Sad Haunted Mansion

amazza

Member
Original Poster
I am an avid fan of the forums but this is my first post. I know I will probably get slammed for it...
Don't get me wrong, I love the Haunted Mansion and fully respect the imagineering, creativity, and history. I ride it every time I am at the park. On my last visit early June, the state of the attraction was very bad. We had fastpasses and when we arrived, the ride was shutdown. Once it opened, the fastpass line was about 3 times as long as the standby line. The line moved ahead quickly and we were soon through to the stretching room.

I've seen other posts recently about the lighting/darkness. The ride was extremely dark and in some places the details of the attraction were not even visible. The "eyes" in the hallway wallpaper were not visible. Was the lighting dimmed to hide ride defects? I felt like we were just riding through without any theming or entertainment. Perhaps it is just me, but I do not find anything comical or scary about the never-ending hallway with the floating candle.

The seance room had the stationary Leota and I think the effect works well. The overall ride music was much lower which made this room a little more eerie and enjoyable.The banquet hall seemed to be as usual.

The most disappointing part of the ride was the graveyard scene. The opera singer was moving but had no sound. There were no popping-up ghost heads. The lighting in this room was terrible. You could see all of the armature under the ghosts as well as the cellophane-like material used for their effect. They were not lit properly which destroyed the original intention.

The hitch-hiking ghosts were okay, but the feature where your head switches or one of the ghosts joins your doom-buggy was a little off. They were not positioned correctly when viewing them.

Has there been any discussion around giving this attraction some love? I know that originally the attraction was a combination of both the humor and spooky effects of two imagineers but it needs a more cohesive story. Some of the effects are timeless and should remain but with today's technology, I have to believe that better effects could be designed for some of the areas throughout the mansion. At a minimum...the effects that are present today should be functioning properly.
 

TheGhostWithTheMost

Well-Known Member
The current managment team just doesn't care. And it's because the managment team above them tells them that they can't care. I've seen Mansion open when Mansion would have NEVER been allowed to be open ten years ago. They've had Mansion open with half the speakers in the stretch room not working, they've had it open with almost NONE of the speakers in the stretch room working.... heck... they used to allow people to funnel through the stretch rooms with both sets of doors continually open. Show is not one of the "four keys" at WDW. The four keys are "efficiency, efficiency, efficiency, and state mandated break time." It's sad but no one in charge cares about the quality of the attractions as long as the attractions make their hourly "numbers." It's not in-park managers who are to blame... it's the park culture that those managers have been brought up to serve.
 

Brad Bishop

Well-Known Member
Did you ride it in the middle of the day?

I'm not disputing parts not working but if everything seemed dimmer then you may have gone in when your eyes were dilated for FL sunshine and didn't adjust until you left the ride (it's happened to me).

One light being out? Yeah - I can see that. Whole sections not being lit in different parts of the ride? I think it's the sunshine/dilation issue.
 

amazza

Member
Original Poster
Late afternoon, during/after a rain shower, so it was gloomy and gray outside. The lighting in the seance and banquet rooms was fine, it was the other areas that did not seem as they should be.
 

Hakunamatata

Le Meh
Premium Member
We were there first of June. Rode it at least a half dozen times. It was down one morning same time as 7D and im sure tons of people tried to use their multi experience fast pass for it. FP lines in general were ridiculous long for many attractions.

Popping heads only were not working once for us. Didnt notice lighting issues or opera singer defect. Scrims do need cleaning or replacing since some dont have respect for anything anymore and throw gum and other stuff on them.
 

HauntedPirate

Park nostalgist
Premium Member
The current managment team just doesn't care. And it's because the managment team above them tells them that they can't care. I've seen Mansion open when Mansion would have NEVER been allowed to be open ten years ago. They've had Mansion open with half the speakers in the stretch room not working, they've had it open with almost NONE of the speakers in the stretch room working.... heck... they used to allow people to funnel through the stretch rooms with both sets of doors continually open. Show is not one of the "four keys" at WDW. The four keys are "efficiency, efficiency, efficiency, and state mandated break time." It's sad but no one in charge cares about the quality of the attractions as long as the attractions make their hourly "numbers." It's not in-park managers who are to blame... it's the park culture that those managers have been brought up to serve.

I thought the new four keys were, "Per guest spending, profit margin, cost containment, and bonuses". The only time efficiency comes into play is when it drops and negatively impacts one of those.

The interior of HM definitely needs some TLC. And those guests that find it funny to throw/spit at the scrims infuriate me as well.
 

G8rchamps

Well-Known Member
Show is not one of the "four keys" at WDW

Still one of my favorites for tradition, but I have a few observations as well:
Why rush through the first 2 rooms to get stuck into the queue of the doom buggys- esp the first room- we never get to hear the whole thing.
The new hitch hikers ore good when they work, but they rarely line up. Better than at first, but not an A+ bu any stretch.
I think they have sped up the speed too for traffic. The scenes fly by now. They want to get you through so you can..

Hurry back...
 

TheGhostWithTheMost

Well-Known Member
The cars go faster than they did in the 1970's, that's true! They also used to only stop the ride for wheelchairs/disabled guests once every hour (or once every thirty minutes.. I forget). Now, they stop the ride every time it is needed... Has anyone even ridden Mansion in the last five years and not had the ride stopped at least twice a ride because of this? There is no show... If there was show quality, people wouldn't be in the gift shops at much. It's about how many mickey dolls they sell and hourly cattle-herding-like numbers... and that's IT.
 

TheGhostWithTheMost

Well-Known Member
It's either stopped somewhere or started to go really slow, every time
The buggies go faster than they originally did but you're more likely to have a longer ride than you did in 1971 (or 2001, for that matter) due to the CONSTANT stopping and slowing of the ride. The annoyance of it is mighty made even more so by the barrage of highly capable people who rent EVCs/chairs because they still think it will get their entitled and useless bodies onto rides faster. Remember how many wheelchairs/scooters you saw at Disney World before around 2005 and compare that to how many you see now.... either the population of adults 40 and up is getting more and more disabled than they used to get or more and more entitled...
 

Kman101

Well-Known Member
The buggies go faster than they originally did but you're more likely to have a longer ride than you did in 1971 (or 2001, for that matter) due to the CONSTANT stopping and slowing of the ride. The annoyance of it is mighty made even more so by the barrage of highly capable people who rent EVCs/chairs because they still think it will get their entitled and useless bodies onto rides faster. Remember how many wheelchairs/scooters you saw at Disney World before around 2005 and compare that to how many you see now.... either the population of adults 40 and up is getting more and more disabled than they used to get or more and more entitled...

That's what I mean by going slow, you can tell when an omnimover starts to move at a snails pace because of what you said above, I notice it every time I ride and there's often a stop somewhere. It's not that big of a deal but I was going off your post as noticing it far more than I seem to remember
 

ItlngrlBella

Well-Known Member
Welcome to the forums!

For me with most rides, they were more "magical" when I was a child/teen because I didn't notice the "tricks" and the "how" of some effects. I think many of us canonize rides we remember from our youth and then upon visiting as an adult, we see the "smoke and mirrors" in some spots.

Having said that, Disney is expensive and expectations at Disney rightfully should be high. So when beloved effects aren't working or working sub-par, it's a major let down.

I'm hoping by your (and my) next visit, it has a thorough refurb and some of the magic is back.

Like a few others, the ride needs a good zhuzzing up.
 

alphac2005

Well-Known Member
When we last visited, which was last year, the stretching pictures in one room were damaged with one of the picture frames being torn. The effects seemed pretty spot on, but the scrim was filthy in the graveyard scenes. Having been on the attraction countless times over the years, I was surprised by whatever lighting they had that day as the scrums were very noticeable, which kind of lessens the effect. We'll be going back down in a few months and hopefully they'll have things at a proper working order.
 

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