Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast I'm
Speaker 1: calling from and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, And we left
Speaker 1: you with a cliffhanger tlimb around. We were talking about
Speaker 1: the history of the Hammond Mansion in Disneyland and how
Speaker 1: it came to be built and how that concept went
Speaker 1: from just an idea in the early fifties to becoming
Speaker 1: an actual thing that park visitors know about today, because
Speaker 1: it really is quite a long and winding road for
Speaker 1: that that right in particular. Uh. And so when we
Speaker 1: left off, uh, really Crump and Yale Gracey were two
Speaker 1: gentlemen that we're working on effects that we're going to
Speaker 1: go into the Haunted Mansion, and they had done this
Speaker 1: really amazing uh demonstration where they kind of made a
Speaker 1: mock up of the whole attraction and how it would work,
Speaker 1: and other imagineers and Walt and their stakeholders in Disneyland
Speaker 1: got to walk through it and experience it. They were
Speaker 1: all completely blown away by it. So amazing. Uh was
Speaker 1: also very slow. Yeah, those amazing effects had really wowed
Speaker 1: the whole crowd, but they also took away too long.
Speaker 1: To play out. Uh. And the show was deemed inefficient
Speaker 1: at that point, so there was no way they could
Speaker 1: move people through quickly enough to avoid long lines and
Speaker 1: log jams. And there's a h term that's often used
Speaker 1: for rides when they're talking about um load and how
Speaker 1: quickly they can get things through that they wanted them
Speaker 1: to be people eaters, like they had to just be
Speaker 1: able to move people through really quickly. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: even if some of the elements of this show had
Speaker 1: been omitted, the time it was going to take to
Speaker 1: reset some of the effects for each new group coming
Speaker 1: through on the tour was just still not going to
Speaker 1: be workable. In addition to this whole timing issue. While
Speaker 1: it had kind of cool and on this idea of
Speaker 1: the Haunted House being a walk through attraction, Sleeping Beauty's
Speaker 1: Castle features a walk through story display that's been there
Speaker 1: since the opening, and he had really never been too
Speaker 1: happy with it. And then, to make matters worse, we
Speaker 1: talked about this in the first episode. There had been
Speaker 1: a debate over whether the exterior should look Christine or
Speaker 1: just as shambles. Uh. Walt wanted it to look Christine
Speaker 1: to match the rest of the park. And other designers
Speaker 1: wanted it to look crumbling like a crumbling old mansion
Speaker 1: and a little rundown like a haunted house normally would
Speaker 1: the kind of place you'd look at and go that
Speaker 1: is haunted me. Yeah, So that had been a little
Speaker 1: bit of a problem. And back when Ken Anderson, who
Speaker 1: was head of UH this project at the time, UH
Speaker 1: had been talking to Walt about it, he just decided
Speaker 1: he would move to focusing on the interior and they
Speaker 1: would table this issue. But they had just stopped talking
Speaker 1: about the outside of the attraction. There had never been
Speaker 1: an agreement on how it was actually gonna look, and
Speaker 1: so that remained unresolved. So as the nine fifties came
Speaker 1: to a close, so did plans for eight Disneyland Haunted House,
Speaker 1: and they basically put the whole thing on hold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the Haunted House UH just to um review quickly.
Speaker 1: Had been part of the plan for Disneyland since Walt
Speaker 1: first envisioned the whole park in so they had spent
Speaker 1: almost a decade at this point working on things and
Speaker 1: then they just had to kind of say goodbye to
Speaker 1: it for a bit. Yeah, And sometimes I get frustrated
Speaker 1: when I am banging my head against something trying to
Speaker 1: work on it for like an hour and a half,
Speaker 1: and they have been banging their heads working on this
Speaker 1: for like ten years. Yeah, I mean, not the whole team,
Speaker 1: although they do go on for many more years. But
Speaker 1: so the Haunted House project then languished until so it
Speaker 1: was a couple of years, but what was still really
Speaker 1: eager to expand the park, and the W E. D
Speaker 1: Team or WED depending on what you prefer, which eventually
Speaker 1: became Disney Engineering, decided that they were gonna once again
Speaker 1: take on this tuble, troubled project. There was such a
Speaker 1: strong desire to get this thing up and running that
Speaker 1: they started passing out handbills in the park that very year,
Speaker 1: announcing that in nineteen sixty three, two years down the road,
Speaker 1: the Haunted Mansion, as it was now officially was being called,
Speaker 1: would be open to guests and haunts. So a little
Speaker 1: bit of let's light a fire under ourselves to get
Speaker 1: this done, and also a little bit maybe putting some
Speaker 1: of the cart before the horse. Yeah, I mean, they
Speaker 1: were throttled by the deadline, and so construction really did
Speaker 1: kind of catapult forward, but even so it was not
Speaker 1: quite at the pace that was hoped for. UH, And
Speaker 1: while the exterior of the Haunted Mansion was in place
Speaker 1: pristine by the way, they went with Walt's pristine plan,
Speaker 1: which is not really a surprise. UH. In ninety three,
Speaker 1: the exterior was completely done, but the interior was far
Speaker 1: from finished. Walt asked Martins Sklar to come up with
Speaker 1: copy for a real estate sign that would be inviting
Speaker 1: ghosts to move into this home in Disneyland. And here's
Speaker 1: the sign that appeared outside the empty building. Do you
Speaker 1: want to read this? I bet you like it? Sure? Uh.
Speaker 1: It reads Notice All ghosts and restless spirits post lifetime
Speaker 1: leases are now available in this haunted mansion. Don't be
Speaker 1: left out in the sunshine. Enjoy active retirement in this
Speaker 1: country club atmosphere for the fashionable address for famous ghosts,
Speaker 1: ghosts trying to make a name for themselves, and ghosts
Speaker 1: afraid to live by themselves. Leases include license to scare
Speaker 1: the daylights out of guests visiting the Portrait Gallery, Museum
Speaker 1: of the Supernatural, Graveyard and other happy haunting grounds. For reservations,
Speaker 1: send resume of past experience to Ghost Relations Department, Disneyland.
Speaker 1: Please do not apply in person. I love that it's
Speaker 1: so charming. So things were behind schedule at this point,
Speaker 1: but they were progressing along. Guests were getting at least
Speaker 1: a little sense of the flavor of the attraction because
Speaker 1: the exterior was there, and so things were kind of
Speaker 1: back on course. But then they were put on hold
Speaker 1: again when Walt agreed to build four attractions for the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four to nineteen sixty five World's Fair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is an interesting one as a brief aside.
Speaker 1: I have heard people say before when you're talking about
Speaker 1: disney history like you do, which I do. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: often this misconception that the World's Fair actually came before
Speaker 1: Disneyland opened, and that because some of the pieces that
Speaker 1: Walt worked on for the World's Fair moved into Disneyland.
Speaker 1: I think there's been this confusion about the timing of
Speaker 1: when Disneyland happened, but in fact it was up and running.
Speaker 1: They just paused on all current projects. Um, because those
Speaker 1: four projects that Walt was doing for the World's Fair
Speaker 1: ate up all of his time and all of the
Speaker 1: time of the designers and artists that he routinely used,
Speaker 1: because he had put them all to work on these
Speaker 1: World's Fair projects. Uh. So every project for Disneyland that
Speaker 1: was on, including the Haunted Mansion, was just going to
Speaker 1: have to wait until the attractions for the New York
Speaker 1: displays were complete. Once the World's Fair projects were completed,
Speaker 1: it was time to go back to the Haunted Mansion.
Speaker 1: So in July nineteen sixty four, the team was reassembled
Speaker 1: and it shuffled around a little bit. Ken Anderson had
Speaker 1: gone back to work in the studios, but Rolly Crump
Speaker 1: and Yale Gracie returned to the mansion, and Walt added
Speaker 1: Mark Davis, Claude Coats, and x Attencio to the mix.
Speaker 1: X is short for Xavier Um and Mark Davis, who
Speaker 1: had worked on other Disneyland attractions, was tasked with creating
Speaker 1: the inhabitants of the mansion, so the ghosts were under
Speaker 1: him UH. Claude Coates put his skills as a background
Speaker 1: artist to work UH designing the environments throughout the attraction,
Speaker 1: and x Atencio worked on the script. He had just
Speaker 1: done one for Pirates of the Caribbean, so every member
Speaker 1: had a role to play and assigned duties. But they
Speaker 1: were starting with that kind of a clean slate story eyes,
Speaker 1: so initially they were all coming up with pitches for
Speaker 1: different versions of the story that would run the Hide Mansion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, just for clarification, so really Crump and um
Speaker 1: Yale Gracie were still working on effects, so we didn't
Speaker 1: mention them, but they were all still working on it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there was another major element of this reboot of
Speaker 1: the project and that they had decided to add an omnimover,
Speaker 1: which is a car system rather than a walk through
Speaker 1: as had originally been envisioned, so that they could keep
Speaker 1: people moving through this attraction at the rate of thousands
Speaker 1: of people per hour. So that's how the Doom Buggies
Speaker 1: were formed, uh, which are the cars that go through
Speaker 1: the Haunta Mansion. And one of the installations that Disney
Speaker 1: and his team had done for the World's Fair was
Speaker 1: this people mover that had been developed in conjunction with
Speaker 1: the Ford Motor Company. Uh. And it was basically this
Speaker 1: omnimover system, and that had been a really great success
Speaker 1: at the World's Fair. So it pretty quickly was that
Speaker 1: concept was adopted over not just into the Haunted Mansion,
Speaker 1: but in several places in Disney. That's a common element
Speaker 1: that you will see. And there's still a people mover
Speaker 1: magic Kingdom. Oh, it's a magic kingdom. You were right,
Speaker 1: I was smashing them all in my head together. Well,
Speaker 1: it seems it's in Tomorrowland, which is a little futuristic,
Speaker 1: so people, it's easy to do that and slip it
Speaker 1: over to like Epcot's Future World. Yeah, it's a great
Speaker 1: place to take a break, especially if it's hot out
Speaker 1: to eat a nice cruel ride. You get to go
Speaker 1: inside some of the attractions while you just sit placidly
Speaker 1: pretty much anything that involves sitting in a boat or
Speaker 1: sitting in a little car. Yeah, for like ten minutes,
Speaker 1: about ten minutes awesome. Yes, really, Crump's work when they
Speaker 1: were working on concepts was way outside of what the
Speaker 1: other men were working on, and even he admitted when
Speaker 1: Watt was reviewing everybody's work but didn't know how it
Speaker 1: fit into the attraction. He had designed things like a
Speaker 1: melting candleman and a sentient walking chair. Yeah. So, as
Speaker 1: they were all pitching these new versions of the Haunted
Speaker 1: Mansion story and like how it would all go together
Speaker 1: in terms a uh continuous thematic thread, Roly Crump was
Speaker 1: just drawing these bizarre things that no one knew what
Speaker 1: to do it. He was off in his own world
Speaker 1: of weird, weird kind of I mean, he's still alive
Speaker 1: today and he talks about it a lot. Uh But yeah,
Speaker 1: his style of art is really unique. Um. It's now
Speaker 1: pretty much accepted that he his some of his crazy
Speaker 1: designs are what led to the famous Dama squallpaper that's
Speaker 1: got the eyeballs in the Haunted Mansion. For a while,
Speaker 1: it was a matter of debate over where that actually
Speaker 1: came from. But if you look at some of his
Speaker 1: early sketches and some of these works, he was puzzling
Speaker 1: over its very similar style to some of the pieces there. Um.
Speaker 1: And so after having done this review where Roly Crump
Speaker 1: is like, I don't know how it fits in. It's
Speaker 1: I'm just spitballing weird things that I think are you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit more new and interesting than the standard
Speaker 1: like Haunted Mansion. Fair um, because you know, he didn't
Speaker 1: want to do the same stuff that any other haunted
Speaker 1: house would have. He won a unique and interesting and
Speaker 1: outside of what people had experienced before. Uh So, apparently
Speaker 1: after not sleeping on it, just interviews with Crump, he
Speaker 1: loves to tell this story and he specifically always mentions
Speaker 1: that when uh Waltz comes to see him the next morning,
Speaker 1: that he was actually there before really Crump got there,
Speaker 1: sitting in his chair. He was wearing the same clothes
Speaker 1: as the day before, and said that he couldn't get
Speaker 1: any sleep because he was thinking about what to do
Speaker 1: with these designs. Walt had decided at that point that
Speaker 1: Role's designs were going to be part of what he
Speaker 1: called a museum of the weird that would fall at
Speaker 1: the end of the attraction as guest exited, and that
Speaker 1: they could walk through at their own pace, so kind
Speaker 1: of the way that people um will know, now, many
Speaker 1: rides in any Disney park will kind of shoot you
Speaker 1: out into a gift shop. This was going to shoot
Speaker 1: you out into this weird museum Roly Crump's Museum of
Speaker 1: the Weird. Once Crump had been tasked with making this
Speaker 1: museum show, he came up with all kinds of odd
Speaker 1: and wonderful things for it. He pulled out things he'd
Speaker 1: worked on earlier in the attractions development process and embellished
Speaker 1: their designs, and he envisioned lots of things that will
Speaker 1: kind of ring familiar to those who've been to the
Speaker 1: Haunted Mansion. In Disneyland or disney World, like a seance
Speaker 1: with floating furniture, marble busts whose gazes followed the guests,
Speaker 1: portraits that morphed and changed before people's eyes. There was
Speaker 1: even a haunted fortune teller's cart. Shall we get back
Speaker 1: to the Haunted Mansion? Nothing would please be more so
Speaker 1: much so all Disneyland projects, including the Haunted Mansion, went
Speaker 1: back on hold again when it was time for the
Speaker 1: installations of the World's Fair to be moved into their
Speaker 1: permanent residence in Disneyland, and even after the task was completed,
Speaker 1: other projects were then prioritized over the now basically beleaguered
Speaker 1: Haunted Mansion. Yeah. This poor things been going on forever.
Speaker 1: They just were trying to drag it to the finish line.
Speaker 1: Empty buildings standing there with a sign in front of it,
Speaker 1: what you can go in because there's not stuff in
Speaker 1: it yet. People are like, wasn't this supposed to be
Speaker 1: years ago? Yes? Uh, And then things kind of take
Speaker 1: a really rough turn. At this point, Pirates of the
Speaker 1: Caribbean is under construction and almost complete, I think, uh.
Speaker 1: Tomorrowland was being refurbished. Work on a second park in
Speaker 1: Florida was underway and Walt died, and to some people
Speaker 1: it seemed very sudden, But I think it's one of
Speaker 1: those cases where he never talked about being sick. Uh.
Speaker 1: He had undergone a surgery in November of nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: six to remove a tumor in his lung that had
Speaker 1: been discovered when he went in for treatment of a
Speaker 1: neck injury that he had gotten from a sporting injury. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then just that following month, December fifteenth of that
Speaker 1: same year, he died of acute circulatory collapse that was
Speaker 1: associated with his lung cancer. So this was really just
Speaker 1: emotionally devastating for the people who worked for him, And
Speaker 1: losing Walt meant that there was no longer a referee
Speaker 1: in the whole Haunted Mansion project, which had always had
Speaker 1: a problem bloom of just big personalities clashing and disagreeing
Speaker 1: over how to do things. Yeah, and especially when it's
Speaker 1: set up in that way where you have a lot
Speaker 1: of really brilliant people and you're like, everybody pitched me
Speaker 1: a new version of this, and they all want there's
Speaker 1: to be the one that goes forward. Of course, it
Speaker 1: could be contentious, um and with or w E d
Speaker 1: leadership felt that the best solution at this point was
Speaker 1: to put the team of Mark Davis and Claude Coats
Speaker 1: in charge of the mansion. Uh. At this point, the
Speaker 1: Haunt the Pirates of the Caribbean had launched, and they
Speaker 1: had worked a lot on it and it had been
Speaker 1: very successful, so they seemed like the ideal team. However,
Speaker 1: it turned out that after that big success, each of
Speaker 1: the men kind of felt like he should be the
Speaker 1: one that was in charge, with the other taking a
Speaker 1: secondary management role. And you can imagine how well that
Speaker 1: played out. Yeah, at this point there had been a
Speaker 1: decade of exasperating on again, off again production. Then there
Speaker 1: was the grief over the loss of Disney. The head
Speaker 1: betting of the two leaders created this perfect storm for
Speaker 1: what had become really one of the most contentious battles
Speaker 1: in Disney imagineering history. It sounds silly, but the question
Speaker 1: of whether the Haunted Mansion should be funny or scary
Speaker 1: caused these huge arguments and a giant split in the
Speaker 1: development team. Yeah, Mark Davis really preferred more of the funny,
Speaker 1: character driven stuff, whereas Coats, who was an environmental designer,
Speaker 1: wanted it to be about spooky scary erie, and because
Speaker 1: they were having such a hard time co managing this project,
Speaker 1: it just became this tug of war between these two
Speaker 1: concepts and designers were kind of lining up on either
Speaker 1: side of the debate, and it really was just constant
Speaker 1: bickering over something. It seems so small, but you can
Speaker 1: see how when the stakes are high, because it is
Speaker 1: a thing that's gone on forever, you have just lost
Speaker 1: your leader, you are a little chuffed with your you know, success,
Speaker 1: and feel like you're not maybe not getting as much
Speaker 1: credit as you want. You could see how it could
Speaker 1: quickly become this boilerpot, especially with a bunch of creative people. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm a creative people. I'm married to a creative person,
Speaker 1: and I know we can have some temper. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what I think is funny. What the jump scare
Speaker 1: at the very beginning of the ride, when all the
Speaker 1: little kids completely lose their minds. This is because I'm
Speaker 1: a terrible person. No, it's fun. It is fun. I
Speaker 1: mean it's you're kind of enjoying everyone experiencing it, and
Speaker 1: for some people it is the terror of it. And
Speaker 1: it's that's part of like what makes any haunted house
Speaker 1: like kind of fun is watching people freak out, so
Speaker 1: I understand, So how do they get over this? Holly? Well, eventually,
Speaker 1: um Dick Irvine, Richard Irvine, who was the w e
Speaker 1: D Vice president of design, he kind of sided more
Speaker 1: with Mark Davis's vision and so at least verbally, that
Speaker 1: was how it settled. But even so, the attraction kind
Speaker 1: of is segmented, and if you think about it when
Speaker 1: you go through it, it's almost like, here's the cloud
Speaker 1: Coats part, Here's some Art Davis part. Um Coats's vision
Speaker 1: for the Moody and Creepy is really more the first
Speaker 1: half of the ride, like when you're going through all
Speaker 1: those environments and you're seeing you know, the creepy coffin
Speaker 1: with the guy talking out of it and the long
Speaker 1: hallway trip, and there aren't a lot of characters about.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of like ghosts that you see
Speaker 1: you have like this about mood like the doors that
Speaker 1: are knocking themselves exactly. And then the second half becomes
Speaker 1: more about the characters and the illusions that Mark Davis
Speaker 1: was really a fan of. So that's when you start
Speaker 1: seeing the ghosts in the ballroom and um, you know
Speaker 1: Leota Seance and all of those elements and the big
Speaker 1: Pepper's ghost illusion, which is the ballroom. Um, that's when
Speaker 1: all of that happens. So it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: ambiance portion at the front and then the funner we're
Speaker 1: gonna set the stage and then we're gonna have a story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and some people have even said likes a this kind
Speaker 1: of set up a perfect like act break to the
Speaker 1: story of the Haunted Mansion that it did break out
Speaker 1: in that way that one half favors one design philosophy
Speaker 1: and one half favors the other. So this was only
Speaker 1: Extensio's second ride script. Before he had written the script
Speaker 1: for Pirates, he had been a storyboard artist who worked
Speaker 1: in the story department at Disney Studios, and it failed
Speaker 1: him to find some kind of way to marry all
Speaker 1: these disparate elements that had been thrown out by this
Speaker 1: team that was of two different kind of incompatible stylistic minds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: poor guy like makes sense of this. We've built it,
Speaker 1: figure something out well, and you and I both edit
Speaker 1: as some of our work here. Yeah, we know that
Speaker 1: feeling of when you get something that is like somebody
Speaker 1: sent you their notes salad and you're like how do
Speaker 1: I make this note salad into a thing one thing
Speaker 1: that's not note salad. Now picture two note salads and
Speaker 1: they argue with each other, and you have to find
Speaker 1: a way to make peace. And if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: interviews with Extensio, I have to say I can see
Speaker 1: where he was the perfect person for this job because
Speaker 1: he has a very um, calm demeanor. He seems very
Speaker 1: you know, sweet and earnest, uh, but also extremely smart.
Speaker 1: And so you can see where and and he'll talk
Speaker 1: about often how you know Walt Disney one of his
Speaker 1: greatest um, what Extencio feels is one of Disney's greatest
Speaker 1: triumphs was that he could see what people were capable of,
Speaker 1: even if they had never done it and didn't know
Speaker 1: they could. Uh. And so that's kind of how he
Speaker 1: became a scriptwriter on shows. Disney just said, I think
Speaker 1: you're the guy to do this, and he's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know how to do this, You'll be fine, and
Speaker 1: he was. Uh. And so in the end he drew
Speaker 1: inspiration from that real estate signed copy that Marty Sclar
Speaker 1: had written, and so that's how he wove the story
Speaker 1: of the Nine Happy Haunts throughout the Haunted Mansion that
Speaker 1: are ready to recruit number one thousand, and it could
Speaker 1: be you. So all the way from the stretching Portrait
Speaker 1: Room to the a hiking ghosts, it's all about, you know,
Speaker 1: these many different spirits that have made their home in
Speaker 1: the Haunted Mansion, and how they would love to invite
Speaker 1: another member, which I think it's kind of fabulous and
Speaker 1: an ingenious solution to this problem. Well, and it wound
Speaker 1: up being a really memorable one. Yeah. I've been to
Speaker 1: Disney twice in my life, once when I was five
Speaker 1: and once when I was in my late thirties. Uh.
Speaker 1: And from that five year old men, you watch me
Speaker 1: freak out and um one of the because you know,
Speaker 1: you don't remember giant piles of stuff when you were five. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's usually impress kind of piecemeal. And one of the
Speaker 1: few absolutely clear memories I have of Disney from the
Speaker 1: trip when I was five was the hitchhiking ghosts in
Speaker 1: the Haunted Mansion. Yes, they're very lovable. I think I
Speaker 1: was quite concerned that one of them actually was coming
Speaker 1: home with me. I'm always quite sad that they're not
Speaker 1: in the car when I leave, Like Phinny has come
Speaker 1: on so At Long Last on August nine, nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: more than eighteen years after the product had started, and
Speaker 1: six years after the empty house that appeared on in
Speaker 1: a corner of Disneyland, finally the Haunted Mansion opened its doors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you ever want perspective on a work project, just remember,
Speaker 1: like Golf was doing his designs, his first sketches in
Speaker 1: I also want to gripe away less about like video games,
Speaker 1: they get perpetually delayed or maybe never happened. Usually that
Speaker 1: does not go on for eighteen years. Yeah, that's it's
Speaker 1: a long time. And I can only and I think
Speaker 1: that also led to kind of some of the I mean,
Speaker 1: we we talked about it tying in, but I can
Speaker 1: only imagine the fever pitch of potential frustration and just
Speaker 1: taught nerves by the end of it. While they're having
Speaker 1: all those arguments about the style of it, and they've
Speaker 1: just put on this project for some of them a
Speaker 1: decade or more. Just be they just probably want it
Speaker 1: done and they want to go home and have a
Speaker 1: life that has nothing to do with the Haunt. I maasion,
Speaker 1: but it was immensely successful from day one. There are
Speaker 1: photographs from day one where you can just see the
Speaker 1: crowd just the line goes on forever. Uh. And a
Speaker 1: week later, the Haunted Mansion set a single day attendance
Speaker 1: record a two thousand, five hundred and sixteen guests went
Speaker 1: through its doors one day. I have a hard time
Speaker 1: imagining that many people. That's how that works. So there
Speaker 1: was a rumor leading up to the opening that one
Speaker 1: of the reporters at a press viewing had had a
Speaker 1: heart attack and died, causing the ride to be redesigned
Speaker 1: at the last minute. Extencio has said that the preview
Speaker 1: period for attractions always reveals some problems that need tweaking,
Speaker 1: but no, no one died of fright. One of the
Speaker 1: early tweaks to the ride was the removal of a
Speaker 1: character that is now referred to as the hat Box Ghost.
Speaker 1: And this is one that if you are into Disney,
Speaker 1: particularly if you're into the Haunted Mansion, you know about. Uh.
Speaker 1: This featured an elderly looking ghost that was holding, surprise
Speaker 1: a hat box, and his head was supposed to vanish
Speaker 1: off of his shoulders and then appear in the hat
Speaker 1: box and then switch back again. But the illusion never
Speaker 1: worked quite right. It didn't work as planned at the
Speaker 1: angle at which guests we're seeing it in the place
Speaker 1: that it was meant to go in the mansion from
Speaker 1: their doom buggies. So it just never worked well enough
Speaker 1: and they ended up pulling it really quickly because they
Speaker 1: didn't want a mediocre effect. Um. And as I said,
Speaker 1: the hat Box Ghost is now immensely popular amongst Hana
Speaker 1: Mansion fans. Uh. An updated version of it appeared at
Speaker 1: d twenty three, which is the official Disney convention, just
Speaker 1: last month, so this summer, and there have been rumors
Speaker 1: that if Guermo del Toro's Haunted Mansion movie ever comes
Speaker 1: to Fruition, which is another on again, off again, on again,
Speaker 1: off again, people say it's canceled. Guerma Deltora will stand
Speaker 1: in an interview. No, we're still working on it, so
Speaker 1: we don't really know, uh. But the rumors that the
Speaker 1: good old hat Box Ghost will be prominently featured. But
Speaker 1: what plans, if any, Disney really has for the character
Speaker 1: is not known to the public at this time to
Speaker 1: the best of my knowledge. So hopefully hat Box comes back.
Speaker 1: There is a I think there is a site called well,
Speaker 1: I know that there's a site called Doom Buggies dot Com,
Speaker 1: and I think they have a picture that someone managed
Speaker 1: to take very early on in those either preview days
Speaker 1: or one of the first days that it was open
Speaker 1: before it got pulled, where you can see what the
Speaker 1: hat box ghost looks like. Nice. He's very popular. Versions
Speaker 1: of the Haunted Mansion have been installed in Walt Disney
Speaker 1: World in Florida and Tokyo Disneyland. Reimagined versions of the
Speaker 1: attraction appear in Disneyland, Paris and Hong Kong. Disneyland. Phantom
Speaker 1: Manner in Paris is set in a wild West mining town,
Speaker 1: and Mystic Manner in Hong Kong has an adventurer kind
Speaker 1: of World Explorer theme. Yeah, it's almost for people that
Speaker 1: have been to Disney in year prior. This place is
Speaker 1: now closed, but there used to be a place in
Speaker 1: downtown Disney called the Adventurers Club, which is kind of
Speaker 1: like an old school hunting club, like the place you
Speaker 1: would expect to see Hemingway hanging out. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: Mystic Manner is almost like a marriage of that concept
Speaker 1: and the Haunted Mansion idea, so they they have slightly
Speaker 1: different twists. The Phantom Manner is fascinating and it has
Speaker 1: really good music. Mystic manner has music done by Danny Elfman,
Speaker 1: so you know it's awesome. Each holiday season, the original
Speaker 1: Anaheim Hanted Mansion and the Tokyo Disneyland Haunted Mansion. Uh,
Speaker 1: they both get a nightmare before Christmas overlay, which is
Speaker 1: called Haunted Mansion Holiday, and so from roughly the beginning
Speaker 1: of October through the end of the year and usually
Speaker 1: the first couple of days of January, instead of going
Speaker 1: and seeing the usual haunts that you would see on
Speaker 1: the attraction, the visitors get to see Jack and Sally
Speaker 1: and Zero and Oogie Boogee and the rest of the
Speaker 1: inhabitants of Halloween Town because it's kind of turned into
Speaker 1: a Halloween Town situation and it is amazing. I cried
Speaker 1: the first time I was on, and I'm not embarrassed
Speaker 1: to tell you because I also a love nightmare before Christmas. Um,
Speaker 1: it's lovely. I wish I could go every year, but
Speaker 1: I never managed to do so. So UH. Probably will
Speaker 1: not be a surprise to anyone that there have been many,
Speaker 1: many claims of actual ghost sightings in the various Haunted
Speaker 1: Mansions around the world, both by guests and by cast members.
Speaker 1: He and there's always the stories of people scattering ashes
Speaker 1: in the mansion. I don't like that idea, no, and
Speaker 1: Disney doesn't either. I don't know if there have ever
Speaker 1: been any confirmed ones, but uh, you'll hear kind of
Speaker 1: apocryphal stories where people are like, no, we vacuum that
Speaker 1: right up. Um, So if you think you might want
Speaker 1: to do that, no, that you're not really know they're
Speaker 1: going to end up in a vacuum. And that seems
Speaker 1: inconsiderate of other Yea, yeah, it's not good, you know.
Speaker 1: I don't want to dis on how people choose to
Speaker 1: express their grief and their wishes of loved ones. I
Speaker 1: do not really approve of the idea of getting are
Speaker 1: people's remains on me? While I didn't right, I understand
Speaker 1: there's no where I would rather be scattered, but you
Speaker 1: know the rules. Uh. And what is missing in this
Speaker 1: final build of the Haunted Mansion was Raley Crump's Museum
Speaker 1: of the Weird because as they were, you know, really
Speaker 1: ramping up towards the last chunk of production, they realized
Speaker 1: it wasn't gonna work. Um, so it got scrapped. But
Speaker 1: many of his ideas for the museum are in the
Speaker 1: attraction itself. Uh And as we mentioned, like the seance
Speaker 1: room with the floating furniture that was his idea originally.
Speaker 1: The busts that follow people, which is a really cool trick.
Speaker 1: They're actually cast in recess, so they're set back and
Speaker 1: it's just kind of a natural cool effect that when
Speaker 1: you go by the way they're painted, they look like
Speaker 1: they're bus standing outside, but they're actually a negative and
Speaker 1: it looks like they're following you. It's awesome. Um And
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that, um there isn't some of the parks,
Speaker 1: there's a souvenir stand outside because it doesn't dump out
Speaker 1: into a gift shop, and the souvenir stand looks a
Speaker 1: lot like really Crump's haunted fortune teller cart, which is
Speaker 1: kind of fun. And that's another thing that there have
Speaker 1: been rumblings about through the years that the Museum of
Speaker 1: the Weird is being kicked around as a possible starting
Speaker 1: point for a full length feature film, script, that it's
Speaker 1: going to be incorporated into a video game. There have
Speaker 1: even been rumors that it's going to be its own
Speaker 1: attraction eventually, but so far those have not materialized. There's
Speaker 1: a story I think that l a times ran like
Speaker 1: three years ago that Ahmed Zappa was working on a
Speaker 1: script treatment about it, and then Disney was like no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not happening. So you know, there's there's always more
Speaker 1: to talk about, imagine more. Yeah, I mean, we've hit
Speaker 1: on some of the higher points, but there's so much
Speaker 1: story there in legacy, and because so many of those
Speaker 1: imagineers are still with us and are often, um, you know,
Speaker 1: make appearances or do interviews. Really Crump's book came out
Speaker 1: at the end of last year, and it's quite fun.
Speaker 1: He's kind of a pistol. He's got an interesting history
Speaker 1: both in and outside of Disney, and you know, he's
Speaker 1: led a wildlife in many ways, and he doesn't really
Speaker 1: hold back. He's very fun Excitencia, like I said, just
Speaker 1: comes across as the sweetest man you would ever want
Speaker 1: to meet on the planet. And they love to wax
Speaker 1: repsodic and talk about the old times and working on
Speaker 1: this project. And I'm sure it was a trial by fire,
Speaker 1: but they still seem to look back at it kind
Speaker 1: of lovingly because they recognize what it became. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: I had been working at Disney in the in the fifties.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I would be waxing repsodic about that all
Speaker 1: the time, even if it was really hard, because of
Speaker 1: what it grew into. Yeah, and it does sound like
Speaker 1: it again. It's one of those things where we see
Speaker 1: it today and it's a huge, massive company. And you know,
Speaker 1: uh many people talk about how they their dream job
Speaker 1: would be to work for Disney, and it was even
Speaker 1: for these guys. But I think people don't realize it
Speaker 1: wasn't like you instantly get rich. Like I was watching
Speaker 1: an interview with Roly Crump not too long ago, and
Speaker 1: he was saying when he got hired at Disney, they
Speaker 1: offered him less than half of what he was making
Speaker 1: working in uh I think a ceramic tile factory. And
Speaker 1: he was like, I have a kid on the way,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do. Man, I really want
Speaker 1: to work for Disney. Uh So he took it, and
Speaker 1: he had to take a second job. Like I mean,
Speaker 1: these weren't like Pie in the Sky, super dreamy, easy
Speaker 1: coasting jobs. They worked really really hard. So I could see,
Speaker 1: we're looking back, he would be very proud of that
Speaker 1: work because you really had to be committed. Uh So
Speaker 1: that's our We'll let the haunts rest for now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you have some listener mail would do this? That
Speaker 1: makes me laugh, which is sort of me now that
Speaker 1: I think about it, But it is from our listener Will,
Speaker 1: and he's talking about our episode on the Nasca Lines,
Speaker 1: and he says, I actually have a related story about
Speaker 1: the Nasca Lines that I wanted to share when I
Speaker 1: heard you mentioned wanting to view them in person yourselves.
Speaker 1: Last summer, I traveled with my girlfriend's family to Peru
Speaker 1: for a three week trip. For her family, it was
Speaker 1: mostly about rek connecting with family, friends, and heritage since
Speaker 1: her parents immigrated to the U s from Peru in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen eighties. On top of this, we also
Speaker 1: did a lot of the typical tourist ventures, including touring
Speaker 1: the Valsa Garado near Cusco and hiking Machu Picchu. The food,
Speaker 1: the people, and the sites were stunning and it was
Speaker 1: simply an amazing experience. One of the final day trips
Speaker 1: we did involved a lengthy Van rhyne down to the
Speaker 1: small town of Nasca from Lima. In order to do
Speaker 1: aerial viewings of the lines. We had to go in
Speaker 1: two groups because the largest plane available was a small,
Speaker 1: six person Cessna, so there were two seats that were
Speaker 1: for the pilot and the co pilot, and the rest
Speaker 1: was people from their group. He says, while everyone else
Speaker 1: was cautious and took drama being prior to the flight,
Speaker 1: I decided I didn't need to. I never get motion sickness,
Speaker 1: and I used to spend most of my summers working
Speaker 1: on the water. Unfortunately, my confidence lasted all of about
Speaker 1: ten minutes once we were in the air. My girlfriend,
Speaker 1: her sister, and her brother in law all enjoyed the
Speaker 1: flight and took plenty of pictures. I could only manage
Speaker 1: a couple of pictures, and then I had to stare
Speaker 1: at the horizon most of the time to keep from
Speaker 1: getting too nauseous. The views were stunning, but my mind
Speaker 1: and body were distracted by the constant swaying and bucking
Speaker 1: of the tiny plane. Also, since drama mean makes you
Speaker 1: very drowsy, I spent the majority of the two mile
Speaker 1: drive back to Lima. Is the only one to wake
Speaker 1: besides the driver. So if you ever go on this flight,
Speaker 1: yes it's worth it, but make sure to take some
Speaker 1: drama means so you can enjoy the whole thing and
Speaker 1: not have to keep assuring your group or significant other
Speaker 1: that you're fine despite that sickly look on your face.
Speaker 1: I love this. Thank you for the work you do
Speaker 1: on the podcasts. So he mentions that he would like
Speaker 1: to hear some of these things about African history. So
Speaker 1: we uh so it's so cool. Well, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: This is sort of um. The the treachery of those
Speaker 1: ones in a lifetime trips is that you can't do
Speaker 1: a rehearsal right, and sometimes your body, because you're traveling,
Speaker 1: it won't even react the way it normally would know.
Speaker 1: And I uh, I have a weird threshold for motion
Speaker 1: signats like I've I've been on a ship before that
Speaker 1: was fine, and then a different ship before that was
Speaker 1: not fine. I empathize with the motion sick. It is
Speaker 1: why I can never ride Star tours again in my life,
Speaker 1: and probably cannot go on the Hogwarts ride at the
Speaker 1: Harry Potter World. Yeah, I am. I have had almost
Speaker 1: the identical thing to him, not on a cool tourism thing,
Speaker 1: but I go deep sea fishing usually every year with
Speaker 1: my dad, that boat rocking. I'm usually the only one
Speaker 1: that's not getting sick. We've had some really good luck
Speaker 1: to a couple of times at the weather, but I
Speaker 1: seem to be okay on those. But I remember taking
Speaker 1: a small puddle hopper plane with my husband back from
Speaker 1: a trip to Disney World. Actually we were making a
Speaker 1: connecting flight from Orlando to Tampa and then picking up
Speaker 1: our flight to Atlanta. I have no idea why we
Speaker 1: book that. Were like, why are you doing this? It
Speaker 1: was probably really cheap, but I just remember my husband
Speaker 1: looking at me and going, I've never seen a person
Speaker 1: actually turned green before, because you were like cartoon bugs,
Speaker 1: bunny green pale. I was like, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm fine. That one was that we did fly
Speaker 1: through a thunderstorm, I should say, so there was a
Speaker 1: lot of shug sugar sugar going on, but no one
Speaker 1: else seemed to have the problems. So sometimes it's hard
Speaker 1: to predict. And I've been on small place before and
Speaker 1: not gotten that. And your body doesn't always do what
Speaker 1: you think it will. Unfortunately, if you would like to
Speaker 1: write to us, yeah, tell us about your motion, sickness,
Speaker 1: maybe not other things you can. I'm fine. I hope
Speaker 1: my laughing does not make will feel bad, because I'm
Speaker 1: not laughing at his um discomfort. I'm just laughing into
Speaker 1: fact that you cannot predict life and even your body,
Speaker 1: which you would think you would know better than anything
Speaker 1: else in the world. Well, and I have enormous empathy
Speaker 1: for the motion sick. Yeah, and I have both been
Speaker 1: motion sick. But if you want to write to us,
Speaker 1: do so at History Podcast at discovery dot com. You
Speaker 1: can also connect with us on Twitter at missed in History,
Speaker 1: and you can visit us on Facebook at Facebook dot
Speaker 1: com slash his reclass stuff. We are also on tumbler
Speaker 1: at missed in History dot tumbler dot com, and we're
Speaker 1: panning away on Pinterest. If you would like to learn
Speaker 1: a little bit more about part of what we talked
Speaker 1: about today, you can go to our website and uh
Speaker 1: do a search for Walt Disney and one of the
Speaker 1: interesting articles you will get is fifteen notable people who
Speaker 1: dropped out of school because he did and yet went
Speaker 1: on to a life of great accomplishment. If you would
Speaker 1: like to learn more about that, or anything else that
Speaker 1: you can think of, you should do that at our website,
Speaker 1: which is how Stuff Works dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Because it has to
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