August 9 - The Haunted Mansion

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On this day, in 1969, a swinging wake began in New Orleans Square in Disneyland as the Haunted Mansion welcomed its first happy haunts… er, guests. Walt Disney had always envisioned that a spooky attraction would be part of his theme park. Even in the early days, when he was only thinking about filling a couple of acres right across the street from the studio, one of the buildings was going to be a walk-through haunted house. As the plans for the Mickey Mouse Park grew and morphed into Disneyland and specifically themed areas of the park came into being, the spook-house ended up getting shelved. Ghosts just didn’t fit in on Main Street USA or in the jungles of Adventureland. The idea wasn’t forgotten though. When Disneyland was slated to get its first new land, the theme of the area was antebellum New Orleans, a perfect venue for pirates and ghosts alike.

Both Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion were originally conceived of as much smaller walkthrough attractions. As plans began to move forward on New Orleans Square, Walt assigned Legendary Imagineer Ken Anderson to develop the haunted house. One of the first designs Ken came up with was a dilapidated manor, overgrown with weeds and boarded up windows. Walt took one look at the drawing and said there was no way he was going to allow a run-down building in his theme park. After a visit to the famous (some would say infamous) Winchester House in San Jose, Walt’s haunted plan, of course, grew much bigger and the building evolved into a stately mansion.

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Ken then began writing all sorts of spooky little stories that could be played out in the individual rooms of the mansion. One involved a sea captain who ends up killing his bride then hanging himself. Another showcased a ghostly wedding party. There was even a tale about a cursed family who lived out their unfortunate lives (and deaths) in the house. Two more Legendary Imagineers, Rolly Crump and Yale Gracey, were put in charge of creating special effects based on each of the stories. And if parts of these grisly sagas seem familiar, it’s because elements from all of them made it into the final attraction. But there are several roadblocks to get around before we get to that point.

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In 1961, Disneyland began handing out flyers to entering guests announcing that the Haunted Mansion would be opening in 1963. Construction on the building, though, didn’t begin until 1962 and the only thing that was actually finished by the next year was the exterior of the building. This first delay can be directly blamed on the company’s involvement with the 1964 World’s Fair. Every available bit of Imagineering man (and woman) power was diverted into the four attractions Disney had been contracted to build for the New York extravaganza. Because of the success of the boat system of it’s a small world, the decision was made to use it on Pirates of the Caribbean. That resulted in a major overhaul of that attraction and the construction of another building to put it in. The Haunted Mansion was delayed again.

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Following the Fair, Ken Anderson had moved on to other projects but several more Legendary Imagineers came on board including Marc Davis, Xavier Atencio and Claude Coats. In the intervening years, Rolly Crump had developed several ideas centering on weird objects like coffin clocks and man-eating plants that were going to be placed in a Museum of the Weird themed restaurant. Meanwhile the two guys who were doing the main designing of the attraction as a whole, Marc and Claude, were at odds with each other over the Mansion’s tone. Marc wanted it to be silly and light while Claude wanted it to be actually scary. Then, in the midst of all this activity, Walt died and his death would cause another delay.

In the aftermath of Walt’s passing, the Disney company did everything it could to keep from descending into chaos. Projects that had already gotten the green light, continued on as best they could, even if there was now some confusion as to who had the final say on any design plans. The team working on the Haunted Mansion used this uncertainty to their advantage. Walt was really the only one who had been pushing for a walk-through attraction. Imagineers wanted a ride, even going so far as to say that they would need to build two identical walk-throughs to combat the loss in capacity that sort of attraction brought on. They were helped by the development of the Omnimover ride system that was first introduced in the summer of 1967 on Adventure Thru Inner Space.

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By modifying the ride vehicles from Inner Space (mostly making them black instead of blue but also implementing mechanical improvements they’d already learned from the systems practical debut), the Haunted Mansion would be a high capacity ride that also gave Imagineers precise control on how the effects would play to guests. Of course this meant that the attraction would need a complete design overhaul, but after Pirates, everyone was used to that. X Atencio solved the dispute on tone between Marc and Claude by melding the two views into the show that we know and love today and construction on the interior of the Mansion finally began.

By August 1969, well over a decade and a half after becoming a glitter in Walt’s eye, the Haunted Mansion was ready. From August 6-8, Disneyland cast members were invited to step into a Doom-buggy (as the ride vehicles are known) to experience the Mansion’s hot and cold running chills. Then, on the morning of August 9, the first guests got to see what they years of hype were all about. Things didn’t run perfectly at first, especially an effect known as the hatbox ghost. While the figure’s head had disappeared from its neck and reappeared in the box it was carrying perfectly in the warehouse where all these things were tested, Imagineers couldn’t get the lighting just right in the attraction to pull it off. After just a few days, the hatbox ghost was removed (he would reappear in the Disneyland version of the ride in 2015 when new technology made him much more possible; here in Florida we’re still waiting…). Other than that, though, the ride was a hit and really helped prove to the world that the Disney magic could continue even after the man was no longer among us. Disneyland attendance, which had seriously flagged since Walt’s death, surged once again.

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The Haunted Mansion was so popular at Disneyland, that it was included in the design of the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World which opened just two years later. You can also ride it in Tokyo Disneyland and there is a very similar attraction in Disneyland Paris called Phantom Manor (think of that one like a Western themed Mansion). Incidentally, those four versions of the Haunted Mansion, located in four different Disney theme parks, are also in four different lands within those parks. Mansion’s address is in New Orleans Square in Disneyland, Liberty Square in the Magic Kingdom, Fantasyland in Tokyo and Frontierland in Paris. No other multi-park attraction can boast the same thing. There is a Mansion inspired attraction in Hong Kong Disneyland as well, Mystic Manor, but because the Chinese people have vastly different views of the afterlife from other cultures, there is no mention of spirits or the departed in it. Instead inanimate objects come spookily to life. Still creepy, just different.

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For those of you who noticed how often I used the word Legendary when talking about the people who worked on the Haunted Mansion, that wasn’t even a tiny bit of overkill. The number of people who worked on this attraction and went on to become official Disney Legends is almost mind blowing. And I didn’t even mention half of them. There is a place you can find references to most of them though. The next time you’re waiting in line for the ride and you’re reading all the silly tombstones and monuments scattered about the queue, every one of those names you see honors someone who made a contribution to the Mansion. And since all but one of them (Rolly Crump is still kicking at 89) have passed away since the doors first creaked open, I’m sure they can now be found among its 999 residents. Which really, in my opinion, only makes it more enticing to volunteer to be the thousandth…