![]() “So let’s see what can we do during these other months to try to reinvigorate this area,” Hobbs adds. ![]() “That’s what Kim and I were saying - the only time this area comes alive is during the holidays,” says Imagineering’s Hobbs, who is stationed in Anaheim and works closely with Kim Irvine, Disneyland’s longtime art director and the daughter of Leota Toombs, one of the first women to work for Imagineering and the portrayer of Madame Leota, whose disembodied head floats in a crystal ball in the Haunted Mansion’s séance room. The changes were partly inspired by the black-lighted colors and characters that populate the space during the Haunted Mansion’s “Nightmare Before Christmas” holiday makeover. Now, they will see a mysterious door, the re-imagined artwork and the devil cat. In the past, once guests rounded the corner, they were fixated on boarding the ride. ![]() Imagineering has now extended the portrait hallway, placing a remade version of Davis’ art around a bend - past the illusion of the busts watching guests. Hobbs says that at the time, the painting’s gradual four-scene change didn’t work with a technological update to the ride that created crisper, more instantaneous two-slide transformations. Davis’ “April to December” painting, in which a gorgeous woman slowly transforms into jagged bones and aged flesh, was removed from the Haunted Mansion’s portrait hallway at Disneyland in the mid-2000s. Here, resurrected, is a portrait from Davis, the Disney legend who designed such characters as Snow White, Tinker Bell and Maleficent, as well as the creative force behind the look of many of the animation-inspired vignettes of the park’s foundational rides. “It’s definitely something that we’re thinking about.”įor the Haunted Mansion, expect lighter touches throughout, rather than a sweeping show scene or a removal of any set pieces. “It’s been discussed for sure,” says Disney’s Michele Hobbs, who managed the Haunted Mansion refurbishment. Recently, there have been calls for removal of a hanging scene in the Haunted Mansion, noting its association with suicide and lynchings.ĭisney has heard those complaints, but for now, the scene will remain unchanged. Splash Mountain, for instance, will be rethemed to “The Princess and the Frog” in an effort to remove its connection to the racist film “Song of the South.” The Jungle Cruise is receiving multiple enhancements to strike its offensive portrayal of Indigenous people. In the last year, Disney has announced multiple changes and upgrades to its rides, many designed to bring the attractions in line with modern cultural sensibilities. As part of a pre-pandemic plan to tidy up effects and give the Mansion a much needed cleaning, Walt Disney Imagineering - the secretive arm of the company responsible for theme park experiences - has also found a way to squeeze in an extra scene, in a nook just before guests board the ride’s “doombuggies.” Both inside and outside the Mansion, Disney creatives aim to gently deepen the mystery of the ride. Discarded eventually - a raven essentially fills a similar role - the cat, which will now be represented as an elegant statue, stands as a reminder that the Haunted Mansion was once envisioned more as a walk between the hair-raising and the humorous.īeyond the cat figurine, there are many other additions for guests to spot, from floating chairs to puzzling dollhouses. Sometimes we’d see the cat as simply an eye in the darkness other times, there would be allusions that this phantom was on the prowl for a spirit to possess. In a nod to Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Black Cat,” it had just one eyeball, which sat in its socket with all the subtlety of a fire alarm. In Atencio’s concept art, the cat featured elongated, vampire-like fangs and a piercing red eye. ![]() This fiendish feline would have followed guests throughout the ride, a creature said to despise living humans and with predatory, possessive instincts. There’s also a not-so sly nod to a demonic, eye-catching cat crafted by another of Disney’s famed animators-turned-theme park architects, Xavier Atencio. Recently materialized in the attraction are a smattering of new illusions and curiosities a few will be particularly familiar to many of the Haunted Mansion’s borderline-obsessive fan community.Īmong the most prominent: the return of a dynamic portrait dreamed up by Disney master animator-designer Marc Davis of a once-beautiful woman aging less than gracefully. When it returns with upgrades and additions April 30 - the day Disneyland is set to fully reopen in Anaheim - it should prove the old adage that a good idea doesn’t die so much as haunt the universe until it becomes a reality. Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion has been a source of fan mystique for even longer than its nearly 52 years at the park.
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