Disney Imagineers Explain Why The Haunted Mansion Is The Greatest Theme Park Ride Of All Time
Disney has adapted its theme park attractions into movies several times, and with varying degrees of success. Everyone remembers "Pirates of the Caribbean," but the "Country Bears" movie from 2002 left a significantly smaller cultural footprint. Same with "The Haunted Mansion," the Eddie Murphy comedy from 2003. Now Disney is coming back for a second bite at the apple with the slightly differently titled "Haunted Mansion," written by Katie Dippold ("Parks and Recreation") and directed by Justin Simien ("Dear White People"), in an attempt to capitalize on the familiarity of the brand while capturing what makes that attraction so special.
But what exactly does make that Disney staple so special? If you polled theme park fans, none of them would blink if you called it the greatest theme park ride of all time. And if you asked Disney Imagineers — the folks who actually design and build Disney theme park attractions — why it's so special, none of them would hesitate to talk your ear off. So that's exactly what I did.
On the eve of the new movie's release, we thought it would be fun to speak with Disney Imagineers about the actual attraction itself, how it came to be, why it's such a beloved classic for theme park visitors, and what its legacy might be. Strap into your Doom Buggy seat and read on for our exploration of the Haunted Mansion.
How the Haunted Mansion was created
In the 1950s, during the early development days of Disneyland, Imagineer Harper Goff sketched a design for what would eventually become the Haunted Mansion. His sketch, which featured a house on a hill overlooking Disneyland's Main Street, "really looked like the quintessential haunted house that you would see in movies at that time," Imagineering's executive creative director Kim Irvine told me — a somewhat raggedy, overgrown manor that appeared to be run down. Irvine is well-versed in the Haunted Mansion and has a special connection to it: Her mother, one of Disney's first female Imagineers, served as the model for Madame Leota, the fortune teller character whose head appears in a floating crystal ball during a séance scene near the midpoint of the ride.
But Walt Disney thought the idea of a shoddy-looking building clashed with his vision for a more pristine theme park. He preferred the juxtaposition of the building having a nice exterior which contained spooky elements inside. As for those spooky elements, the actual narrative that visitors to the Haunted Mansion would experience shifted multiple times in the planning stages. As Juleen Woods, a senior project coordinator in the Imagineering department, explained, some of the early concepts for what the attraction might entail included the Headless Horseman from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," or the legend of a sea captain named Captain Gore who murdered his bride after she found out he was a pirate. Gore's wife's ghost haunted him to the point where he hung himself from the rafters — a distinctive image that actually made its way into the final version of the attraction (and feels like something that would absolutely never be included in a new Disney ride today).
Instead, Walt and Imagineers like Harper Goff, Ken Anderson, Yale Gracey, Rolly Crump, Marc Davis, and Claude Coats decided to create a fully original storyline for the Haunted Mansion. But they initially envisioned the experience of visiting it in a totally different way than how it ended up.
"For so long, the attraction was going to be a walkthrough," Woods told me. "Even at one point, the raven that you see throughout the attraction was going to be your 'Ghost Host' and talk to you as you went through and walked through. But then luckily, the World's Fair — even though it put the Haunted Mansion project on hold from 1963 to 1969 — one of the great things that came out of the World's Fair was we learned about the Omnimover [ride system], which is what the Doom Buggy is. And we were able to take that technology and find a different way to tell the story, which is you're on this Doom Buggy, which is such a better way because it really shows you where to focus your attention."
Daniel Joseph, an Imagineer who has worked on special effects for the attraction, also underscored the importance of that point in the attraction's history. "The main thing to understand with the Haunted Mansion is Walt Disney always had a 'haunted house' planned for Disneyland," he said. "A version of it is in so many early development plans for the park. But the key here is that it is not a traditional haunted house attraction, it is a 'Disney haunted house.' As Walt called it so many times, a 'house of illusions.' As soon as the idea of a traditional haunted house attraction was blended with the Disney component, it became a new thing."
As Juleen Woods points out, the decision to change the attraction from a walkthrough to a seated ride ended up being a practical decision as well as a creative one. "Who [wouldn't] rather sit than walkthrough? When you're walking for 12 hours through the park, you're like, 'I'm ready to sit down.'"
Perfectly balanced
One of the biggest takeaways from riding the Haunted Mansion is the way the attraction transitions from being somewhat spooky to having more of a fun, funny atmosphere as it progresses through the mansion and into the (still-enclosed) graveyard in its backyard. But that balance of scares and humor didn't come easy.
"There was a lot of controversy, quite frankly, between the Imagineers that were leading up the concept at that time as to whether it should be scarier [or] funnier," Kim Irvine said. "I think it went back and forth quite a few times before it landed in where it is now. It's a combination of all of their personalities mixed in. But the humor definitely came from Marc [Davis] being from animation and creating all those wonderful funny characters from the cartoons. He wanted it to have a sense of humor, and I think the balance of it is really wonderful."
"I think the original Imagineers had so honed their storytelling skills producing the early Disney movies, so many of which blended humor into the mix, that they understood how well that would work with the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, where Walt Disney wanted children to be able to have fun with their parents," said John Gritz, a principle concept designer at Walt Disney Imagineering.
Juleen Woods pointed to the musical transition as being an essential reason why the balance works so well. "It's this perfect balance of the grim and grinning, as the song says," she quipped, referring to "Grim Grinning Ghosts," a classic song written for the attraction. "It's a celebration of ghosts and music, and I love that the music changes the mood throughout the whole attraction. So whatever scene you're seeing, it's the perfect music for that scene. It's the balance of haunts and humor."
Woods also cited the way Walt Disney forced Imagineers with different skillsets and personalities to come together and bring the best of both worlds to a project, and how effective that was in the creation of the Haunted Mansion. "Marc Davis is a gag man," she said. "He really understood character and how to make things funny. And then Claude Coats was the other lead designer who really specialized in background and environments and really making things spooky. The balance of spooky and funny or fun is almost impossible to do. I think that it's very rare. There's a reason that these Disney movies like 'Hocus Pocus' or 'Nightmare Before Christmas' are played for 25, 30 years. It's because it's so rare that you can make something family friendly that allows you to be a little bit spooky, but also really funny. So I think that's why everybody wants to play in that world."
Speaking of "The Nightmare Before Christmas," Disneyland attendees know that for the past 20-plus years, the Haunted Mansion has received a themed overlay from September through January to incorporate elements of Henry Selick's stop-motion classic film into the attraction's aesthetic. "It pivots the story, but still allows you to have that same sense of, 'This is something different and really interesting and a little bit strange' and really holds that, but also allows you to celebrate two holidays at once," Woods observed.
Tradition vs. innovation
Woods acknowledged that some Disneyland fans love the "Nightmare Before Christmas" overlay, whereas purists continue to prefer the original attraction as it stands for the rest of the year. That brings us to one of the biggest challenges Imagineers face when it comes to this particular attraction: How far is too far when it's time to update the ride? Many Disney fans embrace the park's traditions as one of its central tenets, and in an era in which fan voices are louder than ever, how does the Imagineering department handle an attraction like the Haunted Mansion being under a fan microscope?
"We have to tread carefully in the Haunted Mansion," John Gritz told me. "It was cutting edge technology when built, but the technology was carefully crafted to support the mood and story of the attraction ... to be 'invisible.' We always strive very hard to preserve that tradition today."
"Our jobs as Imagineers are to constantly keep Disneyland relevant and growing and exciting and tweaking things just enough so the next time you come back, it's maybe a little bit of a different experience, but still with all of your favorite memories," said Kim Irvine. "And with Mansion, I think the thing that we always try to do is maintain the original intent ... it's so important to really understand what was in the original Imagineers' heads when they built it. Research, research, research. Lots of books, lots of talking. When we actually put together a new concept, we do big storyboards, just like the original Imagineers did with the story, then start building on top of that with, 'What is it going to look like? What is it going to feel like? How does it fit in with the original story?' Just to make sure that nothing ever feels like, 'Ooh, what is that? That doesn't belong in there. That doesn't fit with the non-tech way that it looks.' We never want to put high technology in there because the beauty of it, with the Pepper's ghost [effect] and a lot of the tech that Yale Gracey and Rolly Crump used, is so low-tech that it's invisible and it needs to stay that way. So, I think that is the key, is understanding and always staying within the original intent."
"There is a beautiful analog aesthetic to the Haunted Mansion and we work very hard to keep it that way," Daniel Joseph agreed. "Since its opening so long ago, our Illusion Development team has come up with all kinds of new special effects and wonders that would wow guests in the Haunted Mansion. We have added new illusions over the years as new techniques and technologies come around. It's always with a careful eye for cohesiveness with the rest of the attraction, though, that these new moments are added."
One of those additions is The Hatbox Ghost, a character with a storied history in Haunted Mansion lore. Daniel Joseph was a member of the team that was responsible for restoring the character to its former glory.
"The Hatbox Ghost has sort of a cult following, and this was primarily due to the fact that he was only [originally] in the Haunted Mansion for about a week in 1969 when the attraction first opened," he explained. "For many, the question of 'Did he really exist?' loomed. For us Imagineers and illusion designers, he became sort of our 'white whale.' The original version of the Hatbox Ghost was designed by Disney Legend Marc Davis, and brought to 'after life' by another Disney Legend, and my personal lifelong hero, Yale Gracey. When the figure was installed in August 1969, Yale noticed his illusion wasn't working the way he had mocked it up in Glendale. The head wasn't fully disappearing from the body, and the Doom Buggy was way too close for the effect to work well. Yale, being a perfectionist, took the figure out of commission. It wasn't until around 2013 that myself and a few other passionate Imagineers developed some new techniques to bring him back. It was really a combination of modern technology and some clever stagecraft that enabled him to rise once again. This time we wanted to celebrate putting him as close to the guest as possible, and truly show that 'there is nothing up our sleeves.' It was incredible to see the guest response for the Hatbox Ghost returning, especially since it was such a passion project for us at Walt Disney Imagineering."
The Haunted Mansion's legacy
How does an attraction created in the 1960s influence current Imagineers as they design and think about new projects? Kim Irvine didn't hesitate for a second when I asked her about the legacy of the attraction and what lessons could be learned from it.
"Nowadays, usually there's just one person that leads an attraction or a movie or a theme park," she said. "That was such a partnering of different people with Yale, with Claude, with Marc, with Ken in the beginning, the combination of all those people lending their spice to that amazing stew. It's really a lesson that it's important for people to work together on something like that and give each other just as much space for their ideas ... it was a real team effort, and the ability that Walt Disney had of putting people together to work on projects, you would never see Claude and Marc out to lunch together, but working together, they were magic. He really had a skill at that."
Meanwhile, Juleen Woods pointed to some creative ways the Haunted Mansion lore could be expanded in the years to come. "Haunted Mansion, more than any other attraction, actually has the most characters. It has 999 ghosts. That's a lot of different characters to deal with. And yes, you really pretty much know as a guest, maybe only about 40 of them. But it's also really fun to think of all the content we can create in the future of, 'Hey, let's get to know all 999 ghosts' ... There are always people with ideas. 'Can we do this? Should we do this? How about this?' And we are so open and really hoping to add diversity and new ghosts that you haven't met yet. So I think that's always the future opportunity, and we'll see what happens."
A more subtle part of the attraction's legacy is its ability to continually inspire young people to want to learn more about theme park design and maybe even find their way to careers in that industry. John Gritz and Daniel Joseph both specifically pointed to the Haunted Mansion as the reason they became Imagineers, and Gritz went as far as to say "the storytelling, style, and tone of the Haunted Mansion have permeated our culture. Joseph called its creation a "turning point" in the history of the Imagineering department: "The level of detail, story, music, and, of course, groundbreaking illusion technology elevated the whole art of theme park attractions to a new level."
Gritz picked up that thought and ran with it, attributing the immersive experience of visiting the attraction to the considerable amount of thought and care put into each decision when making it. "If we add enough detail, story, and visual wonders in our attractions, guests not only get a treat when they re-ride, but they also make their own story up. It means the story isn't spoon-fed in a linear literal way, but instead allows the guests to create their own personal narrative. This is one of the amazingly powerful things about how the Haunted Mansion is designed."
When diving into the minutiae of the attraction's history, technical achievements, and deep-rooted mythology, one can occasionally forget that, at the end of the day, for Disney park visitors, the Haunted Mansion is simply a visceral, thrilling experience. "It's really a rite of passage for kids to go to the Haunted Mansion and be like, 'I did it. I sat through and a popup ghost came, and I didn't run out screaming,'" Juleen Woods said. "So it's very unique. I don't want to talk badly of other theme parks, but I think all the other theme parks often lean a lot more scary. And yes, it can be fun to be scared, but I don't want to be chased by someone with a chainsaw. That's not my idea of fun."