Ride Backstory and Continuity

[Steel City Magic]

Just curious, and wanted an opinion. With all the stories and movies out already, what is considered disney canon when it comes to backstory, especially for the rides. Some stories downright contradict others. Personally I get a kick out of the magic kindoms comics, and the S.E.A. continuity but it seems disney is quickly working themselves into continuity problems. One of the reasons I love original disney rides are the incredible fabricated backstories. It seems they're quickly working themselves into an almost Marvel alternate timeline/reality situation though. Seems rather than flesh out stories, every 10 years they completely rework them. Thoughts?

 

[Matt_Black]

Examples? Do you mean like for the individual rides, or how they relate into the context of each other?

 

[Steel City Magic]

Both actually. I mean, when it comes to the new comics, there's an old sea captain that put the whole hauted mansion under a spell, the new hm in disneyland, diferent than the (horrible eddie murphy) movie or the narration of hm. Then there's the s.e.a. thunder mountain, comic book, and original story...

 

[Matt_Black]

Adaptations, at least in my view, don't count unless elements of those adaptations get incorporated into the rides. Otherwise, Steve Gutenberg is officially part of the backstory of Tower of Terror, and that's more horrifying than any trip to the Fifth Dimension!

 

[Steel City Magic]

You're going to hate me but I liked the Gutenberg movie... mainly because it was the 90s and I had a Kirsten Dunst fixation at that point...

 

[Magenta Panther]

Both actually. I mean, when it comes to the new comics, there's an old sea captain that put the whole hauted mansion under a spell, the new hm in disneyland, diferent than the (horrible eddie murphy) movie or the narration of hm. Then there's the s.e.a. thunder mountain, comic book, and original story...

I don't think the Mansion has an official backstory (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I think it's just a mashup of classic haunted house ideas. Here's an excellent article about the history of the Haunted Mansion and its brilliant imperfectionism. It features the wonderful Rolly Crump, who helped develop the attraction. Be warned, here be spoilers: http://kotaku.com/disneys-haunted-mansion-is-a-terrific-mess-1773263620

And here's an excerpt: The Haunted Mansion’s creation was notoriously tortured. Disney’s developers spent over 10 years creating ideas before settling on the final vision. Even that was a product of hard compromise. There were too many great ideas, and many of them live on through preliminary sketches and concept art. One potential storyline for the Mansion climaxed with a Headless Horseman. Another story treatment, according to Surrell, told the dark story of Captain Gore, who murdered his bride in cold blood and bricked her up in a cellar wall.

I remember reading about the Captain Gore idea in Rolly Crump's excellent book "It's Kind Of A Cute Story". It's worth checking out, if you're interested.

 

[The Empress Lilly]

Backstories are mainly nineties and beyond. (And yawn-inducing!)

As for their rules, I don't think Disney has many? They seem to slap some story on at will, when convenient. Thereby immediately depriving their backstories of their main function: to provide deep coherence.

 

[JIMINYCR]

Backstories are mainly nineties and beyond. (And yawn-inducing!)

As for their rules, I don't think Disney has many? They seem to slap some story on at will, when convenient. Thereby immediately depriving their backstories of their main function: to provide deep coherence.

And its hard to have continuity when the CM's are telling variable details to the story when guests inquire.

 

[Bairstow]

Adaptations, at least in my view, don't count unless elements of those adaptations get incorporated into the rides.

When has this ever improved an attraction?
Personally I'm more satisfied by the gaps in a story intentionally left by its original creators. Good stories are most often defined by what the audience isn't told. This is especially true of a certain school of thought pertaining to park attractions, where the rider is meant to be the main character in their own narrative.

That's one of the reasons I'm not sure rides like Pirates or Star Tours have been enhanced by adding more familiar characters to them. These attractions were always intended to be more immersive experiences rather than narrative exercises. This is why there's a fundamental difference in the approaches taken by the Haunted Mansion and Phantom Manor.

One's not necessarily better or older than the other- narrative rides like Peter Pan are at least as old as Disney Parks themselves, but changing an attraction from one to the other alters its character completely.

 

[Matt_Black]

There's one little thing on the People Mover narration I like- to explain things like Monsters Inc., they say that Monstropolis is leasing out the Tomorrowland Trade Center, or whatever they call it.

 

[AndrewsJ]

I don't think the Mansion has an official backstory (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I think it's just a mashup of classic haunted house ideas. Here's an excellent article about the history of the Haunted Mansion and its brilliant imperfectionism. It features the wonderful Rolly Crump, who helped develop the attraction. Be warned, here be spoilers: http://kotaku.com/disneys-haunted-mansion-is-a-terrific-mess-1773263620

And here's an excerpt: The Haunted Mansion’s creation was notoriously tortured. Disney’s developers spent over 10 years creating ideas before settling on the final vision. Even that was a product of hard compromise. There were too many great ideas, and many of them live on through preliminary sketches and concept art. One potential storyline for the Mansion climaxed with a Headless Horseman. Another story treatment, according to Surrell, told the dark story of Captain Gore, who murdered his bride in cold blood and bricked her up in a cellar wall.

I remember reading about the Captain Gore idea in Rolly Crump's excellent book "It's Kind Of A Cute Story". It's worth checking out, if you're interested.

The guy that runs doom buggies and is also a host of the Moustalgia podcast has a lot of good info on the HM. Like you said some of the back story is fan or CM fiction. He did point out that the tightrope girl has been referred to by a few different names from official Dianey info. He has written a few books about the mansion and has done art that is actually used by Disney. He recently wrote a 3000 word essay about the HM and is narrating it on a new podcast called Storied. It's worth a listen for HM fans. As far as the comics go, I have them all but haven't read them. I did read Seekers of the Weird that was based on the works of Rolly Crump.

 

[Steel City Magic]

I don't think the Mansion has an official backstory (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I think it's just a mashup of classic haunted house ideas. Here's an excellent article about the history of the Haunted Mansion and its brilliant imperfectionism. It features the wonderful Rolly Crump, who helped develop the attraction. Be warned, here be spoilers: http://kotaku.com/disneys-haunted-mansion-is-a-terrific-mess-1773263620

And here's an excerpt: The Haunted Mansion’s creation was notoriously tortured. Disney’s developers spent over 10 years creating ideas before settling on the final vision. Even that was a product of hard compromise. There were too many great ideas, and many of them live on through preliminary sketches and concept art. One potential storyline for the Mansion climaxed with a Headless Horseman. Another story treatment, according to Surrell, told the dark story of Captain Gore, who murdered his bride in cold blood and bricked her up in a cellar wall.

I remember reading about the Captain Gore idea in Rolly Crump's excellent book "It's Kind Of A Cute Story". It's worth checking out, if you're interested.

I always took the 63' lp as a jumping off point for the HM backstory, that and there's quite a bit of backstory on the bride and mr Gracey...
I agree about pirates though. I like a good backstory to flesh out a ride narrative (Tokyo ToT) not fundamentally change it (Pirates)
Also what I found interesting was that those disney kingdom comics aim is to not only create some kind of backstory but create a cohesive 'world' where everything plays nice woth everything else. Now I know everything doesn't have to be interconnected, but I love making the connections. It's half the fun. (A picture of lord hightower in the SEA group photo in the old adventurers club for instance)

 

[WDW Zandt]

I could be remembering this wrong, but if you search this forum for Eddie Sotto you will find two huge threads where somewhere buried in them he talks about trying to have a cohesive story between pirates and the haunted mansion and I even think Tom Sawyers island was involved as well but like I said, its been awhile since those topics.