This is a transcript of The Origins of The Haunted Mansion episode. Some chit-chat has been removed from the transcript for the sake of not only the editor, but because it's boring.
- 0 min
Jason
You know, the amount of dancing that we do in our chairs on this show should be like the theme of the show by now.
Taren
It kind of is.
Jason
You know what I mean?
Taren
Bev, have you ever done bed dancing? Because that's … that's the best.
Bev
Oh, I’m gonna need you to clarify what you're speaking about.
Taren
Just mean dancing, but in bed.
Jason
You know, she did one time, at least. The proof of that is probably upstairs watching a TV show or something.
Bev
She's playing Roblox
Jason
See?
Taren
That's not what I was talking about.
Jason
Mm hmm.
Bev
No. I like to do bed sleeping.
Jason
What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. We got a good one for you. I have 24 pages of notes.
Bev
Good Lord.
Jason
Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot, man. But, you know what, it is the Halloween season! It is October 5th or 6th or whatever it is. And today's show is all about the origins of the Haunted Mansion. Now, it is very different from the history of the Haunted Mansion, whichTerrence did several years ago or whatever. And it's also very different from the first original idea for the Disneyland Haunted Mansion, which was a boat ride. Okay? It's different from these two things.
Erik
Sure.
Taren
You've gone into the weeds.
Jason
I have gotten into the weeds.
Bev
Yet another iteration of us trying to make a show out of the Haunted Mansion, is what you're saying?
Jason
Yes, number one. But it's really cool. It's cool information. So it's sort of like the history, but it's very detailed. And I thought it was pretty fascinating stuff. So I thought, “You know what, let me save this for October. We have this show.” And then I think Bev reminded me today, next week is our spooky story show.
Bev
Yes, it is. Yeah, I'm totally prepared for it …
Erik
Oh, crap. Yeah.
Jason
After writing this, like, good Lord.
Erik
Yeah, I thought of a story. It's not written.
Taren
Actually had an outline. I just haven't written it.
Bev
Yeah, I mean, my mind's typed up and like, I put it in a binder and it's. What's it called? Matted, You know like it's bound.
Jason
Bound.
Erik
Ooohhh!
Bev
Stinking bound, baby.
Jason
Wow. Look at you.
Taren
Terrence is going to come, too. He is going to do a story.
Erik
Does he know I'm on this show now?
Jason
He does, I think. You can dress up like him for Halloween, Eric, and then it'll be just the same.
Taren
Despite, you know, there, there can only be four people on the show.
Jason
Have a guitar off.
Taren
Just have a fight.
Jason
Like dueling Banjos.
Taren
That would be fun. Yeah. But only Halloween songs.
Erik
Cool. I don't know any of those.
Bev
So I was actually going to say only, like, only random old, Old, old Worship songs that nobody listens to anymore.
Erik
I know those!
Bev
Yeah, I know you do.
Jason
Speaking of old Halloween songs, you know, going through like Spotify and just looking for like, you know, Halloween. There's a bunch of Playlists or whatever. Like one is vintage Halloween. It's like all these really kind of corny songs from the twenties and thirties. But I found one the other day. I think it's called like lo fi Halloween. And it's pretty sick, dude.
Jason
It's well, I.
Taren
The only problem with it is there's only a few songs on it, so it was just a short playlist.
Bev
Just going to say, did they play the monster mash eight times?
Jason
Dude, that's one thing I cannot get away from with like all these other playlists. Because it's literally that. it's literally Monster mash. And I saw a one eyed, one horned flying purple people eater. It's like, dude, I can't. I can't do it with you. I just can't.
Taren
Okay. That's one song about With the Mirror, and it has Michael Jackson in it, but it's not a Michael Jackson song.
Jason
Uh, it always feels like somebody's watching me.
Bev
That's not a Michael Jackson song?
Taren
No, it. He is on the song.
Jason
No, it’s Rockwell.
All right, so here's the playlist, but listen to this. Just listen to this, please.
Taren
It's coming. This is every morning in our house.
Jason
Oh, yeah.
Taren
Not always this Halloween, but just.
- (5 min)
Jason
That's right. And I thought that was pretty sick. And then this one was pretty. Good, too. Let's see if I can find it.
All these are pretty good. Like they're not necessarily Halloween. Like, you Know, cover songs or whatever, but they're just sort of like spooky. Vibey stuff, but where is it?
Taren
Oh, I know what you're looking for.
Jason
There’s like 60 songs. What do you mean, there's not that many songs, so you're crazy.
(Boring)
Jason
Well, anyway, whatever. Who cares? Listen to the play. It's a good playlist.
Taren
But you still want look for it.
Jason
Well, yeah, of course I have to. It's my … That's my mental disease.
Taren
I feel like it's gone now.
Jason
It's there somewhere. I just never even knew the name of it. I'll look. And then next time I can bore everybody with me finding it. Okay, everybody, before we get into the show, I want to thank our official travel partner, ConciEARS. If you want to go to the park, to Disneyland specifically
with all of this information that I'm about to feed you right now and enjoy every single person in line with all the facts, you can be that guy or that girl or that person hit up concierge. Listen to the show, hit up ConciEARS, have them book all of your stuff, and then you can just go. You don't have to worry about anything because my problem is I've learned so much stuff that I'm going to forget it. Something else is going to enter my brain. It's definitely a one in one out Brain that I have. So you don't have to worry about that with ConciEARS. If you you you learn all the stuff I'm about to tell you, then you just tell ConciEARS to book your stuff, book your your airplane ticket, book your hotel, do your rezzies, do your genie, whatever. Then you can keep all that information. And be that Guy inline. Check it out.
Taren
Yeah. Everyone's dream.
Jason
Yes, that's right. It's everyone's dream.
Bev
Everyone wants to be that guy.
Jason
Head over to ConciEARS dot com. They will help you book your Disneyland vacation, Disney World vacation or anywhere else, really, whatever. They are vacation planners, but they're Disney Experts, so check them out. Okay. I'm just going to get into the show because I want to get over it. And then afterwards, you know, we'll do like. The normal plugs and stuff. Okay. What do you think?
Taren
Sounds good.
Jason
You guys ready? I've been doing this a long time. I know. I've been doing this a long time, and I'm pretty excited about it. All right. And so there are a lot of quotes. So my co-hosts here are going to help me. So if you're listening live, it might be a little choppy, but I'll fix it in editing. And I also have pictures to share with everybody. Some cool stuff I've never seen before. I'm just … I'm pumped for it. And of course, the number of pictures I have is 13.
Taren
Oh, perfect.
Erik
Did you just stop looking after that or?
Jason
Yeah, you have to. All right. I wish I had, like, intro music.
The early 1950s were a crazy time for Walt Disney. He was in the early planning stages of one of the boldest projects in his long career, Disneyland. As ideas began to flow, a need became clear for more people who had experience in architecture design to get on board rather than the current slate of animators, stage designers, and idea men.
In 1953, Dick Irvine, often considered the grandfather of WED, brought in fellow 20th Century Fox art director Marvin Davis to help Walt solidify the look and layout of Disneyland, before they even had a location firmly picked out. But sometime after, Walt knew that his project would be too big for his original plan of a small park on his Burbank studio lot, Marvin would create drawing after drawing for Walt, trying to shape Walt's ideas into something tangible.
Here's Marvin:
Bev
The first scheme you had, Walt would completely tear apart. Eventually, you'd come up with something better. He wanted to see every idea that you could possibly have before he settled on something.
- {10 min}
Jason
Davis had a hand in the foundational design and feel of Walt's new park, including Main Street, the Hub itself, Sleeping Beauty Castle, and New Orleans Square. It was Davis that really helped Walt think of the attractions within Disneyland as rides and experiences, rather than just something to go and do.
Marty Sklar once said of Davis:
Bev
Marvin was a bulldog. He pushed things and kept pushing them until everyone, especially him, was completely satisfied with them. He was just extremely thorough and professional. Determined was the right word for Marvin. It took him 69 versions or more of the Disneyland master plan before Walt said, okay, it was a difficult situation.
Jason
In addition to the design and layout of the park, Marvin Davis also contributed ideas for attractions that Walt might find interesting, one of which was a mysterious old house on a hill set just off Main Street, located at a dead end, crooked and crumbling side street, which dropped guests off at the top of a hill overlooking a small Midwestern town.
Harper Goff took the idea and came back with artwork depicting a rundown Victorian house on a hill, Overlooking an overgrown cemetery and a quaint small town church. I have a picture …
Bev
Oh, that's cool.
Taren
Yeah, it sounds scary.
Jason
It is scary.
(Boring)
Jason
I closed my computer. Yeah, it's a good thing. I love editing.
Taren
Yes.
Bev
So much!
Jason
So this drawing is called Church Graveyard and Haunted House. And it's literally like any western that you might see, even like the mid 1850s on. I mean, that's the Western era, right?
But that classic very small wooden church with the steeple and you know, a graveyard, it might look like something out of Red Dead Redemption, to be honest with you. And then up on the hill, there's this big mansion.
Taren
That looks like the the house from … Oh, my God, I'm blanking - the shower …
Jason
Psycho.
Jason
Eventually the haunted house is put on the back burner as other projects took hold. And so Disneyland opened in July of 1955 with zero Ghosts that we know of, I guess.
After the success of Walt’s Park, an expansion was soon deemed necessary as early as 1956. In addition to other ideas, the rotting old haunted house concept was brought back to life. So to speak. Only this time, instead of being located off of Main Street, the idea was pushed back into the depths of the park into the southwestern corner of Frontierland This area was then called Magnolia Park and at the time was one of the homes of the original Disneyland Bandstand. Kind of a rant coming up here, but it's all cool information and I don't really know what else to do with it, but blurted out so I can feel like a complete boy. Now I know how Jimmy feels sometimes.
Originally the bandstand and gazebo was located on Main Street, pretty much where the big Halloween pumpkin and Christmas Tree stand each year. And I have a picture of that, too.
Jason
Now, these most of these pictures, if not all of them, have come from our friend David Dave Land Web. So here's a picture before the open right of the Main Street. So probably shooting from the train station across the Esplanade - not the Esplanade. But the, you know, opening right there to the shops. And there's a it's a big gazebo and a bunch of dirt and, you know, whatever. I just thought that, you know, it's pretty neat. Yeah.
Um, this was soon moved because the bandstand blocked the castle when guests would enter the park, and Walt wanted that view to be open. So in 1956, the bandstand was moved next to the castle for a bit.
Bev
Awkward.
Jason
I know, Right? There it is. Next to the castle.
Bev
It's terrible.
Taren
Oh, that's bad.
Erik
I love the paint scheme.
Jason
Yeah, I know. It's very good. I mean, just Temporarily, I suppose. But like, what's fascinating is look at all those, you know, the umbrellas By the benches.
Taren
Oh yeah.
Jason
They used to really care about people back then.
Taren
So this is over where, where the little fantasy thing is now?
Jason
And then it was relocated next to the Adventureland area in an area called Magnolia Park. This area was between the jungle cruise and the Chicken Plantation Restaurant. And if you don't know what that is.
- {15 min}
Bev
I don't know what that is.
Jason
Yeah, that's this. Here's a here's a picture. Well, it's a chicken plantation restaurant.
Bev
That's Davy Crockett, right?
Jason
I think. Or, yeah, this is the this is the chicken plant. So, like over on the over on the right hand side would be the start of New Orleans Square.
So no, on the left side would be the start of New Orleans Square. Okay. Maybe I may have picked a bad photo to share. Yeah, I did. But that's right. Where the chicken plantation restaurant, which was eventually cleared out and replaced with New Orleans Square.
So the chicken plantation restaurant was gone sometime in the early sixties. They raised the red, raised it, raised whatever. They demolished it, leveled it and put New Orleans Square there. So I think this picture right here is sort of looking out in.
The area that is now New Orleans Square.
Taren
Oh, wild.
Jason
Because I think over here on the right, that's the dock to get across to Tom Sawyer.
Bev
Look at how - look like I know this is a dumb thing to point out, but like look how easily accessible the water is.
Jason
You could just, yeah we could just go right into that.Into the rivers of America.
Taren
I mean, it's like a little pond.
Bev
It's like, yeah, it's put your feet in.
Jason
Yeah, absolutely. It's a really cool man. The bandstand set here in Magnolia Park, which I'd never heard of before, by the way. Never heard of Magnolia Park. It sat there until the Jungle Cruise expansion of 1962 meant that it had to go once more.
(Boring)
Jason
The bandstand sat there until the Jungle Cruise expansion of 1962 meant that it had to leave once more. Now, I'm not super clear on the layout of the park back then. I don't know why the jungle cruise expansion affected this bandstand specifically, but I think it had to do with a larger revamp of adventureland rather than just The jungle cruise.
But at any rate, the bandstand was donated to the city of Anaheim, who then gave it to a place called Rogers Gardens, a community center, community garden center and resource for the people of Orange County. It's still standing as a gazebo and you can go visit it to this day at their location in Corona Del Mar.
Oh I got another picture of it. Anyway, in 1956 it made sense to develop Magnolia Park into something because there were still big piles of dirt all over the place, even after the bandstand was moved there.
So here it is. Disneyland Bandstand in Magnolia Park, March 1956. Again, from DaveLand.
And it's like there's just dirt.
Bev
Yes. There's a lane, the gazebo and dirt.
Jason
Yeah, it's a gazebo and like a platform and the whole thing. And then just literally mountains of dirt behind her. It's almost like a scale model of The foothills in L.A. or something like that.
Taren
Yeah. Like, are they building something there?
Jason
Eventually they will, yeah.
Erik
Okay. Is that holiday hill where they talk about it was literally just a pile of dirt.
Jason
It might be.
Erik
Eventually they kind of grew some grass and teenagers would make out there.
Jason
It might be.
Erik
I never understood exactly where that is or was. Yeah.
Jason
In January and February of 1957, members of WED, now, of course, Walt Disney Imagineering had done preliminary work on a story involving Captain Gore and Priscilla, central characters who might haunt this Proposed haunted house attraction that, again, got sort of reinvigorated as Walt knew that he needed to expand here.
Disney staff had produced notes on ghosts based on research done in Louisiana and were considering a narration recorded by either James Mason, who starred in North by Northwest Lolita and most recently at the time, 20,000 leagues under the Sea, hence the Disney Connection.
So it's either going to be him or Peter Lorry, who was most famously in the Maltese Falcon, arsenic and old lace, and 20,000 leagues under the sea. So already Walt's going, who are stars? Let's get ‘em in here. You know what I mean? Everyone wants to hear this. Let's go.
Bev
Set a small pool.
Jason
Right?
Jason
New Orleans had already been selected as the location of the background story for this attraction. Tests on the feasibility of moving groups of 20, 30 and 40 people in a walk through style were done at the Walt Disney Studios using the old Zorro television set. So I guess they weren't old at the time. In March of 1957, Walt Disney had decided to turn over further development of this haunted house to one of his first Imagineers, Ken Anderson.
Ken met with Walt, and the two talked about what this Haunted house was going to be, what Walt thought it should be, and what they could feasibly create together. Later, Ken submitted their written treatment of a working ride concept based entirely off of Walt's ideas from this meeting. And by September of that same year, he showed Walt a sketch of a decrepit, rundown haunted house serving as the main show building. And there it is. There's the sketch.
Taren
Oh, that's looking familiar.
Bev
Yeah.
- {20 min}
Jason
That's exactly it. Set into a swampy area, you know, the gnarled trees. And it's just that classic haunted mansion. It's the haunted mansion.
Taren
It's really that plantation style house, the four pillars in the front, right. Two balcony or two levels.
Jason
Of course, Walt rejected the look at first because he didn't want the building to look rundown in his nice, pristine park. And apparently that's just what he did.
Eventually, Ken’s design was used as the show building design, just cleaned up and repaired, you know, as it were.
The house Anderson crafted was a combination of an existing house located in Baltimore that he'd found in a catalog, a Victorian buildings and the imagery setting of and the imaginary setting of New Orleans that Walt and Marvin Davis were creating. The house that Ken took most of his inspiration from was the Shipley-Lydecker house built in Baltimore in 1803 and then demolished in 1967, and plus some other bits and bobs. That's what people say. But I'd say over 90% was a Shipley Lydecker house. Now I have a photo of it. The next photo coming up. Tell me that. Tell me how much you think Anderson took from this house for The Haunted Mansion. Are you ready for this?
Bev
Okay. Whoa!
Taren
Oh, 100%.
Jason
Here's the sketch. So you have the four columns. The two levels. You can see the iron work around. You get the four chimneys, two on either side. You got the tower at the top, you got even the one window on the right side on. Yeah, on our right side. It's the same exact house with the shutters and everything.
Bev
The only difference is the Haunted Mansion version is just a little more elongated.
Taren
Yes.
Bev
It's the same it. Yeah, 100%.
Taren
Or he, like, literally put this on like one of those like light projectors and just traced It like. Yeah, no, this my idea.
Bev
So this has been - this is no longer in existence?
Jason
Correct. 1967, It got it got bulldozed.
Taren
Kind of sad, although I think I would actually be a little freaked out, too, to see it
Bev
I would love it. I think it's great.
Jason
But it's interesting because -
Erik
Where's the Christmas themed like scarecrow with the pumpkin head was that guy oh this time of year is this.
Jason
We cropped it out.
Erik
Oh okay.
Jason
What's interesting is that, you know, a lot of this other documentation that I've been looking at, it says like, Oh, this house. And then there's another house they used - I can't find any inspiration from any of these houses. That's not - This. You don't need another house. It's - you found it.
At one point when this house was built in 1803, apparently the citizens of Baltimore didn't really like it. One person called the Shipley-Lydecker house at the time pretentious. Another noticed the dazzling ironwork and described the home as the quaint estate, the most absurd and the most picturesque dwelling in Baltimore.
Taren
On what planet is that Quaint?
Jason
I know, right?
Taren
It's a mansion.
Bev
I mean, I've been to Baltimore. This is pretty nice as far as the other houses go.
Jason
you know, in 1803, there were probably 100 houses. This was one of them.
Taren
Wow.
Jason
You know what I mean?
Ken and Walt had an idea to make this attraction a walk through, and the pair had come up with several concepts that eventually had to be dismissed due to technical limitations of the time, like having the guests sign a register at the entrance of the mansion. And then that information would be used by disembodied voices calling up the names and details of the guests who signed as they were walking through the ride.
Just so we're all clear, everybody, the Shipley Lydecker house and by default, the Haunted Mansion are both examples of the Greek revival style of architecture.
- {25 min}
Taren
All right.
Jason
The primary features of Greek revival buildings include - and I still have the picture up. So you can you can look - columns made of white marble or wood or brick painted to look like marble. Typically in the ionic Doric or Corinthian styles of ancient Greece.
Taren
I can see those.
Jason
A pediment or triangular structure at the front of the building that is supported by these columns. That's it, too. And then also go back to the Haunted Mansion. You got the triangle at the top. Whatever. Decorated cornice or molding that projects beyond the top edge of the building. A roofed porch held up by the columns. Typically at the front you got balconies with iron railings each level, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so it's Greek Revival style. You're welcome … again, Society.
After a weekend trip up to San Jose to visit the Winchester Mystery House to get a feel for how they handled the lines for that Walking Haunted House tour, Ken realized that Disneyland needed a good story for their own ghost house if they were to get people involved in it. So he returned to L.A. to begin Working on a story.
Taren
I wonder if he came to that, because the Winchester Mystery House does have a story or doesn't have a story.
Jason
I think because Winchester House has a story. But it was probably the most famous haunted House at the time that you could visit within a you know, at that time, probably a seven hour drive.
Taren
But the story is like one sentence long.
Jason
Well, no, he has more of a lore where you know, Sarah Winchester was haunted by the ghosts of all of the people that the Winchester rifle killed. And she kept Adding on to her house until the day she died. And, you know, there was like those Small stairs and the doors to nowhere to confuse the ghosts. There was a lot of there's a lot of story. I mean, you could whittle any story down to one sentence, you know?
Taren
I mean, sure. I guess that's true.
Bev
It's also a terrible movie. Don't watch it.
Jason
It was awful. I watched it.
Bev
I watched about 38 minutes of it.
Jason
It was Gross. I didn't like it. I was like, wow, this is very not good.
The first draft of the mansion back story focused on an old sea captain called Bartholomew Gore, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances and guests were to be led into the Gore mansion, as it was first called, by Beauregard The Butler.
Guests would be loaded onto a moving platform that would lower them into the actual attraction.
That sounds familiar, doesn't it?
The first in the first draft of the of the mansion back story, we have a butler and a platform that lowers you. Into the ride. Okay.
This servant would then be the walking tour guide, pointing out secret passageways, changing portraits and other kinds of ghostly nonsense. In other versions of this story, the captain was called Gideon Garlow and was given the nickname of Captain Gore due to his savage Reputation on the high seas. I'm sure that he was just, you know, bossing it and, you know, slaying or whatever.
As the Butler gestures to a portrait of the captain, a pair of hairy hands would reach out and grab the Butler, and then it would be like a voice or something. They don't really know what's going on. These are just ideas. That would be called Harry the Arm, by the way. Which does sound kind of cool. It sounds like a lot of haunted houses at the time or even now
But it really wasn't what the park needed. I guess, because the following month, Ken crafted another version of the history of the mansion. The working title of the attraction had changed to Bloodmire Manor and the legend then became that the house had been physically moved in its entirety from a dreary swamp in New Orleans to Disneyland to be the cornerstone of Walt's new land, New Orleans Square.
Here's Ken describing the history. I have a brief quote from Ken in the book Haunted Mansion Imagineering at Disney Classic, fantastic book. Ken says, This is the lakeside estate of the Unfortunate Blood Family. Our house had a tragic and bloody history of unlucky owners who died sudden and violent deaths, which resulted in their unhappy ghosts remaining behind to fulfill the uncompleted mission Of their lives. We started the work of restoration as soon as it arrived at Disneyland, but strangely enough, the work of each day was destroyed. During the night. It mysteriously remains always night within the house. So we recommend you stay close together during your visit and please, above all Obey your guides instructions.
The whole family would come to die in the mansion, hence the ghosts haunting it. But the tale focused on the captain himself and his bride. The story has changed over the years and you can still see some of the design elements that reference this origin story, namely the weathervane in the shape of a ship on the roof, And the bride that haunts the attic.
While I couldn't find any real proof of this, people do think that Anderson was trying to sort of tie the mansion in with the forthcoming Pirates attraction. So this is like late fifties, right? So Pirates is probably on the drawing board.
- {30 min}
Taren
It would make sense.
Jason
Yeah, it would. And the nautical theme could have also easily just been due to New Orleans having been an important sailing and shipping hub, as well as location for Pirates of the Time. Who knows? But it's kind of an interesting theory. Yes, we're to leave the clean swept an orderly Disneyland proper and walk along pathways lined with moss for tunes, magnolias and southern oaks. Vines and tall trees would have shut out much of the sunlight, adding mystery to the area as the visitors pass through wrought iron gates, an unkempt graveyard, the statues that seem to move and unburied bones jutting from the earth were to join the pathway leading through the trees. The ghost house would be scarcely visible unless guests were close upon it.
Taren
Oh.
Jason
Theses would seem to appear in the upper windows. Yeah. Very different. But vibey.
Taren
But like why make this beautiful house if you're going to hide it.
Erik
The vibes.
Jason
That's what it was all about. Vibes. He was the original vibes guy. Once inside the house, a guide would assist the guests in proceeding. And then Walt Disney's voice seeming to hover above them in the entrance way, would talk of the blood family and explain the tragic history of the house itself.
Jason
And this is part of the script. It says This is the lakeside estate of the Unfortunate Blood family. It was built about 1800 in the swampy bayous near New Orleans and was moved here intact because it was such a fine example of early Architecture. And side note Greek revival architecture.
Sorry.
We started the work of restoration that was sort of already basically happened. The work of each day was destroyed during the night. The night watchman reported he'd heard eerie screams and seen weird lights. Our house had a tragic and bloody history of unlucky owners who died sudden and violent deaths, which resulted in their unhappy ghosts remaining behind to fulfill the uncompleted missions of their lives.
So it's like sort of the same thing, but expanded upon a little bit and then read in Walt's voice. That'd be kind of neat, you know what I mean?
Erik
The big question here. Eisner comes in. Does he rerecord it?
Jason
Oh, every time. Chapek Should do it too.
Walt would continue assuring us that the house had been made safe for our visit. The guide would describe some of the historic ghosts within the house. He would mention that there was unusual activity among the spirits because a wedding was about to take place with famous ghosts. Throughout history in attendance.
Bev
Lovely.
Jason
Because, of course, why not? But again, we're still we haven't really moved on from the wedding theme at all. No the bride it's - they were set on that. As much as the things have changed, the story has changed. There's still a few key story points that they were sticking together. At one point, a royal decapitation victim and Boylan's head would have rolled down the stairs towards the group, and the ghostly groom, chained and manacled, would have been all tied up while still speaking to the group.
The guide would definitely avoid Harry the arm who would grope for him from a sliding panel on the nearby wall. The group of visitors would follow the guide through the seven rooms of the house viewing manifestations around them. As he pointed out the eerie sites and related stories about what was taking place, the guide would vanish through secret panels and reappear in order to address the group again.
When they arrived at the next scene, they were just bouncing all over the place. There were various designs for secret panels, fireplaces which would slide upward bookcases which would swing inward. Since the early floor plan called for rooms and corridors similar in size and shape to those of an actual mansion, guests walking through would have been encouraged by their guide to pass from room to room through these passages.
Imagine that. That'd be kind of neat.
Taren
Yeah.
Jason
But in Disneyland now it’d just be ruined. I don't know, man.
The rooms and corridors within this haunted house, as envisioned at the time by Walton Kent, would have showcased a number of ideas and story elements discarded as the project evolved towards the ride we're now familiar with. However, as plans developed, the concept of a plot or storyline with defined characters and a detailed context for the ghosts was looked at as being unnecessary story elements like the lost Disneyland carpenter who was walled up within the house because he tried to restore it. And Hairy the arm, the insane brute manservant for the old blood family were discarded without a storyline in place. We lost some cool scenes, like a bedroom with a murderous four poster bed and other tragic past atrocities of the blood family. Because out of context just stuff didn't make much sense.
They were still digging up stories or still digging up ideas. Walt came up with an idea to have the haunted house set in New England rather than New Orleans, even though the New Orleans part was his idea in the first Place.
- {35 min}
Taren
But he wants to know every idea before he makes a decision.
Jason
He really does.
Bev
And then shoot them down.
Jason
And then make you feel sort of good, but not. Yeah. Much like the one in Disney World is. Instead of having a story involving a sea captain, Walt's house would feature Ichabod Crane in his encounter with the Headless Horseman in the Adventures of Ichabod Crane and Mr. Toad. And I can only imagine it's because, like, there was so much going on. I'm sure Walt was like, What do we have already? Uh, let's do that. What about what about that?
Taren
Well, IP. Get your IP in there right.
Jason
Well, anyway, that's not long. I want to read.
Erik
Well he's looking or you're giving up on looking. Okay.
Jason
But what are you going to say?
Erik
Oh, I was going to say, they were go. Instead of putting the haunted mansion into Walt Disney World, it was there was a consideration during the early stages for the Magic Kingdom to do that Sleepy Hollow ride. And I literally just listened to this to an episode of Disney Dish with Jim Hill today. It was this week's episode where he described it. It was basically Roger Rabbit's cartoon spin, except you're being chased by the Headless Horseman.
Jason
Wow. Well, now I am going to look it up for a second.
This is sort of what it would it would have been like the clouds will obscure the moon and distant flashes of lightning and sounds of thunder Will next be heard.
When the sky is darkening, the ghostly apparition of the headless horseman will fade into view or appear from behind a distant tree and gallop towards the graveyard and house from right to left foreground. He will disappear behind some trees to the left, but the sound of his horses approaching hoof beats will continue to grow louder. Suddenly he bursts into view, into the courtyard, just outside the windows, and gallops across from left to right, raining to a noisy halt, just out of view below the balcony on our right is keep is the only part of him we need to see at this last crossing. Since the shrubs will obscure the horseman’s cape must match in color and value with the previous projected image. Next, a bolt of lightning against the sky and a werewolf howl signaled the appearance of The ghosts rising from the tombs.
Bev
This sounds scary as hell.
Taren
I know all of this sounds scarier than what we got. Yeah.
Jason
It would have taken - there's a reason for that. We'll get to that - The arrival of the horsemen would have taken place in the graveyard Scene and was Meant to signal the beginning of a wedding party between Monsieur Boogeyman and Mrs.Vampire.
Taren
That sounds Stupid.
Bev
Are you making up those names or is that legit?
Jason
This is legit.
The Conservatory would then be filled with guests of all sizes and shapes, including Dracula,Frankenstein's monster and great Caesar's ghost. So this is definitely old People trying to figure this out.
Taren
This would have become Marvel Universe.
Bev
It sounds like Hotel Transylvania threw up.
Jason
The bride, of course, would get cold feet and leave the groom at the altar. And after all, the guests would freak out. Naturally, while the tour guide led all the human guests outside to Norland Square via a secret door in the fireplace. Like, okay, you got to get out. All the monsters are going to fight. Eventually, the sea captain theme won out Over this mess and work began on that storyline. So in what like two years or so we said we're still not into 1960. Here we had more than a few storylines and way more than a few effects in mind. The planning of this ride was fast and furious.
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Jason
I just did the classic podcast thing where it's like this thing was creepy.
Erik
I got an ad for JCPenney on one of our last episodes.
- {40 min}
Jason
They went out of business like five years ago.
Erik
Yeah, well.
Bev
J.C. Penney is still clinging on by its fingertips.
Jason
Are they?
Bev
Yeah. Kmart went out of business. Not J.C. Penney.
Jason
By 1959, both Yale Gracey and Raleigh Crump were upstairs in the studio lot in Burbank, crafting illusions and concepts for this ride. Even with no solid story in place As of yet, just general direction. Gracie and Crump were literally inventing new illusions every day, using reflections of figures to improve on these ancient magician's tricks.
Here's Rolly:
Erik
Well, we were making them up on a daily basis. We tried to work out every illusion we could think of where you used a reflection as a gag. We began working on a little storyline, and I don't remember where the story came from. I don't know whether Ken Anderson came up with the storyline or that Yale made it up. We had an old sea captain and there was a sea captain's room in the mansion. You could look through the window and see ocean waves breaking outside. He had gone to sea and then drowned, but before he went to see, he had killed his wife and bricked her up in the wall. That sequence we were showing was when he periodically came home back came back home to his wife and was wandering through the mansion.
We had actually built off stage and reflected into the room, a mannequin that was covered with seaweed and an old slicker and raincoat with a lantern in his hand. We put him in a pan of water with mirrors down in the water, and we had a shower above spring watered down to him when we wanted it. So all of a sudden you'd see the sky slowly appearing from nothing and you'd see the water running off with it, and the water would reflect and you could see it running around on the floor of the room.
It was an incredible illusion because then he would slowly disappear and all the water would be gone. And of course the murdered wife would slowly appear behind the brick wall. Suddenly she would raise her arms and fly out through the wall towards him in the middle of the room, and then she would just disappear. We actually built all of that. We jerry rigged it out of clothesline and wooden pulleys, spit and glue. But it worked and it was wonderful.
Jason
Sounds awesome.
Taren
It does.
Jason
And I've heard people talk about that before and it's like it just doesn't really do any justice unless it's in rolly’s words. I don't know why.
Erik
So yeah, but I mean, it does sound like a really cool idea for an illusion and to hear their stories that it kind of worked unless you were moving right?
Jason
Yeah. And it's like, you know, I wonder with that kind of lack of oversight, then they were literally just playing for two years.
Taren
It must have been the best time ever.
Jason
Despite the reaction to those being shown this mockup effect, Walt wanted to move away from the walk through idea
Bev
Of course he did!
Jason
Yeah.
The Sea Captain Effect took 2 to 4 minutes to set up and run each time, making it fairly impractical, even for a walk through attraction. Walt already wasn't happy with the walk through version of Sleeping Beauty's Castle, and he knew that they had to move more than the currently projected 40 guests at a time Through this attraction.
Taren
40?
Jason
Yeah. Set up for 40, 40 people. Imagine. Imagine being with 39 other freaks in a small room watching this Captain disappear and then okay. Turn to the right walk for I don't know,
Taren
it doesn't really Feel like A small number just because I'm thinking of it.
Jason
It is a small number. Oh, yeah, yeah. But also it just seems weird.
Other effects, such as creaking, unsafe floors and collapsing ceilings were abandoned for the same reason. Gone too were similar ideas for sound effects, such as clanking chains, roving voices, howling werewolves and lengthy narrations by guides.
And hosts alike, much like this show.
As the haunted house exterior became less decrepit faces in the windows, those unburied bones and animated statues in the graveyards became incompatible. But there are a number of ideas and visual effects present in today's Haunted Mansion that have hung on and survived all of these purges. The grounds of the estate still include that wrought iron fencing, humorous tombstone epitaphs and the New Orleans locale first thought of in 1957.
Plans had always included an eternal nighttime within the house, ghostly images materializing and floating upward out of sight, musical instruments playing overhead and ghosts who have followed you home from today's Haunted Mansion ride begins with groups who are escorted by a butler into a disguised elevator. Hear a narration and a view, a gallery of stretching portraits and are shocked to see a ghost hanging by the neck above a transparent ceiling.
They descend and walk into hallways with locked, forbidden doors. In fact, today's haunted Mansion still maintains more than a few key scenes that seem to connect back to the original wedding banquet story. The first synopses from Anderson describe the two storied room with a balcony over a great hall where ghosts would be seen along a huge banquet table with a wedding cake and candles and an invisible ghost playing a pump organ.
And, of course, one of the haunted mansion's most frightening visions has always been that of a ghostly bride, her eyes brightly glowing from an invisible face, her red heart visibly beating all ideas first thought of by Ken Anderson and Walt Disney.
Lot of key moments.
- {45 min}
Now I should bring up that there is some debate among the people who care about this sort of thing as to when exactly the Haunted Mansion concept became a ride and not a walk through. In an interview with Mark Davis in the early 1990s, he mentioned that this idea of a walk through was abandoned in the late fifties, and by late 1957, plans included at least some kind of tract conveyance system, although I'm not sure how solid those plans were.
Other people will say that it's only by the grace of the omni mover system developed for adventures through inner space that the walk through was tossed out in favor of a mechanized system.
Well, here's Ken Anderson on that point:
Bev
At that point, people would be collected on the porch of the house and these big double doors would open all by themselves. People would enter and stand in a temporary looking, wheeled transport at the foot of the stairs. This came later and again was part of Walt's idea. It was in his story that the ghosts would not permit any restoration of the house.
Anything done would be destroyed during the night. Only this cart, looking like it was made out of two by fours and painted with primer, was allowed by the spirits. It would have lowered from the entranceway to the basement, then moved on some kind of track throughout the attraction.
Jason
So it seems that the walkthrough was a fleeting thought and once Walt saw it in action over at the castle, in a place without such complicated effects as Rollie and Claude were pitching, he abandoned that concept in the early stages of planning. Oddly enough, the walk through idea was fairly popular within where at the time.
Here's Rolly:
Erik
You know, this is interesting. The 20,000 leave leagues exhibit actually out earned the submarine voyage ride one year. Everybody said how could that be? With the leagues exhibit being only a ten cent A ticket, it was because it cost a fortune to maintain the submarines while there was zero maintenance on the league's exhibit. Once in a while they would replace a couple of light bulbs in the exhibit while the goddamn submarine ride cost them $1,000,000 every year to run.
Jason
Thats that walk through, 20,000 leagues under the sea, where it's like you just walk there and you look at the Stuff and you Go, okay, that's that's it, you know, that's the thing that out earned the submarine voyage before Nemo Ruined it one year. I mean, just one year.
At the same, Mark Davis was busy figuring out what the inside of the mansion was going to look like. It was up to him to determine the look of the ghosts, the design of the rooms, and pretty much every scene that has been popping up in your head since you started this show. It's all thanks to Mark.
And here's Mark on how he got started working in the park:
Taren
The business people wanted to discontinue animation entirely. This was after we completed 101 Dalmatians around 1959 or 1960. They contended that it took too long, it was too expensive and so on, and said that Walt should discontinue doing cartoons and animated features. All this time I'd been working in story off and on, so when Walt was going to discontinue cartoons, he knew my drawings, so he wanted me to work on something for Disneyland. One of them was Nature's Wonderland. Then he wanted me to look at other things, including a pirate show.
Jason
Mark Davis got involved in working at the parks by Walt himself, and the two had a very good relationship from that point on.
Taren
He just said, Hey, why don't you go down next week and take a look at the park? He'd often go down there and walk around with us. I've done a few things for Disneyland. Before 1960, they had a pirate ship out there in fantasy land, the chicken of the sea pirate ship. Walt asked me to design a Little Mermaid figurehead for it. We'd go down there and discuss the work and observe people in the rides. We'd wander around the park and the public would notice him. He enjoyed being recognized, but he was impatient with the demands it made on his time. Right away, he'd say, We'd better go. After about a half day of this, we'd go up to the little apartment he had over the firehouse. We'd have a drink, scotch and water, and talk about what was going on, and that would be a relaxing time.
- {50 min}
Jason
Now I realize this has nothing to do with the Haunted Mansion whatsoever, but it's a cool little quote that I had never really heard before about Walt basically looking for a reason to drink with a partner, basically.
Erik
Well, you've all you've all heard the stories about Mark Davis in Imagineering, right. Where he he demand this is a role story. Hmm. I can't remember if you told it on your show off. I heard it from another another show where Mark Davis demanded that his desk be the one closest to Walt's office. So, yeah, he and Walt would see each other more often.
Jason
That's right. That's funny. I got to look At my buddy. at this point sometime in pre 1960s Disneyland work on the mansion was once again put on hold. They had a general idea of a story and an even less solid idea of how to move people through it. Plus effects that, well, stunning to see. We're not ready for the thousands of people that Disneyland was seeing at the time, but not for long.
Walt had already put the forthcoming New Orleans Square expansion on the park's maps in 1958. And as this new land took hold, the mansion needed to be a part of it. So in 1961, which I also think was 62.I don't know, there's like a debate and my in my reference notes.
But anyway, let's call it 61. The show building was constructed with the promise of the actual ride opening in 1963. Now, Walt still had no storyline, no set effects, as they were still being worked out and there was no set path inside for what this attraction was even supposed to look like, aside from A house.
But they knew what the outside looked like. So the show building went ahead. The Haunted Mansion exterior had to stay within Walt Disney's concept of a clean well-maintained Southern mansion.
Everyone we’re gonna take a quick Break and I'm going to come back and I'm going to show you some pictures Of the Haunted mansion under Construction. Hang on, everybody. It's EarzUp, we'll be right back.
(BREAK)
Jason
All right. Thanks for hanging on, everybody. All right. We're talking about the haunted mansion under construction and how everyone really needed to stick to Walt's idea of it being a clean looking House, basically.
So I found these again on Dave Land Web .
Taren
Oh, wow.
Jason
It’s a color picture.
Taren
Never seen this.
Jason
It's the four Greek revival style white columns. Everybody. With with the Haunted Mansion. Basically just a wood framed house. Like it's just wood.
Taren
Crazy looking.
Jason
With, like, some of the windows inset and the door frame and stuff like that. But it's just it's like you're driving by any house construction site.
Taren
But with four pillars.
Jason
But with four. Yeah, of course.
Here's the next one. So this is on the balcony or this is on the back porch, I think like where the line Comes through where you step up from the line onto the porch to then wrap around because you're facing the berm where the train sort of is or whatever. And it's just it's a big pile of dirt. I mean, they they don't even have the walkway or the pathway Laid out, just dirt. So it's like the Cement of the porch. And then there's dirt step down. There's sawhorses in place. But yeah, it's construction.
Here's this one. This one blows me away.
So this is of the if you're looking at the front of the mansion, it's the left side. Your left Side. There's like a tree there and there's a cement mixer. And place is staked out for, you know, landscaping and stuff and Just dirt everywhere with piles of four by two by fours.
Bev
I mean, do you think maybe they must have, but like the public knew what he was building, I thought were they or were they like, why the hell is he building a house?
Jason
I think so. I don't actually I think that they were announcing it.
Bev
They had to, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Taren
Yeah. I mean, he announced everything, so.
- {55 min}
Bev
So clean.
Taren
Yeah, it does. And you know what? To be honest with you, it still looks clean. It does. I mean, it's almost great. It's not a dirty, haunted mansion, which I never thought about until we're talking about it.
Jason
So here to answer your question, sort of there's A - It's still under construction, but there's a big map In front of it. I think it sort of explains what it's doing. And it says Disneyland, 1962, 63. So this was not built in 61. I don't know Where I got that number from, but it's definitely wrong because it's not finished yet and says Disneyland 62 63.
Bev
So Disneyland has definitely gotten a lot more intense with their walls.
Jason
Yeah, sure. This is just, Like it looks like little sheet Rock or whatever.
Erik
Little Jimmy can't see over it, but everybody else can.
Jason
Okay. Of course, fate would intervene yet again and Walt once again stopped all work on the mansion project to work not only on just one, but three brand new attractions for the 1964 World's Fair. The Fair allowed Walt to produce three new rides without spending much of his own money since they were all sponsored by corporations. When the team came back from installing the attractions at the fair in New York, most everyone in Imagineering at the time was Put back onto the Mansion Project.
What the World's Fair had taught them was that any new attractions that had that went into the park had to be people, eaters and able to access and able to address the demands of the ever growing crowds in Disneyland while still providing a good show with Ken Anderson having moved back to the Disney studios. When WEDb started working on the Fair Projects, Walt tasked Mark Davis and Claude Coates with filling Ken's shoes. And this is when the mansion story and character design finally began to Solidify.
In a treatment dated July 27th, 1964, Mark Davis whittled the existing story ideas into his own version of The mansion back story. The Lonesome Ghost that once led 40 people at a time through his house was replaced with a disembodied ghost host, a spooky narrator to lead us around. Mark's treatment also referenced something called The Elongated Room, the portrait gallery in the Seance Room Among other things. All things that are really key points in the mansion. Today, while Mark was busy with character design, Claude Cote was in charge of designing the interior environments Of the mansion.
In 1965. Work was once again stopped on the mansion as WED's focus was in bringing these rides from the World's Fair back across the country and installing them within Anaheim, then Pirates of the Caribbean was installed, and then Tomorrowland got a redesign ahead of the mansion opening. And I'm not really sure why. Maybe the delays and hesitation on actually setting a story and going with it just kept the mansion as an idea more than a project.
Jason
But even after the show building was built, things still weren't ready. And we got a whole new ride, plus three others from the World's Fair before we got anything real on Haunted Mansion.
It's weird.
Then the ultimate delay.
Walt Disney passed away on December 15th, 1966, and the Haunted Mansion lost its creative driver and more importantly, the man with the final word on What goes and what stays.
Suddenly, the project was in disarray, with no one person really thought of as being in charge. Since pirates had opened to rave reviews, Dick Irvine, who is now the vice president of WED, thought he could put Mark Davis and Claude Cote's back together on the Mansion Project and recreate the magic across the square. However, with the success of Pirates being what it was, each man thought he should be given a bit more power than the other.
So instead of recreating this amazingly creative collaboration that gave us Pirates of the Caribbean, we had a fractured partnership, culminating in the most basic and most pivotal problem to ever face Walt's haunted house. Should the mansion be scary or funny? Aside from the story, you can't if you don't know that fundamental point,You can't have a story.
Mark Davis thought that it should be more on the humorous side, since ghosts were scary enough as it was.
Sounds like a coward to me, folks.
Claude thought it should lean scary since the word haunted was in the name of the bride and people would be expecting something a bit scary. Ultimately, Mark Davis won out in the end and we got some Humor added to the show.
And this rift also resulted in the obvious split in how the mansion is. The first half of the show is on the more scary side. Leaning on the environmental stylings Of Claude Coates. Think about the hanging corpse in the elevator room, the hallway with the Paintings that change, the set design of that, a coffin with the skeleton trying to get out.
- {60 min}
Jason
Everything is so layered and detailed in the second half of the ride is sort of more sight gags and character design. Thinking The Great Hall with the banquet and the seance room and the graveyard.
Since many of the Imagineers working on the mansion were basically equals and held similar positions within the company, there was no true haunted mansion team leader, so most of the decisions were made as a group. Dick Irvine ended up handing out different sections of the ride for smaller groups to oversee, which sounds like an interesting solution, but it just ended up leading to the mansion, having a more segmented feel between scenes from boarding the doomed buggies to the endless hallway to the attic and in the graveyard.
The ride doesn't really flow all that well story wise and needed a solid storyline to wrap everything up And make it all make sense.
Since Mark had been producing mansion art for Walt before he died, he did have some pull as to what went in the ride. And here's Mark again:
Taren
A lot of these drawings date from 1964 or 1965, and there are some things in here, I think, that Walt saw and enjoyed. There are a couple of drawings here that I know he personally enjoyed enough that when he brought a visitor to my office, he'd say, Hey, get those drawings out. Walt was totally enchanted with the stretching portraits, and we built a display so that you could pull the artwork down and demonstrate the action.
Walt came into my office one time with Lily Ponds, the opera singer, and he said, Where are they? Where are those drawings? And I got them out and pulled them down and she loved them. And Walt was laughing the whole time.
Jason
It's a classic Walt thing. I can totally picture that scene happening. In addition to the story and what was to even go on the ride. Another point of conflict was what the guest conveyance system was even Going to be. They knew a walkthrough was out, but had yet to figure out a great way to get the guests through the ride and still have some of these great effects that Rollie and Yale were working on.
Here's Mark again:
Taren
There really was nothing happening on it. The 64 World's Fair did take time. And then Walt died in 1966. And we didn't get it open until 1969 for about two or three years. It was kind of a dead really. These guys worked on it, but they couldn't sell the idea the way they had it. All that work on a story bogged the mansion down to a point where it just wasn't done. There were continuity problems with people in vehicles or boats, and Walt wouldn't buy it that way.
Jason
Now, in case you forgot or want to know more, check out our show from August of 2020 titled The Haunted Mansion That almost kind of it was because I talk about how the real original version of this ride was meant to be A boat ride. But I digress.
Jason
As mentioned earlier, the folks at Disneyland came back from the World's Fair with a fixation on capacity. They wanted each new ride to haul as many people as possible. And the success of pirates only hardened this focus. Dick Nunis, who was the director of Disneyland operations, was such a stickler for ride capacity, according to attention. Imagineers called him hop along capacity because he was always making them think of how they could get the max amount of people through the doors, which meant there was no going back to the walk through concept from earlier, and They had to figure out some kind of conveyance soon, but the silver lining and all of these delays and arguments over what the mansion should be or shouldn't be was that in 1967, the omnimover was ready for use and already perfected for the adventures through inner space ride over in Tomorrowland. Based off of the idea of the people mover, the omni mover was to be the breakthrough the mansion Team needed.
Combined with advances in audio animatronics that wed had made with the new Pirates ride. The omni mover enabled the Imagineers to finally commit to a conveyance. Speaking of the people mover, I read that Walt's idea of the people mover would connect shops and stores in downtown L.A., but only on the second story. And that's all the information I have on that.
But apparently I just. I don't know. I thought it was neat. Um, I mean, imagine, like, going shopping in L.A.. Go the second store on the People Mover. I don't know. It's weird, right?
Erik
Doesn't Cincinnati have I mean, they don't have a people mover but isn't a chunk of the city of Cincinnati connected through like walkways on the second floor of a of a bunch of buildings? At least I seem to recall that I've only been to Cincinnati once. I'm not an authority on Cincinnati.
Jason
Cincinnati? I don't know. But Saint Louis.
Bev
Saint Louis does.
Jason
It's the snow in the Midwest. They have a lot of Those habitrail things connecting buildings. Because of that. Yeah. Because you're not going to be walking on the sidewalk, you know, when it's snowing like that.
- {65 min}
Jason
As they played with this new technology, they realized that the system actually solved a lot of their problems they seem to be having in selecting which effects and scenes to Build into the Haunted Mansion.
Much of what Rolly and Yale had created depended on the guests being positioned just so otherwise the effect wouldn't look as great. The omni movers were able to rotate and pivot, allowing the programmers to position the guest exactly where the Imagineers wanted them to in order for certain effects to work. In many ways, this opened up the door for when to really start deciding on how the mansion was going to function As a whole. The Omnimover really sort of saved The Haunted Mansion, in my opinion.
Now there's always been talk of a restaurant next to the mansion. I know when we first learned about this, we're like, Oh, that would be so Cool guys to eat at the Haunted Mansion or whatever, right? And apparently Marc Davis was the brainchild of that because he wanted a place to house some of these effects that couldn't be done in the mansion at the time. Or they could only be done if the ride stayed as a walkthrough. If you stood there for 2 minutes, then you could have this effect.
It would Be cool. Otherwise it just it just didn't work.
Here's Mark:
Taren
As you see Yale, Gracie came up with a system which used a canvas framed on a wall. And then with his extraordinary kind of rear projection, it looked like the painting was really changing very slowly. It would go through a number of steps of images. The reason it was not used was because everybody was moving through the place instead of standing still watching the paintings.
I wanted to do a restaurant near the Haunted Mansion with low key lighting. So you'd sit there while the paintings on the walls were changing all around you. These ideas evolved and became the corridor where you now walk past the changing portraits. But it wasn't done very well, really. It's got a kind of on and off action with flashes of lights and so on is right.
Jason
I mean, these paintings really are just sort of like the lightning flashes, the cue for the Paintings to change in the hallway of the mansion that day.
Erik
Well, we've got the new one in the queue. At Disneyland. Right. The that one the.
Jason
You're asking the wrong dude.
Erik
Yeah. Well yeah. Go to the parks again sometime.
Jason
Yeah. Bev, you been there. We have a new one.
Bev
The last time I was there, it was closed. And the time before, I don't remember.
Jason
Well, even like aside from the new one for a long time, it was. It was basically just the same.
Taren
Isn't this just the club 33 paintings?
Jason
Yes, that's exactly what I thought, too, in the jazz club of the of the club 33. Now you're in the booth and the paintings come to life, and they slowly, like, move through the thing. Yeah, I think it was going to be something like that.
Bev
And they're like, they look like oil paintings. Like they don't look great. Like when you, when you pointing them out to mean you're like, watch this. And I was like, I like died. Yeah crazy.
Jason
With all of these threads of a story that had been woven since the early nineties, since the early 1950s, it fell to a tenko to assemble them into something resembling a cohesive story. His job was to craft the story while also keeping in mind Mark's whimsical ghost clods sort of creepy and spooky vibes, and having meld with Raleigh Crump's and Yale Gacy's effects.
Sounds like a mess, to be honest with You. Take all these divergent things and make it cohesive. Also do it kind of soon.
It was X who took the scenes Mark and Claude worked on and arranged them in a way that made sense to him, which would be following the layout of an actual mansion itself. We enter the house and walk into the portrait Chamber, which is one of the first Mark Davis ideas. Then we move on to the hallway where more Mark Davis art awaits us With the portrait's changing shape right before our eyes and on and on. You might not notice this and I didn't know this.
I learned about this somewhat, you know, when I was doing research for this is like, Oh, this is cool. The hallway of the portrait hallway after you get off the elevator and walk towards the dune buggy is another example of the use of force perspective as the walls and ceiling designs and wood beams all taper down and down, directing you towards the marble busts ahead that seem to follow us Wherever we look. I didn't really realize that they using forced Perspective in the hallway, but.
Here's Rolly on that effect of the the busts that follow you around:
Erik
The way that happened is kind of a funny story. The title of the book and the start of a lot of his stories. Uh, there you go. That was a happy accident. Yale and I were building this particular room, and wed had already begun doing Mr. Lincoln. At this point, we happened to get a hold of a vacuum formed face of Lincoln, made of a clear plastic.
- {70 min}
We fogged it so you couldn't see through it, and we put it in a frame with the framed face looking toward you like. A bar relief bust on a wall. We had a little 35 millimeter projector behind it, and we were doing something that was a lot of fun at the time. We had a circular, transparent disk turned by a clock motor in front of the projector lens.
We had melted portions of the disk and we had sprayed other parts black and this caused the images on the face to slowly change as the disk turned in front of the projector. At first you'd first, you'd first you'd see black, then all of a sudden the melted section would come on and the face would appear all wormy.
Then slowly, as you got past melted part, the image would become sharp and the face would appear as a skull. We had this little projection set up with Lincoln's face and everything working for about a month or so. Finally, we were behind the scenes one day for some reason, and Neill said, Well, you're that Rolly. And I said, What?
And he said, If you walk around behind that face, the eyes follow you. And we knew at that time that the illusion would have to be used in a corner for it to to work properly. My question before you move on here, they got a hold of a vacuum forming face of Lincoln who stole that from the other project, Gracy or Crump.
Jason
Rolly 100% while you zoomed in his motorbike, did a couple of donuts. Hopped off, did a backflip, pick the one up, put it in his satchel, 14 front flips onto his Bike and he was out.
Nearly all of the characters in the Haunted Mansion are Mark Davis design. Basically, the entire graveyard scene was done by him. Most everything in the dining room scene from the duelists to the granny knitting the sweater. Mark did hundreds of drawings in concept sketches, and most were never used. Many carried on through rewrite after rewrite.
Here's Mark again:
Taren
I've always felt and I think that this is the way Walt thought to you. Don't just think of one idea, and that's it. You explore everything that you can. Everything that I did, I did 100 ideas to get one. I don't believe you can sit down with just one idea and do it, because when you come up with something dull, what would say, Mark, give some thought to this.
And that's what I would do. I'd sit down and start producing ideas and I try not to overlook any bits in the process. I remember one story about Walt. Somebody came up with somebody came up to him with something and said, Hey, Walt, what do you think about this? And Walt looked at it and said, Well, it's awfully hard to choose between one.
Jason
Jerk. The guy was asking for a choice. He was asking for feedback on what he did, not what to do to choose This or You know, it's like, Well, I'm not asking you to choose.
Bev
All he wanted was a little bit of positive reinforcement. Instead he got punked.
Jason
Basically, of all the rooms and locations in the Haunted Mansion, one always struck me as sort of underused. Or at least it used to be Disneyland added a bunch of stuff to it, but for decades the loading area has been so poorly themed and I finally found out why in this story and song from the Haunted Mansion released in 1969, that loading area is referred to as a, quote, limbo of boundless mist and decay. I suppose like a buffer between ghosts In the real world or something like That, I don't know. But that's it. Limbo of boundless mist and decay.
Erik
Not just the room we painted black.
Jason
Yeah, it's just always. It was weird to me. I was like, what is there could be any number of things here, but apparently they already had enough trouble figuring out what to do for the frigging around the hallway. One of the most memorable, memorable effects in the Haunted Mansion, even to this day, is the singing busts in the graveyard.
Jason
Uncle Theodore, which is the broken one, bears the face of Thurl Ravenscroft, one of the main Voice talents in the mansion In an interview about that effect, Thurl recalls,
Erik
All right, now. Now I'll embarrass myself with my Thul Ravenscroft impression.
- {75 min}
Jason
Please do.
Erik
We recorded the song at length and then after a couple of months, they called us back in. They made us up like marble busts with pockmarks and cracks like a piece of marble. They said we were going to project film marble caricatures of each of us to bring them to life. And I couldn't believe that they sat us in chairs and put up a kind of comfortable vise on our necks so that we couldn't move our heads.
Comfortable vice, by the way, people, right? Yeah. Not an uncomfortable one.
Jason
A comfortable vice is like, you know, having one of those big knit Blankets around you at all.
Erik
They had five cameras on us while we sang the song and we could animate our faces all we wanted. Then they took me over to my bust. It was just white marble. And the minute the track came on, I could see inside my mouth, my teeth and my gums. I couldn't believe it. It was so weird.
Jason
Well, the design of the inside of the mansion was going on. Imagineers finally figured out how to still have their spooky haunted house look rundown while keeping with Walt's decree that the outside should look pristine. They leaned on the use of the outside inside illusion often found in dark rides. Guests enter the well-manicured and whitewashed mansion building, pass through rooms and hallways, board the ride vehicles and eventually leave the house through an attic window.
Now, still inside the attraction, but outside the house, they can view the rundown rear of the haunted mansion from the cemetery. Rude. In an internal night of the ride. This exterior is not the same mansion. It has broken window frames and dead bushes and trees, a crooked, loose shingled roofline and lacy iron trim work which does not match that of the true mansion outside in the sunlight.
But this outside inside Idea Can be found within Peter Pan when the ships fly out over London and in Pirates of the Caribbean. Kind of a neat little thing.
By 1967, the Haunted Mansion Project started to gain real traction within WED. And since the company was already starting to construct Walt Disney World over in Florida or Project X as it was known, the Imagineers wed began to build two of everything that was going into the house in Anaheim, with the duplicate set being shipped off to storage until the show building in Orlando was built in designing the building for Orlando, Claude Coates finally got his chance to make the Haunted Mansion a bit more Scary.
In transforming the Southern style house into the Dutch Gothic version at Disney World. He adjusted the scale and details in order to make that mansion look a little more sinister and foreboding. The East Coast version was completed and ready to go a full six months before Disney World even opened.
The Mansion House itself was constructed in 1963, marking six years from conception to completion. Kind of a haunted mansion as we know it wouldn't open till 1960. Sitting in the Anaheim sunshine, teasing guests for another six years, I was trying to think of another ride in these modern times that would be the equivalent of what happened here and I can't really come up with one because nowadays we'll complain that things aren't done in.
Imagine seeing a show building sitting out there for six years. You can't go in it can't do anything about it.
You know, if Chapek was alive then and this is a Chapek Chapek is ruining Blah blah blah blah blah.
Erik
Tron's getting close, but it is. It's only been three years since they really started it. Although people complaining, well, they already have it in Shanghai. Why did it take so long to build it in Walt Disney World? I don't know. I don't know either. It's almost done. It's fine. Yeah.
Jason
On August 1969, days before the opening of the attraction, a memo was sent to Dick Irvine from Marty Sklar, who was concerned that, quote, We have not as yet given this an appropriate name. And I would like to send one to the park as soon as possible. But they're talking about is the omnimover system. Because they were still calling it, The omni mover system.
Marty sent along a list with the memo of possible names for the omni mover that he had collected from some of the other Imagineers. Some of the names listed were. So these were other Imagineers pitching names. I can imagine, like Marty Sklar going, Hey, Tom. Give me a name for this thing. Hey, Bill, what do you got?
So here's some of these names. Ghost Mobile.
Taren
That’s what Jeremy calls it!
Jason
Oddly Enough.
Jason
A ghost coach, which I think is just fashion for dead people. Phantom mobile.
Taren
Not good.
Jason
Banshee buggy.
Erik
Oooh
Taren
At least. You have alliteration.
Jason
Here's this one. Check this. Actually, I'll say ghostly host mobile. This one sort of my favorite seance conveyance, I guess. Seance conveyance, I guess.
- {80 min}
Bev
I hate that so much.
Taren
That's all we're going To call it.
Jason
I'm going to get on the seance conveyance. And of course, doom Buggy.
Jason
And that got widely Upvoted, so to speak. As Marty Sklar later explained at the time, California beach surfing culture used a dune Buggy As a form of transportation, so it was felt that the name would resonate with young people.
Taren
I see where they're going with that. But also like who's going to argue with that with the word buggy? Everybody loves the word buggy.
Jason
I don't know, man, but I love the qualifier attached to it. Oh, the young kid. The kids will love it.
Taren
Yeah, for the kids.
Jason
The narrator ghost host merely referred to the ride vehicle as a carriage carrying you to the boundless realm of the supernatural. Because the name had not yet been locked down in time for the by Paul Freese. I mean, it was now four days, three days before the ride opened It was called the Doom Buggy.
And a midnight press event held on the evening of August 11th. From 10:30 p.m. to midnight, 50 members of the press were given a special press package. Upon their arrival at the park that included a press ghost pass attached to a small glow in the dark skull. There's a skeleton Key which would be worn throughout the Evening. I would love to see one of those. I would love to get my hands on one of those.
They began the late night by being wined and dined at Club 33.And then Disneyland Ambassador Sherry BASKAS escorted them to the attraction. The mansion officially opened as advertised in the newspapers and the park to all guests the morning of August 12th, 1969. However, today, the Walt Disney Company claims that August 9th was the real opening of the attraction, since that was the first time that a handful of Disneyland guests experience that.
Get over yourselves. I don't know, man.
Finally, The world's greatest ghost house was opened to the well-dressed public Of Anaheim.
With the newly christened doom buggies. The Haunted Mansion had 131 ride cars capable of making 183 turns left and right, aligning them with whichever effect was triggering at the time, with two guests in every car passing through the ride every 3 seconds at 1.4 miles per hour, it's possible to frighten as many as 2618 guests per hour.
It may seem longer, but once onboard the car, the ride actually lasts six and a half minutes and the cars travel a track 786 feet long. The eerie expanding room, of course, is a hydraulic elevator which descends to a depth of 15 feet, carrying as many as 85 people. Or 12,000 pounds, whichever comes first. At the time. And for a good while after, there was no ride as detailed as the Haunted Mansion within the walls of Disneyland.
Not even pirates, which is amazingly detailed and can match the depth and the seemingly scattershot approach to the story development that was happening in a haunted mansion. The mansion was an instant success, spawning lines of eager guests just waiting to be spooked. And here's a Final image of the I couldn't really see couldn't find more images of Like Opening Day of Haunted Mansion. But third, humans do that.
I mean, it's, you know, it's just like today. It just looks like today. Yeah, exactly. Everything is exactly the same. It's just people are at the front gates and. You know, and beyond is wall to wall people. Yeah.
Taren
They're just dressed better than we are.
Bev
Just dressed so much better.
Jason
I kind of like this lady is in a tank top and very short shorts.
Taren
She’s the only smart person there
Bev
Lady behind her look like she was from the Victorian era.
Jason
Yeah, she's a ghost.
Erik
She had a bonnet. Yeah.
Jason
Just one week after the mansion opened, Disneyland, set a one day attendance record on August 16th of 82,516 guests eager to enjoy The new experience. In general. At the time, weekly attendance. The park was roughly 30,000 people. Man That line must have sucked.
That increased to approximately 50,000 on the weekends. But it also created something else.
Merchandise. And Disneyland celebrated the attraction with various promotion souvenirs, mementos, including the co-branded carnation ice cream Sundae.
- {85 min}
Taren
That's pretty good.
Jason
Which came complete with a little red plastic spoon picturing, the heads of the three hitchhiking ghosts and the phrase visit the haunted mansion etched into the handle. It was only available during the early months. The attraction was open and it was advertised by large silkscreen posters. Throughout the park there were haunted mansion themed toy sets, kinetic models that were powered by rubber bands escaped from the crypt and the vampire's midnight madness.
In that case, the executioner's shovel chopped down on prisoners, chained, causing a skeleton in the coffin to rise in protest. Two other scenes called Play It Again, Sam and Grave Robbers Reward completed the series and all of the boxes dated from 1974. They have stylized Disneyland Haunted Mansion drawings on the cover of the box in a Walt Disney World mansion illustration on the side.
None of the models are specific to scenes in the attraction, but kind of neat though. There's like all these weird figurines and Toys and stuff like that that Are just like gory, ghoulish scenes, but nothing is. There's nothing wondering whether an attraction with a background as complicated as this one, there are undoubtedly many more stories to tell and perhaps get to them one day.
Until then, Sleep tight. Knowing that the Haunted Mansion stands not only as a symbol of near-perfect ride design and theming, but also as a symbol of what can happen when you get a bunch of people together Who can't agree on a single Thing.
Bev
Truth.
Jason
There you go.
(Boring)
I mean, I cut a lot of stuff, and then there's also a lot of cool stuff out there about how the effects work. And I thought that might be a fun show. Maybe next year.
Taren
It cool if we could get an interview of somebody talking about like that kind of stuff. I don't know Who.
Jason
I don't know who either.
But yeah, it was. Yeah, it's neat. I don't know. I like it. I like hearing how things develop. You know, I always sort of really enjoy trying to, like, reverse ideas or jokes or whatever. And this to me is very interesting because it starts off with sort of nothing like what it ended up being, but then sort of Is also and I just Think that's creative process, but we don't really think about that. We think of like, Oh, they made this ride, this is they wrote it out And then they did the thing.
And it makes sense that this is our fourth show on this topic, because it did go through so many different renditions. And there is just a lot of there's a lot of details in the weeds that you can get into on this. Yeah.
(Boring)
Jason
Okay. You can find us on social media. You guys, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, tik-tok. Which maybe I'll pull a clip of this show. I don't know. We'll see. I'm doing some things on Tik-Tok and we're trying to have fun over there.
If you want to support the show, go to Etsy.com, slash shop, slash covears and buy Shirt's patron dot com Slash earzup, of course, is the best way. Come on, sign on. As a patron supporter of the show, you keep the show on the air, you keep show on the air. You keep streamers on the air. You keep indepth on the air. You keep bantha milk on the air. You keep scraping the vault on the air. secret show. It's six shows that you're helping to support only page on supporters. And if you're a passionate supporter, you get an Etsy discount and you get an RSS feed to the show that has no commercials except the 21st amendment. And ConciEARS you got to sit through those sorry. Otherwise no commercial. You have to deal with it.
That alone is worth five bucks a month. Sorry it is.
And then, of course, discord coming out. Yeah, I don't know. I'm tired.
Taren
Yeah, I get that.
Jason
That's it. Next show is the spooky stories.
Taren
I'm so excited. It's my favorite show that we do. It's just I love doing it because it's very stressful, but I really love the show. I'm very excited for it, and it's a secret show, so we're gonna have to come up with a Halloween drink.
Jason
God, it's a secret show.
Taren
Oh, I'll. I'll figure out the drink, and I'll send out the ingredient or the recipe. I'll try and do that, like, soon so that we can all happen.
Jason
There you go. Like soon?
Taren
Like soon? Yeah.
Jason
She's used to hearing about how the haunted mansion. Was scheduled, so she's like, Oh, I can. Yeah, whenever it's soon.
Taren
I mean like the day before.
Bev
I mean, it just seem it does seem like this show has just come out of nowhere.
Jason
Absolutely. Even though it's. And you know what? It's Terence's fault. It is because we reschedule it like 400 times.
Taren
But in order to get Terence on, we moved it for him. So it is his fault, but it's worth it.
Jason
Yeah, for sure. Probably. Maybe I'll let you know on the 14th.
Bev
I see him every day.
Taren
He may even be in person. We don't even know.
Jason
I doubt it.
- {90 min}
Taren
I doubt it. It would be awesome. And then I would make the drinks for you. So there's the incentive.
Taren
Because you could come in person too. I could, yeah. And then I'll make your drink.
Bev
I could.
Jason
Everybody thanks a lot for tuning in. I really appreciate it. And till next time. We'll see in the parks.
