HBG2
Member
One of the most important points about the ghostly manipulations and poltergeist activity inside the HM is that you can't be sure if it's "really there" or a product of your imagination. They're messing with your head. This is explicitly put before you: Is this haunted room actually stretching, or is it your imagination?You make a good analysis in your post and on the blog. Fascinating stuff.
I believe that the interactive queue works for the same reasons you think it doesn't. Why should the ghostly distortions be limited to the inside of the mansion? I think what you now see in the queue are the same type of ghostly tricks in the Stretching Room paintings that you reference in the link I bolded. What you see in the queue could also be the result of ghostly manipulation. Why should the new crypts be taken literally, but the Stretching Room portraits should not? In keeping with the mythology of the attraction, the ghosts have not materialized at this point in our experience, and the fact that they won't materialize until the seance is performed and the sympathetic vibrations received is still intact. Is it necessary to witness the metamorphosis to communicate the ghostly deception? I don't think so. The new queue, in my opinion, actually adds another layer to the experience that was already there. The guest happens upon this bizarre graveyard where, unbeknownst to him, the metamorphosis has already occurred. He feels, but can't quite place, the presence of the otherworldly. It's so surreal - am I imagining this? Once inside, the guest for the first time witnesses the disquieting metamorphosis, but you still wonder whether your mind is playing tricks on you, which is compounded by the Ghost Host's eerie question: "Is this haunted room actually stretching, or is it your imagination?"
Granted, this illusion is slightly breached by the poetess that talks to you. If they had kept her silent and given a more tangible payoff (e.g. a wind gust) for finishing the poem, it would be more effective. The constant playing of the instruments is less destructive of the illusion, but putting these effects on a delay timer like the ceiling drop in the Indiana Jones Adventure might be a good improvement.
Overall, I believe this is a great plussing to the Haunted Mansion. That's just my humble opinion, and I'm eager to hear more of what you (and Eddie too!) have to say about it.
The queue blatantly answers this question in advance: it's not your imagination. It's really there. Bang, the mystery is solved before it begins. Way to go, Mr. Carsillo.
You ask, why should the queue manifestations be taken literally? Because you can put your hands right on them, see them, hear them, touch them. If you stood close enough to the bookcase, these manifestations would literally bang you in the head! Seriously, if you wanted to make it absolutely certain that they be taken literally, could you do any more than what they do?
I've decided I need to discuss the "world of the HM" at my blog, since I've been throwing that phrase around so much, and it's so unclear to so many what it means. My fault there. But actually, this whole thing can be put in a nutshell.
The world of the HM is simply our world, the real world, except that in the HM world, ghosts are real. The main character in the story is you. The "story" is simply you going through a haunted house in real time. Oh, you learn a little history about the house in the process, a sketchy backstory, but the story is you in a haunted house, and nothing more.
With the new queue, the world in which the ghosts are real (a fiction) is no longer our world, the real world; rather, it too is fictional. So the whole thing is now a show, and you are not really a character in it but only a spectator to the show. It's fun in that you get to walk around in that world a little, but with the new queue taken into the whole, the environment in which you find the ghosts is manifestly just as fictional as they are. And since you do not live in such a world, you are no longer the main character.
In a nutshell:
HM world until now: Depiction of your world, except ghosts are real
WDW HM world now: Depiction of a fictional world, in which ghosts are real