Welcome, Foolish Mortal, to the Haunted Mansion. I am your host. Your Ghost Host.
Welcome to the first of Twenty Something in Orlando’s attractions spotlights, and as it is October we shall fittingly begin with the Haunted Mansion. The greatest regret of my Disney career is that I didn’t get the chance to work at the Mansion. For many people it is a lifelong dream, and at the very least I can say I got closer than most. When I was a Cast Member I worked in Adventureland and Liberty Square, also known as Ad-Lib. While the two thematic areas are quite different from one another, they’re grouped together for cast and management purposes. I had the honor of working on the World Famous Jungle Cruise as a Jungle Skipper and as a Pirate at the very popular Pirates of the Caribbean. The Haunted Mansion would have been next on my list, but opportunities arose that took me away from that area before I could enlist as a Maid in service to Master Gracey.
In case you were wondering, the other attractions of the area are the Liberty Belle Riverboat, the Hall of Presidents (the HOP), and ATT which stands for Aladdin/Tiki/Treehouse. Due to their minimal staffing needs, The Magic Carpets of Aladdin, the Enchanted Tiki Room, and the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse are grouped together as one attraction.
While I may not have worked the Mansion, I have been backstage in some of the more infamous locations during my Cast Member days. During a wonderful backstage tour, I was escorted into the ball room scene where the animatronics that create the Pepper’s Ghost effect are located.
On October 1, 1971 the Haunted Mansion welcomed its first batch of “Foolish Mortals” as an opening day attraction at the Magic Kingdom. For forty-six years approximately 27,000 guests have made their way through the gates on a daily basis. Residing in Liberty Square, the Haunted Mansion is set in Colonial America in an age before indoor plumbing. The crumbling façade suggests not all is as it should be inside the stately manor.
Before the addition of Fastpass+ the Haunted Mansion only offered a stand-by line, but with two queues. To the right was a direct approach to the foyer, and to the left was an extended, interactive queue through the Graveyard. Now the interactive queue is the Stand-by line and the more direct route is reserved for Fastpass+. While utilizing a Fastpass does drastically reduce the wait time it also skips over quite a bit of atmosphere and lore that the Haunted Mansion’s queue area explores in detail. Of course, no matter which line they are in, guests will pass a black hearse being pulled by a ghostly steed.
While a great many people stop for a photo with the hearse, it is rare that they look closely at the busts just beyond, to the right of the queue. The busts are sheltered in a small, bricked area where they can be inspected and touched by any who pass by. The busts themselves are of the Dread Family, supposed former residents of the Mansion, but more importantly, they and the clues hidden about them form a murder mystery! A close look at the statues will reveal clues as to who killed who, and how they died. I actually had no idea this existed until Jay was showing our friend Doug during his visit back in April.
If your next visit to the Mansion is some time away, never fear, I’ve got all the photos you need to solve this mystery yourself! Plus, a fantastic video with the solution if I do say so myself.
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Past the busts of our dear dead Dreads is the interactive graveyard. There’s no puzzle to solve here, but there are Hidden Mickeys to find and buttons to push, causing musical outbursts of a particularly fitting theme. Additionally, there’s an interactive Poetess preoccupied with her ghost-writing, eliciting the guests to help her finish simple rhyming schemes. A careful eye in the graveyard can spot a ring – often rumored to be an engagement or wedding ring tossed from the higher windows of the storm-wrought Mansion. Additionally, sharp-eyed guests may spot foot-prints of both man and beast – the caretaker’s heels and the paw-prints of his loyal hound, journeying around the corner and up into sights unseen.
Once guests are through the graveyard they find themselves at the Servant’s Entrance to Gracey Manor. The doors open with a flourish, and a butler or maid brings some sixty odd people into the Foyer. It is here that the Ghost Host begins to speak. The portrait on the wall appears to be of a young man, often thought to be Master Gracey (though interestingly enough, that has never been officially confirmed by Disney.) The painting begins to change and he rapidly ages into an old man, leaving almost naught but a skeleton. Most guests are in such a hurry, or struggling to adjust to the low-light conditions, that they never take a moment to look at the aging portrait. On that portrait in the foyer there is something rarer than a Hidden Mickey: there is a Hidden Jack Skellington on the man’s forehead. The guests to this Haunted Mansion then move into what is commonly referred to as the “Stretching Room.” In truth, it’s a portrait gallery, and the nomenclature of ‘stretching’ is given to us by the Ghost Host himself. The Stretch Room is what every Haunted Mansion Cast Member dreams of, the moment when they get to say, “Please step into the –dead- center of the room.”
While it is so much more enjoyable to ride such a ghastly attraction than to depict it step by step in text, there are some fascinating things to keep an eye out for in the shadowed halls that follow: a looming black bird, a massive raven with glowing red eyes that seems to follow guests around the twisting corridors of the Mansion itself – and even greets them in the graveyard beyond those musty, cobwebbed halls. Some of the original conceptual design for the Mansion had the raven as a sort of savior, advising guests how to survive the Mansion itself – and still in other versions, he was to be the personification of the Ghost Host himself. Known among Cast and Mansion fans alike as Lucifer, the raven can be found in almost every scene.
There’s an oddly decorated chair that sits at a corridor of phantasmal hallways, with closed doors and a floating candelabra, that bears a striking resemblance to a particularly fowl friend of Mickey’s, one of the only Hidden Donalds on property.
In the room with the never-ending stairs there are footsteps that move slowly about the room – defying any sort of sanity or gravity. Pay attention, and you’ll realize there’s ghosts walking up those stairs to delicately blow out the candles held to the banisters by wrought iron sconces and candelabras.
In the Attic, you’ll find a controversial figure-the ghost of an axe-wielding black widow, who had a penchant for ending her husband’s lives – and their need for headwear or neckties! Known affectionately simply as “the Bride”, this ghost has in recent years been given a much more intricate backstory and name – that of Constance Hatchaway, and the attic has been re-styled to illustrate her rather wicked hobby. Some who remember the Haunted Manson’s previous incarnations of the Beating Heart Bride ghost have expressed concerns over the new design, preferring instead the fluid, mysterious story that lacked any true detail or name – enjoying the ability to interpret each scene as they wished. However, the Bride has seen several re-workings to her model and her attic – and as a remembrance to those imaginings in the past, the steady thump-thump of a heart-beat can still be heard when entering the attic, a lovely tribute to a past time.
There are two residents of the Haunted Mansion that are neither ghosts nor ravens, the Caretaker and his dog. Remember their footprints from outside? They have made their way into the graveyard scene. Disney is somewhat infamous for their recycling of animatronics, a close look at the Caretakers face will reveal a striking similarity to the last man on the Jungle Cruise’s totem pole trying to avoid getting the “point in the end” from the rhino.
The last bit of advice to pay careful attention to is the matter of Hitchhiking Ghosts! While they’ve always been prankful and spry spirits, with fun threats of ‘following you home’ as you leave the Mansion, these days they’re quite active as they hop around the doom buggy. They have a variety of tricks to play on the living, from swapping of heads to the chiseling of gravestones with the very names of the guests passing by! It seems the ghosts at the Haunted Mansion have learned a thing or two by examining some of the personalized Magic Bands that have been passing through so recently!
For many avid fans of the Haunted Mansion, none of this is new information. There are always new things to discover however, as we only found the dog’s paw prints a few months ago ourselves. For the average Disney fan, I hope this gives you some new fun details to hunt for the next time you visit this ghostly retreat.
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