News New Haunted Mansion Grounds Expansion, Retail Shop Coming to Disneyland Resort in 2024

[LittleBuford]

Except that, trouble is, more often than not, when a problematic (or "problematic", as the case may be) element of the parks has been identified and changed, infantilization has been the result. So in effect, if you are rooting for such a change, you are endorsing the infantilization of the parks.

I think the suicide depiction is a product of generalized societal differences. Watch enough older films, Looney Tunes, etc. and you'll see that society used to be much cavalier about suicide, and more inclined to treat it as situation that could be mined for comedy. Obviously societal understanding has changed, but I think that accounts for the scene's inclusion and very much makes it a product of its time. It would not have been done the same way had the ride been built new today.

That said, I bristle at the notion that just because things don't precisely meet our present level of morality that we should immediately change them. That's a losing battle, and one that's likely to level the parks of anything interesting sooner than it would make everyone happy about the park's perceived level of morality in its attractions.

I haven’t identified it as problematic, nor have I framed my comments in terms of “our present level of morality”. And, as I’ve stated twice already, I’m not rooting for a change.

The problem with such discussions is that, no matter how precisely you try to express yourself, people assume you’re saying something more than you are. I’ve been about as clear as I can be, but I can see my words aren’t being understood as intended, so I think I’ll extricate myself from this exchange now.

 

[LittleBuford]

What is "something that does not fit the needs of today's family audiences" if it is NOT problematic?

I never expressed such a sentiment, much less used those words, so I’m not sure why you’re presenting them as a quotation. On the contrary, I’ve stated quite clearly that the suicide depiction strikes me as surprising and anomalous even by the standards of the time in which it was installed.

And that really is the last thing I’ll say as part of this particular exchange. I can’t offer any further clarifications without repeating myself (which I’ve done already).

 

[Animaniac93-98]

So seeing death depicted in such a manner in a Haunted House isn't terribly out of step with ANY HH attraction and, more credibly than anything else, adds tension to the HM experience. Tension that, again, is inherently part of ANY HAUNTED HOUSE ATTRACTION TO FUNCTION EFFECTIVELY. The sign out front told us so. This isn't Peter Pan's Flight, it's the Haunted Mansion. Scary or unsettling things are likely to be encountered.

Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, specifically, is supposed to be scary and unsettling until you get to the big party. The hanging man works because you see him so early, establishing the uneasy tone. It wouldn't work later on in the ride.

Also, Walt's favorite stretching portrait was the about the lady who kills her husband. He got the dark humor early on.

 

[yensidtlaw1969]

The loading area is the worst thing about Disneyland's Haunted Mansion.

Maybe it worked better when it was darker, but I think it's telling no other version of the ride attempted the black void.

Now it just looks like a big empty room and ruins the idea that you're in an actual house.

Back in the day, before it was flooded with light, the Disneyland Load Area was chilling. It was filled with more webs, fewer candelabras, and it was DARK. To me it was one of the most dramatic and impactful scenes in the Disneyland Mansion, if you can believe it.

The darkness was impenetrable - I recall truly being unsure if the walls were just out of reach or 100 yards away. The Doombuggies appeared to materialize out of thin air as they swirled around the staircase onto the load belt . . . to such a degree that I thought it was a genuine illusion. In actuality it was just that dark. The first time I visited DL after the lights had been brought up in the Load area I was SHOCKED by how big the room actually was - prior to that it felt endless, but I had assumed it was also a trick and that the room was much smaller than it actually is.

That said, the DL Load has historically had issues with people tripping and/or struggling to board. The darkness was stunning and deliciously illogical, but it also verged on non-functional. WDW, Tokyo, and DLP have managed to solve that issue with varying degrees of artistic success, but DL has largely just introduced more lights at the expense of the scene. Much as I'd love to see them restore the original design, at this point they need to give us something better to see if they aren't going to shroud the walls in darkness.

No idea yet if this is something they're planning on touching while the ride is down for this coming refurb, but the alterations made in 2021 show that WDI is aware the space isn't working.

 

[zipadee999]

Back in the day, before it was flooded with light, the Disneyland Load Area was chilling. It was filled with more webs, fewer candelabras, and it was DARK. To me it was one of the most dramatic and impactful scenes in the Disneyland Mansion, if you can believe it.

The darkness was impenetrable - I recall truly being unsure if the walls were just out of reach or 100 yards away. The Doombuggies appeared to materialize out of thin air as they swirled around the staircase onto the load belt . . . to such a degree that I thought it was a genuine illusion. In actuality it was just that dark. The first time I visited DL after the lights had been brought up in the Load area I was SHOCKED by how big the room actually was - prior to that it felt endless, but I had assumed it was also a trick and that the room was much smaller than it actually is.

That said, the DL Load has historically had issues with people tripping and/or struggling to board. The darkness was stunning and deliciously illogical, but it also verged on non-functional. WDW, Tokyo, and DLP have managed to solve that issue with varying degrees of artistic success, but DL has largely just introduced more lights at the expense of the scene. Much as I'd love to see them restore the original design, at this point they need to give us something better to see if they aren't going to shroud the walls in darkness.

No idea yet if this is something they're planning on touching while the ride is down for this coming refurb, but the alterations made in 2021 show that WDI is aware the space isn't working.

Agreed, lots of people seem to disregard the DL load area as just an ‘empty room,’ but as it was intended, the ‘boundless realm of the supernatural’ can be very impactful. I think the weak link for load areas is the WDW/Tokyo version, especially Tokyo because it lacks the sinister eleven portraits. For guests waiting in line for upwards of an hour, the load area should be a grand display that lets the guests know ‘you made it!’ The Florida load area is just a small, empty room with a low, boring ceiling. There’s no centerpiece, scale, anything of impact, just a cramped, boring room. Empty load areas can work, as evidenced by the DL version, but there needs to be some scale or impact. The Florida load area feels like someone took the vast DL load area or even the Paris version, and enclosed the guest space in a small, tight box!

 

[Mickey's Pal]

Fair enough. I personally don’t mind it, but I do find it a very strange thing to have in a park that’s meant to be child-friendly. Depictions of suicide aren’t typically what one associates with a Disney theme park.

1. Kids can handle complex themes and emotions. It is good for kids to be scared.
2. It is never confirmed it was suicide. It is just a body hanging. Anyone could have hanged him. 'There is always my way'could mean the ghosts hanged him or a mob hanged him. Either way it is appropriate for the attraction and for the park.
3. You can just take it at face value that "there's always my way" means the only way out is if you die. Which sets the tone and the mood for the first half of the ride. It says 'take all this ghost stuff seriously' then in the 2nd half the ghosts materialize and we realize they are a fun bunch that do not want to hurt us but just party. Set up and payoff. It works. It balances the ride out.

 

[LittleBuford]

1. Kids can handle complex themes and emotions. It is good for kids to be scared.
2. It is never confirmed it was suicide. It is just a body hanging. Anyone could have hanged him. 'There is always my way'could mean the ghosts hanged him or a mob hanged him. Either way it is appropriate for the attraction and for the park.

1. I really wish people would stop attributing sentiments to me that I haven’t expressed. I’m not saying it will scare kids; most people probably never even notice the figure. I’m merely saying that its presence seems, to me at least, surprising and bemusing in the context of a Disney theme park. To offer another (milder) example, the line “All the guys that turn me on turn me down” in my beloved CBJ is also something I’ve always found very unexpected, even as “Mama, don’t whip Little Buford, I think you should shoot him instead” seems perfectly unexceptional to me. We’re all surprised by certain things; it doesn’t mean we’re opposed to them or calling for them to be changed.

2. It is confirmed in the LP, which includes a raven cawing, “He chose the coward's way out.”

 

[Mickey's Pal]

1. I really wish people would stop attributing sentiments to me that I haven’t expressed. I’m not saying it will scare kids; most people probably never even notice the figure. I’m merely saying that its presence seems, to me at least, surprising and bemusing in the context of a Disney theme park. To offer another (milder) example, the line “All the guys that turn me on turn me down” in my beloved CBJ is also something I’ve always found very unexpected, even as “Mama, don’t whip Little Buford, I think you should shoot him instead” seems perfectly unexceptional to me. We’re all surprised by certain things; it doesn’t mean we’re opposed to them or calling for them to be changed.

2. It is confirmed in the LP, which includes a raven cawing, “He chose the coward's way out.”

1. Dude you literally brought up the subject with how you are surprised a hanging is in a family friendly ride as if it should not be there. If you didn't feel that way then you wouldn't have brought it up in the first place. You keep hammering that point in subsequent replies that you are shocked its there and would not expect it in a modern attraction. My counter point to you is that there is nothing wrong with it at all. Death and being scared of death are good emotions for kids or families to experience and kids and families can handle it even if the ride was built today.
2. No raven on the ride since it has opened talks. I don't care about the LP. Been going on the ride since the 80's and the ride itself never directly says it is suicide.

 

[LittleBuford]

Dude you literally brought up the subject with how you are surprised a hanging is in a family friendly ride as if it should not be there. If you didn't feel that way then you wouldn't have brought it up in the first place.

As my posting history shows, I’m a pretty direct person; if I felt the figure shouldn’t be there, I would say so. I wouldn’t mourn his loss, to be sure, but it doesn’t bother me in the least if he stays.

Again—and I can’t believe this even needs stating—finding something surprising is not the same as wanting it gone. I’m tickled pink every time I hear “All the guys that turn me on turn me down”, in large part because I can’t quite believe that such lyrics are being sung in the Magic Kingdom. The replacement show won’t include anything nearly so risqué, which makes me, personally, very sad, even as I recognise why they’re phasing the old songs out.

The reason I waded into this discussion was to counter the claim that opposition to the hanging figure—which, again, I don’t harbour—is necessarily coming from a place of “political correctness”. It’s enough to acknowledge that some people might simply find such a depiction inappropriately morbid for a family theme park.

 

[celluloid]

Why would you think a ghost who wants to frighten you prematurely ever actually hung himself?

The ghosts do desperate things throughout the ride to suggest grotesque that they probably actually did or didn't do. It is a fine mystery of the macabre.

 

[Mickey's Pal]

This is just shoving your head into the sand.

How so?

 

[Animaniac93-98]

Another thing to remember is that in the years leading up to Haunted Mansion's opening kids and young adults were watching Shock Theater on TV, going to see William Castle, Hammer and Vincent Price horror movies in theaters and reading Famous Monsters of Filmland and creepy horror anthology magazines. Dark Shadows and Scooby Doo were on TV at the time. There were records of scary stories you could buy and so on.

Gothic, macabre scares were part of many kid's regular media diet (and many of those kids would grow up to be film makers)

 

[PiratesMansion]

Why would you think a ghost who wants to frighten you prematurely ever actually hung himself?

The ghosts do desperate things throughout the ride to suggest grotesque that they probably actually did or didn't do. It is a fine mystery of the macabre.

The Ghost Host DID hang himself. That is made clear by the attraction. Not even subtext, but text.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have said there was always HIS way to get out (before going to the body). This is made even more clear in the originally planned version of the scene, where the raven parrots "he took the coward's way out, he took the coward's way out."

 

[celluloid]

The Ghost Host DID hang himself. That is not up for debate.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have said there was always HIS way to get out (before going to the body). This is made even more clear in the originally planned version of the scene, where the raven parrots "he took the coward's way out, he took the coward's way out."

I tend to agree, but we don't really know for sure.
He is incapable of lying or being tricky to put a scare in people? Remember he did it to frighten us, and the lyrics specifically point out they pretend to scare people. There is just as much literature in the ride telling us that it is another gag that gets mortals jumpy. They are all shrouded in a daft disguise, and they pretend to terrorize. We know that things, including the very art on the walls, the ghosts and the mansion itself deceives us.

The entire mansion has things manipulated right before our eyes. It is the boundless realm of the supernatural. It is not like the hanging we see from rafters is possible for a mortal.

 

[Consumer]

The Ghost Host DID hang himself. That is made clear by the attraction. Not even subtext, but text.

Although this is obvious to anybody who knows the Haunted Mansion, does the average guest realize this? Even if they listen to the actual monologue of the Ghost Host, he says "there's always my way out," not "you can always kill yourself."

 

[_caleb]

It is not like the hanging we see from rafters is possible for a mortal.

Huh? Not sure what you mean by this. Isn’t this the scene in question?

 

[Consumer]

Huh? Not sure what you mean by this. Isn’t this the scene in question?

View attachment 760852

Always irked me how the Ghost Host claims there are no windows in the Stretching Room yet clearly there are.

 

[_caleb]

If Disney is considering changing this scene, it may have something to do with this:

And also with this:

Man jumps to his death at Disneyland parking garage; Third incident in less than a year

There have been six suicides since 2010 at the Disneyland parking garages and three since December 2022.

www.ocregister.com

 

[LittleBuford]

Another thing to remember is that in the years leading up to Haunted Mansion's opening kids and young adults were watching Shock Theater on TV, going to see William Castle, Hammer and Vincent Price horror movies in theaters and reading Famous Monsters of Filmland and creepy horror anthology magazines. Dark Shadows and Scooby Doo were on TV at the time. There were records of scary stories you could buy and so on.

Gothic, macabre scares were part of many kid's regular media diet (and many of those kids would grow up to be film makers)

Removing the hanging figure (which escapes many people’s notice anyway) would hardly make the ride less gothic and macabre overall.

 

[celluloid]

Yeah

Huh? Not sure what you mean by this. Isn’t this the scene in question?

View attachment 760852

Yeah, forensic level expert mode for someone to be able to hang themself like that.