that just
wouldn't have worked. Now, this wasn't exactly a new issue, Disney had known that
capacity was going to be an issue as far back as to when Ken Anderson was still on the
project. Since then there had been a few different ideas on how they could convey
guests through the attraction that never really stuck. Mainly because of the fact
that Walt really wanted the attraction to be a walkthrough. In trying to keep
it that, Imagineers experimented with a lot of potential solutions. They
considered removing certain scenes, to moving the Museum of the Weird to the
front of the attraction so it'd now function is the pre-show, to even suggest
building a second identical walkthrough so they could, in theory, double their hourly
capacity but, after a while of being unable to find an effective work-around,
The Haunted Mansions developed stopped yet again. It wasn't until after Walt
Disney's death in 1966 that the Imagineers picked back up on the project,
now with the idea to turn it into an omnimover-style ride like the PeopleMover
or Adventure Thru Inner Space. Now that the Haunted Mansion was
officially a ride, all of its original scenes had to be redesigned to fit the
new track layout. Along that, and now that they had a better idea of
the space they had to work with, new scenes were also created, utilizing some
of the emerging technology like audio animatronics for example. But, as all
these new additions and improvements were coming about there began to be some
debate amongst the Imagineers over the attractions storyline. This of course led
to one of the most infamous battles of ideas in Imagineering history. Basically
what had happened was that WED was split into two groups the Marc Davis
group, who favored a more lighthearted and family-friendly ride and the Claude
Coats group, who pictured a darker and more scary experience for the mansion.
The debates went on for some time, with Imagineers on both sides arguing why
their version of the ride was better. However the two sides eventually reached
an agreement in 1967 thanks to Xavier Atencio to combine both ideas into the
attraction. Now the first part of ride would be the foreboding and scary
experience that Coats wanted while the latter half would be the more jovial
and light-hearted one that Davis had envisioned. After that, Atencio
revisited all the different backstories that the Imagineers had come up with
over the years, essentially combining the best elements of all of them into the
attraction. He also put together the final script for the ride's narration and
wrote the lyrics for "Grim Grinning Ghosts", the same song that later plays in
the graveyard. But, once all the planning had wrapped up, Disney began construction
on the attractions show building and subsequently installed all of its set
pieces and animatronics. By the time they were finished with all that in 1969 the
attraction was finally ready to be opened.
After over 15 years of development, Disney officially opened the Haunted Mansion on August 9th of 1969.
The mansion very quickly gained traction, and became one of the most popular dark
rides in the park and, for the most part, the mansion's popularity kept it from
being altered in any major way. Which is more than I can say for some other
classic Disney attractions from that same time period. By and large, the ride
we see today is near-identical to the same one guests first saw almost 50
years ago. However there have been quite a few changes or additions to the
mansion so let's go through those now. Keep in mind that what a ride is this
old there are gonna be countless minor changes throughout it, pretty minute
stuff like pictures on the walls getting changed or some set pieces getting moved
around, stuff like that is bound to happen quite a bit so, for this next
section we'll just be focusing on the bigger changes.
Sometime in the mid-1980s Disney added a night in the corridor of doors scene
towards the beginning of the ride, what most riders were unaware of was it was
actually a costumed cast member who would suddenly come to life. The new addition
proved to be very effective when it came to getting in a quick scare, so much so
that it had to be stopped only a couple years later, due to the fact of the knight
was either punched or had something thrown at him
on multiple different occasions. What we see now in its place is an
audio-animatronic knight that, really doesn't do too much of anything. The next
change can be found in Madame Leota's seance room. Besides the multiple
upgrades her projection saw over the years to make the illusion more
convincing, they also recently changed it so that her crystal ball is now floating as
opposed to just sitting on the table like it originally did. The ballroom scene
also saw similar changes in terms of its lighting effects and updated
animatronics sometime in the 80s but, nothing to noticeable or different
from its original version. Next up is the attic scene, in the Attic the main focus
point is undoubtedly the bride character. But, the animatronic itself has gone
through quite a few changes in the last couple of decades, being redesigned in
late 70s and again towards the end of 1995. Eventually she was replaced altogether
in 2006 with an entirely new character named Constance. The new animatronic also
came with an official backstory, that being, that she killed all of her
husband's with a hatchet. there also used to be some pop-up ghosts in the
attic as well but, those were eventually removed in 2006 alongside the original
bride. Another more minor change in the Attic was a shadow of a ghost playing a
broken-down piano on one of its walls. The effect was added sometime in the 90's
and was actually based off one of the original Ken Anderson concepts for the
attraction. Way back when it was still a walkthrough. However, the most infamous
change in the attic and, perhaps the entire attraction came in 2015, when
Disney added a character called the Hatbox Ghost, an animatronic figure whose
head would disappear and then reappear in the hatbox he was holding. the Hatbox Ghost
was actually an opening-day effect that guests back in 1969 we're
actually able to see before it got removed a few months later. Ultimately
they removed the Hatbox Ghost because the ambient lighting in the attic just about
always made both heads visible at the same time, and pretty much ruined the
effect. In more recent years, Haunted Mansion fans had become so interested in
the forgotten-about Hatbox Ghost that Disney ended up bringing him back just a few
years later. Now with new technology that made the effect work as originally
intended. Besides all those changes there really haven't been any other major ones
to the ride. A few upgrades to its lighting and animatronics in the
graveyard as well as some updates to its queue to better handle capacity but,
really nothing story-wise was significantly altered. Aside from its
yearly "Nightmare Before Christmas" seasonal overlay but, there's more than
enough change in that alone to warrant its own separate video so, expect that soon enough.
In reality, the Haunted Mansion hasn't actually been changed all that much,
especially when you consider how frequently other attractions from that
same era have been. And, it's not that hard to see why, the ride itself is
iconic. Nowhere at Disney or anywhere else are you gonna find an attraction
as interesting, creative and groundbreaking as the Haunted Mansion.
And on top of that, it's just a really entertaining ride everything from it's
really morbid backstory, to the weird characters, to even just the music make
it a lot of fun. At the end of the day I really do hope the Haunted Mansion can
continue its streak of remaining, pretty much untouched for at least a little while
longer. Just about everything in that ride is great enough on its own that I
think it's earned its spot is one of the best dark rides out there.
Oh, the Haunted Mansion's always been one of my favorites...
Hitchhiking ghosts...
Heh heh, I don't think so. ( ͡ ͜ ʖ ͡ )
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