The Disneyland Book of Secrets 2014: One Local's Unauthorized, Rapturous and Indispensable Guide to the Happiest Places on Earth (93 page)

The voice isn’t
Toombs
’, though; you might recognize it as the intimidating voice of
Eleanor Audley
, who provided the menacing tones for
Cinderella
’s cruel stepmother
Lady Tremaine
in
Disney
’s
Cinderella
in 1950, and beyond-evil fairy
Maleficent
in 1959’s
Sleeping Beauty
.  What people might not realize is that
Eleanor Audley
, while specializing in grand dames and villainesses, could be funny as well as scary, appearing, for example, in episodes of “I Love Lucy” and portraying Mother Douglas on the absurdly funny 1960’s sitcom “Green Acres”.

The séance scene, with its floating, phosphorescent instruments and furniture is a
highly effective set piece.  The lighting, the sound, the effects and the mood are just right, and the history too; the scene is what visitors to a medium in late Victorian or Edwardian America would’ve actually encountered.

The famous escape artist and illusionist Harry Houdini spent much of his career exposing phony mediums and explaining how they performed their parlor tricks.  Phony
psychics bilked thousands of credulous people out of their savings.  But the unsettling thing about the
Haunted Mansion
’s
Séance Circle
is that as you glide through it, the scene feels disturbingly real.

According to the
Ghost Host
,
Madame Leota
’s spell has worked its magic:

The happy haunts have received your sympathetic vibrations

and are beginning to materialize.

They’re assembling for a swinging wake,

and they’ll be expecting me.

I’ll see you all a little later.

Now Guests’
Doom Buggies
slide along a gallery above a
Grand Hall
, the mansion’s giant set piece, the kinetic
tableau
with so many details that it alone rewards frequent visits to the
Haunted Mansion
.  A coterie of diverse ghosts have indeed gathered for a “swinging wake,” and also to sing, blow out birthday candles, waltz, duel, and play an organ that looks suspiciously like the organ from
Disney
’s live-action film
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
(but only because it is).

Interestingly, although th
e
Grand Hall
is the biggest and most impressive chamber in this giant cabinet of curiosities, its effects are the least puzzling.  Even kids often suss out that the “ghosts” are reflections of mechanical and
Audio-Animatronic
figures housed on the levels above and below the second-floor gallery along which the
Doom Buggies
drift.  One of the reasons that flash photography destroys the mood here is that lights bounce off the enormous expanse of glass, revealing its presence and purpose.

A lot of the ghosts in this vignette are humorous as well as disturbing.  That’s the
Marc Davis
influence.  As mentioned earlier, the darkness of
Claude Coats
’ designs, the oddities of
Rolly Crump
and
Yale Gracey
’s influence, and the hilarity of
Marc Davis
give this attraction is richly textured moods.  The
Haunted Mansion
just might scare you to death, but you’ll probably die laughing.

One of the intriguing elements of the
Grand Hall
is the
Library
nook off the mezzanine landing, near the organ and the dueling portraits.  The
Library
is usually hidden by a curtain, but the curtain is opened during holiday season when all of the
Haunted Mansion
, and most particularly the
Grand Hall
, are made over.  During Christmastime, a handsome little room full of tall bookshelves can be glimpsed, and floating in the center of it are spirals of books apparently arranged by ghostly hands.

Another highlight of the holiday overlay?  The gingerbread cake that dominates the dining table
.
Disneyland
Cooks
make it from real gingerbread and it’s a point of honor to outdo the previous year’s design, using more than 500 pounds of gingerbread and yards of fondant.  This is when the
Haunted Mansion
provides one of its rare scent effects, pumping the aroma of warm, fresh gingerbread into the gallery.

The
Grand Hall
(or
Ballroom
) and
Gallery
wallpaper was supposed to be available eventually at
www.gothicmanor.com
,
but, sadly, the site has been discontinued.

After the
Grand Hall
, your next stop is the
Attic
, a cobwebby, claustrophobic space with pitched roofs and exposed wood beams and planks.  It’s the quintessential Victorian grandma’s attic, where kids would go to try on ridiculously elaborate old hats and suits and dresses, where you just know bats are lurking, waiting to swoop down and sink their little talons into your hair.

The
Haunted Mansion
’s
Attic
was always a creepy, cluttered mess, and a 1990’s refurb added a ghostly bride and her loudly beating heart.  A 2007 enhancement provided more historical background (and more chills) by adding framed wedding photos in which the increasingly affluent husbands’ heads vanish.  There are five wedding photos, displaying five unlucky husbands whose heads fade as they stand next to the same bride.

She’s the
Bride
who stands at the
Attic
window.  Holding a hatchet.  With a demented expression on her face.  She delivers standard wedding phrases in a giddy, evil cheerleader tone (wonderfully voiced by actress
Kat Cressida
):

I do!  I do! … In sickness, and in … health … You may now kiss the bride …

We’ll live happily ever after … ‘Til death do us part …

Here comes the bride … As long as we both shall live …

For better, or for worse …
  I do!

The flickering holographic effect of the
Haunted Mansion
Bride
is very good.  Accompanied by a morose version of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” plunked by a shadowy figure on an out-of-tune, broken-down harpsichord, the
Bride
smiles toothy, mad smiles, rolls her eyes, and repeatedly hefts her gleaming hatchet.  Her name is
Constance Hatchaway
, and you
really
don’t want to get tangled up with her.

Your
Doom Buggy
sails past the
Bride
and out of the
Attic
window.  You’re high above a graveyard, and it’s night.  Incandescent spirits fly up from the graveyard, and you hear the tune
Grim, Grinning Ghosts
again, this time performed by a full chorus and a large complement of musical instruments.

What could be scarier than descending into a
Graveyard
?  Descending into it
backward
!  The
Doom Buggy
tips back at a sharp angle and thus ferries you down into the cemetery.  Anthropomorphized trees, with angry eyes, slack, hungry maws and tortured limbs appear (but only
appear
) to sway over you and reach toward you, wanting to pluck you from your
Doom Buggy
.  The raven peers down at you from a branch, fixing you with its frightening eyes.

At the cemetery gate a terrified
Caretaker
stands, lantern aloft, knees knocking.  His gaunt, famished dog sniffs the shovel.  When the
Caretaker
is scared, you know things just aren’t right in the graveyard!  My
Doom Buggy
has been stalled at this spot a couple of times, and it’s not a fun place to be stranded, even for a few minutes.  The
Caretaker
’s trembling fright is contagious.

You now run the
Graveyard
’s grisly gauntlet, a lively pageant of odd, horrifying, and funny events and characters, to the rollicking strains of
Buddy Baker
and
X. Atencio
’s
Grim, Grinning Ghosts
.  The graveyard’s
Audio-Animatronic
figures, translucent and specially treated to shimmer with a blue-white ectoplasmic glow, play musical instruments, sing, take tea, and play on a teeter-totter, engaging in human-like activities as if they never shuffled off their mortal coils.

From behind
headstones with humorous epitaphs, skeletal figures pop up unexpectedly, making more than one Guest with a sensitive startle-response yelp in surprised terror.

The well-known singing busts (another fabulous holographic effe
ct that includes the face of famous
Disney
voice actor
Thurl Ravenscroft
) regale you with their barbershop-style singing:

When the crypt goes “creak” and the tombstones quake

Spooks come out for a swinging wake.

Happy haunts materialize and begin to vocalize.

Grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize.

Now don’t close your eyes and don’t try to hide

Or a silly spook might sit by your side.

Shrouded in a daft disguise, they pretend to terrorize.

Grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize.

As the moon climbs high o’er the dead oak tree,

Spooks arrive for the midnight spree.

Creepy creeps with eerie eyes start to shriek and harmonize.

Grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize.

When you hear the knell of a requiem bell,

Weird glows gleam where spirits dwell.

Restless bones etherealize, rise as spooks of every size.

Grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize.

If you would like to join our jamboree,

There’s a simple rule that’s compulsory:

Mortals pay a token fee; rest in peace–the haunting’s free!

So hurry back, we would like your company!

One of the final images in this weird, wonderful cemetery is a hand holding a trowel well-smeared with mortar.  It’s protruding from a crypt that has been almost completely bricked in.  Self burial is a twist that would probably delight Poe.  This is one haunt who wants to seal him or herself away from the jubilant action, the only undead resident who wants some peace and quiet.  Could it be that the Viking-helmeted opera diva just down the row is too loud a neighbor?

Your
Doom Buggy
veers under a stone arch, on which the Plutonian raven perches, bidding you a sharp
adieu
.  As your infernal journey concludes, you’re confronted by three
Hitchhiking Ghosts
, one skeletal (
Ezra
), one doughy (
Phineas
), and one a bearded convict midget
(Gus
), all glowing an unwholesome verdigris-green.  None looks like a passenger you want with you on your travels, but in the mansion’s final, mirror-based effect, one of them has joined you in your
Doom Buggy
!

In 2011, the
Hitchhiking Ghosts
at the
Haunted Mansion
at
Walt Disney World
received a major tech upgrade.  Instead of simply sitting between Guests in the
Doom Buggies
, the new, animated ghosts sometimes appear to sit on top of the vehicles, and play tricks like switching heads with the Guests!  You have to see it to believe it.  How do they do it?  Note that you’re not really viewing your reflection.  It’s a video projection which can be manipulated.

Naturally,
Disneyland
fans wanted these effects installed at California’s
Haunted Mansion
.  Although the full array of pranks–like head switching, and ghosts sitting atop
Doom Buggies
–has not been installed at
Disneyland
’s
Haunted Mansion
, the sequence was upgraded, quietly, without any fanfare, by spring 2013.

My sister and I were riding toward the unloading zone on April 7, 2013, when
Phineas
appeared in our cart, looking crisper and more three-dimensional than we’d ever seen him. 
He tilted his head and leaned it on my shoulder.
  Sis and I were both awed and startled.  The “ghosts” that appear in Guests’ vehicles during the final leg of the
Haunted Mansion
ride are, in
Disneyland
, static models mounted on a merry-go-round or turntable that revolves in synch with the exiting
Doom Buggies
.  How then was spectral
Phineas
able to tilt his head and lean it on my shoulder with such fluidity?  Clearly
Disneyland
’s
Hitchhiking Ghosts
had received a subtle but chillingly effective makeover!