The History of the Haunted Mansion PART 1

[Music] for five decades now the haunted mansion has been touring disneyland guests through a place where hinges creak in doorless chambers and strange and frightening sounds that go through the halls the history of this beloved attraction begins in 1951 when walt disney and his team were drawing up ideas for disneyland walt expressed his wish to have some kind of haunted house imagineer harper goff soon drew renderings of a church graveyard and haunted house for the 11 acre mickey mouse park they were planning however after the purchase of the property in anaheim imagineers brainstormed ideas for main street usa one idea predates the unbuilt edison square and liberty street it was a small road that was an offshoot of main street lined with victorian houses and the street dead ended with a run-down haunted house plans for the haunted house were put on hold during disneyland's construction due to the fact that disneyland was exceeding its budget but walt had revisited the idea of doing a haunted house around the year 1957 as part of the master plan to expand frontierland on the west side of the park this new expansion would be themed to new orleans walt assigned imagineer ken anderson to design the haunted house because ken had the experience of making thrilling and frightening scenes as proven with his work on the fantasyland dark rides snow white's scary adventures and mr toad's wild ride in 1958 walt went public with the idea of adding a new orleans addition to disneyland and it would have a wax museum and a haunted house walt had spoken to the bbc in london about how he wanted to build some kind of retirement home for all the homeless ghosts in the world he said the nature of being a ghost is they have to perform therefore they need an audience ken anderson searched new england and the american south for inspiration on the look of the haunted home in disneyland's new orleans land and he found photographs of the shipley lydecker house and baltimore maryland this was the house from which he drew his inspiration ken finally created a sketch of the ramshackle house in 1958 and sam mckim turned the sketch into the now famous painting of the haunted mansion everyone loved the look of the house the project they had been working on finally had a face except it was a face walt didn't like you have to understand this was 1958 disneyland was still trying to distance itself from other amusement parks which featured run-down and dilapidated structures walt insisted disneyland always looked new and in pristine condition and after only three years of trying to build its reputation walt was not going to have this ramshackle house mar the beauty of his park walt told the team that he liked the architectural style however he wants the mansion to look just as well kept as the rest of disneyland he then famously stated we'll take care of the outside and let the ghosts take care of the inside and if you consider those words for a moment they really make sense disneyland is providing this living space for these ghosts it's only fitting that disneyland keep the exterior of the house in the same condition it keeps itself in during the design of the mansion's backstory in 1957 ken anderson came up with several story lines for the walk-through attraction one featured a sailor named captain gore who was secretly the notorious pirate black bart and he killed his wife when she discovered his true identity another iteration was that the mansion came straight from the deep south and was brought in one piece to disneyland the mansion was then known for killing all of its inhabitants there was even a more humorous and light-hearted version of the story that featured walt disney himself as the tour guide via recorded tape and projection effects but i will not be delving into these backstories instead i will focus on the history of the physical mansion itself [Music] walt had yale gracie and rolly crump teamed together to research and develop special effects to be used in the haunted house walt saw yale as an out-of-the-box thinker and he was known for his mastery in building models as well as tinkering around with illusions rowley had an affinity for magic and illusions himself and he was well known at the studio for his fooling around with creating mobiles and propellers creating kinetic sculptures and things that moved in any which way you could imagine yale and rowley were able to learn from old-fashioned illusions and deconstruct them in order to create more visually complex special effects these illusions were rather simple when their workings were revealed but had you not peeked behind the curtain you probably would have never guessed how it was done back then the designers at wed were a close-knit group a lot like family they may not have always gotten along but there was a sense of togetherness teamwork support and most of all a common goal of bringing walt's dreams to reality by the end of 1959 yale and rowley had staged a full-scale mock-up of the haunted house attraction there were several scenes staged to take around two minutes each to complete the full illusion or effect again this was a guided walk-through tour your tour guide would bring you from room to room where each stage scene would come to life when walt got a good look at the mock-up he was impressed with the illusions they created unfortunately he still wasn't sold on a walk-through tour it wasn't efficient enough to entertain the kinds of crowds that disneyland received and on top of that the imagineering team put in charge of the project could never pinpoint a definite storyline to the attraction so the haunted house was put on indefinite hold in 1961 plans to finally build new orleans square were being pushed forward and work began on clearing out the area of frontierland known as magnolia park home to the chicken plantation restaurant due to the larger design of new orleans square the haunted house was given a plot of land further north than originally expected now it would reside near fowler's harbour along the rivers of america due to the fact that new orleans square would house a large wax museum themed to pirates and the spanish maine as well as a simultaneous expansion of the jungle cruise this meant the boundary of the park would need to be extended and the disneyland railroad rerouted the frontierland railroad depot was moved about a hundred feet further to the west and a new station platform was built to handle a larger amount of people waiting for the popular trains while the pirate wax museum building would be hidden from view by disguising it as part of the shops and restaurants of new orleans square there was no way to build the haunted house's show building within the park without shattering the illusion that people entering the little mansion were actually led into the massive warehouse behind it so it was decided that disneyland railroad would pass through a tunnel between the mansion and its show building providing the house with a large hillside behind it to hide views of the warehouse in 1962 construction on the facade of the haunted house began and it would be completed by 1963. during this time walt disney was curious to see what show elements imagineers could come up with for the haunted house he asked a group of imagineers such as ken anderson mark davis claude coates rowley crump and several others to start coming up with designs and ideas for him to brood over rowley had created several weird show elements walt and rowley would later decide that the room that contained his weird artifacts would be called the museum of the weird when 1963 came about the only thing that was completed was the mansion facade it's show building and even the rest of new orleans square were put on hold as wed was busy at work designing attractions for the 1964 new york world's fair newly recruited imagineer marty sklar created a sign out front of the mansion advertising leasing for ghosts and restless spirits who wish to reside in the house the world's fair was a big leap for wed walt saw the potential for ride and show experimentation and expanding their library of knowledge so he sent almost everyone he had at wed to work on four attractions for the world's fair using the money corporate sponsored had given to wed to design these attractions they were able to develop new ride technology though ford's magic skyway would have a direct effect on the design of the haunted mansion at disneyland it was an attraction where guests boarded real ford convertibles that traveled back in time to the age of the dinosaurs and then made their way through the history of mankind's technology imagineer bob gur was tasked with figuring out how to get the ford cars to drive through a show building in a safe and predictable way what he came up with was using tubular steel rails underneath the road bed that would guide and steer the vehicles through the building and embedded in the roadway every few feet was a powerful electric motor fitted with a rubber tire which would propel the vehicles forward at a controlled speed this type of ride system would be forever known as the people mover so when wed came back from their work at the world's fair walt had to decide whether or not the haunted house would be a walk through or a ride through some argue that they could increase the capacity of the haunted house walk-through by creating an identical walk-through in the same building so that it could double the capacity but even still walt was not convinced the plans for the redo of tomorrowland would call for several high-capacity attractions installed such as the massive rotating theater of the carousel of progress the tomorrowland people mover which would chow through an astounding 3 000 riders per hour and finally a redesign of the people mover which would be called the omni mover used for the automobiles of adventure through inner space walt called these high-capacity rides people-eaters because of their ability to consume the crowds that would otherwise be queuing up outside the untimely and devastating death of walt disney in december of 1966 left imagineers without a guiding force to keep the haunted mansion on track there were so many different directions for them to go and nothing had yet been given the green light by walt it was apparent that imagineers would have to decide things for themselves a predicament which led to divisiveness at wed in 1967 richard irvine who was in charge of wed decided that with the massive success of pirates of the caribbean that he would put mark davis and claude coates in charge of the haunted mansion hoping the duo would create another smashing success but claude coates felt that pirates of the caribbean was successful because of the scenery and sets he created while mark davis thought the secret to its victory was the design of his pirate characters this would lead to a feud where claude thought the haunted mansion should be frightening and use its sets and place setting to develop that fear but mark felt that the house should draw inspiration from the hilarity of pirates the caribbean by creating lighthearted and comedic ghost characters but there was one thing mark davis and claude coates both agreed on now that walt wasn't here to intervene they would not allow rowley's museum of the weird to be built rolly crump was dismayed at the news of his project being canceled he would later say that for him the museum of the weird was the one that got away however rowley crump held no grudge against mark or claude you see without walt disney there to provide his guidance richard irvine and everyone at wedd felt like they should leave the haunted mansion in the hands of the two guys who knew best how to translate walt's dreams into reality everyone trusted mark and claude and if they said the museum of the weird was not a good idea then perhaps they were right nevertheless rowley's museum of the weird would have been a sight to behold as development on the haunted mansion continued park operations manager dick nunes had been checking in on all the projects happening at disneyland he was the one that insisted to walt that the pirate's wax museum should be turned into a high-capacity boat ride he was also the one that eyed the progress of new tomorrowland and made sure imagineers knew that the park needed more people eating rides imagine your ex-atencio joked we called him hop along capacity dick nunes was also against the haunted mansion being a walk-through even though it would be a guided tour to keep people from staying in one place too long and even though there would be a duplicate experience to double the hourly capacity he still felt this wasn't enough he suggested that the mansion might benefit from the omnimover technology used in adventure through inner space when adventure through inner space was being developed imagineer john hench was put in charge of the project and he consulted with fellow imagineer bob gur on what type of ride system they could use to take people through the attraction bob was sitting at hench's desk twirling a candied apple by its stem while he thought it suddenly occurred to him when he looked at the apple twirling that they could use the peoplemover ride system to create an endless chain of vehicles but instead of vehicles that always faced forward the automobiles would have the ability to rotate their pods 360 degrees in order to direct the guest view at exactly what imagineers wanted you to look at when they wanted you to look at it for the haunted mansion they would duplicate the clamshell shaped omnimover system then simply paint it black and dub them doom buggies very interesting technological aspect that ford's magic skyway the people mover the automobiles and even the doom buggies share is their audio system [Music] we take for granted how the ghost host's narration is delivered to us in each dune buggy at precisely the right moment the system developed at the new york world's fair is still in use at the haunted mansion today albeit slightly upgraded the whole chain of 130 doom buggies are divided into groups of 20 vehicles in that string of 20 pods the narration track is shared between a pair of vehicles and the first dune buggy in that chain of 20 keeps the audio system powered using a dynamo that charges up a 12-volt motorcycle battery so as the first buggy rolls along it generates power now each narration zone in the ride had a hidden antenna wire underneath the track that transmitted the narration and each pair of doom buggies that passed by would pick up an individual narration track the narration was broadcast in each area into six separate radio channels that way six different pairs of dune buggies had the narration timed perfectly to the exhibit as they were passing through now today they use rfid scanners and chips to assign each pair of dune buggies a pre-programmed digital version of the narration the designers of the haunted mansion had a daunting task ahead of them the two imagineers chosen to spearhead the project couldn't agree with the direction to take it they had been working on the mansion off and on since 1959 and they feared guests were getting restless it didn't help that the facade of the attraction was already built and a sign had been hanging out front taunting park visitors of a ride that may never come the imagineers at wed were all but willing to give up however it was hard to imagine where things would go now that everyone was without walt disney their leader and beloved mentor on part two we will finish the story of the attraction and i will guide you on a scene by scene tour showing you the secrets and the history of the haunted mansion our tour begins here in this gallery where you see paintings of some of our guests as they appeared in their corruptable mortal state

Channel: Alex the Historian

Views: 69,145

Keywords: Haunted Mansion, Disneyland, Disneyland Haunted House, Walt Disney, Yale Gracey, Claude Coats, Marc Davis, Alex the Historian

Id: i9bjNvmAhSQ

Length: 15min 37sec (937 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 08 2021