TP2000
Well-Known Member
Wow, what a blast from the past! I asked Jim to move me from the Whiskey Sour he's so good at to just a simple Drambuie served straight up for this one....
The Haunted Mansion facade we know today was built in Disneyland over the winter of 1962 and 1963, so that by the spring of 1963 it looked like this in the park, with nothing of any substance behind it and no operating ride system ready to go.
But by early 1963 when this facade was completed the basic plan was still to use the Sam McKim concept of using elevators to lower groups of customers down to a lower level to begin a guided tour by a Haunted Mansion butler or chambermaid. Apparentely at D23 Expo in a few weeks they are going to expand on the late 1950's to early 1960's plans for the "Haunted Mansion" walk-thru attraction at Disneyland.
This facade, the "mansion" we still know today, sat there for six years. They abandoned the development of this ride by the spring of 1963 as Walt directed his Imagineers to focus all their energy and attention on the pavilions for the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, since the pavilions were being paid for by deep pocketed companies and governments; Ford, General Electric, State of Illinois, Pepsi-Cola. They also abandoned plans for the walk-thru Pirates wax museum for the same area.
Here's an aerial photo from January, 1964. The completed Haunted Mansion facade is seen here as it was completed almost a year before, plus the basement level excavation for the Pirates wax museum that was also abandoned by this time. All of this sat abandoned until later in 1965 when construction resumed after the wax museum walk-thru became a boat ride-thru based on the Pepsi-Cola Small World boat ride for the World's Fair. And the wax figures became moving animatronics.
By the time construction resumed in 1965, the excavated area shown here that was supposed to be the entire wax museum walk-thru became simply the opening acts of the boat ride as the Blue Bayou, plus all the shops and restaurants of New Orleans Square. The rest of the boat ride we now know as Pirates of the Caribbean was built in a second warehouse beyond the berm later in 1965.
By the time work got going again on the Haunted Mansion later in the 1960's, WDI had learned all sorts of lesson on moving people through shows. Instead of using maids and butlers to personally lead a few hundred customers per hour on a walking tour of a haunted mansion, WDI had created ride systems like the Omnimover that could move over 2,000 customers per hour through this show. The ride changed, but the exterior facade on the edge of New Orleans Square stayed the same.
Interestingly, when I just Googled this 20th Century Haunted Mansion topic to get that photo above, Google showed me there's a Haunted Mansion CM uniform from the 20th century for sale on Ebay. Those vintage "Disneyland - Anaheim, California - Made In U.S.A." tags on this uniform alone are worth a fortune! Too cool! https://www.ebay.com/itm/Disneyland...582184?hash=item4b689bb568:g:VjsAAOSwzkRdSNTR
I have half a mind to bid on that. I'd ask Jim for his opinion, but he thinks we're all weird to focus so much on Disneyland.
The ride as we know it, The Haunted Mansion, opened on August 12th, 1969. Almost 50 years ago this week. By then the exterior facade seen from inside Disneyland had remained the same since 1963, but the ride system and show inside had been radically changed after the knowledge gained from operating big pavilions at the World's Fair five years earlier.
Happy 50th Anniversary, Haunted Mansion!
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