The Haunted Mansion
The Haunted Mansion is a Disney theme park attraction in the form of a dark ride. There are four Haunted Mansions: one at each of Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and Tokyo Disney, and the same attraction with the name The Phantom Manor at Disneyland Resort Paris.As the opening spiel says: We have nine hundred and ninety-nine happy haunts here, but there's room for one thousand. Any volunteers?
Originally concieved 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 house was given a southern-plantation style. The attraction'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.
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 flicker out and lightning flashes, briefly revealing a glimpse of someone hanging by a rope 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.
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 special effects they are shown were groundbreaking for the time: the Doom Buggies pass a ballroom where ghosts dance with each other in mid-air; there is a crypt and a cemetery, halls which appear endless, and a mystical fortuneteller in 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.
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 cereal commercials) is part of the singing, and his face is on one of the singing busts in the graveyard.
The other incarnations of the ride are very similar, but have their differences. Walt Disney World'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 version at Disneyland Paris 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 Mansions was featured at Disneyland.
A 2003 film named The Haunted Mansion was based on the ride (mostly the Disneyland version). It starred Eddie Murphy.
Beginning in 2001, the Disneyland attraction is changed for about three months every fall/winter to become "Haunted Mansion Holiday," a cross-over with The Nightmare Before Christmas.
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