13 Chilling Fun Facts About The Haunted Mansion!

Welcome foolish mortals to the Haunted Mansion!

Today we want to share with you 13 chilling fun facts you might not know about one of the most beloved attractions in Disney Parks around the world. So let’s get into them:

• Did you know The Haunted Mansion is the only attraction located in four different lands in four different Disney Parks? You can find it at New Orleans Square at Disneyland, Liberty Square at Walt Disney World, Fantasyland at Tokyo Disneyland and Frontierland at Disneyland Paris and they are all different so definitely worth visiting them all if you can.

• Eddie Murphy was looking forward to do a scary comedy when he learned about Disney’s Haunted Mansion film, so he asked Bob Hope and Abbott and Costello to see the script. Perfect timing huh?

• The Haunted Mansion a water ride? Imagineer and Disney Legend Claude Coats briefly developed a water ride version in which guests would float through the ruins of an old plantation house partially submerged in a Louisiana bayou. Interesting but i think we will keep the one we know.

• Did you know a “live” caretaker was featured in almost every draft of the haunted mansion film script? He was ultimately cut in favor of a ghostly cameo appearance in the graveyard, complete with cowardly canine companion.

• The audio-animatronics figures, props and set pieces of the ride in Disneyland and Walt Disney World were produced at the same time since the Florida attraction would open less than two years after its Anaheim predecessor.

• Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion was largely inspired by the Shipley-Lydecker house in Baltimore, Maryland, pictured in Decorative Art of Victoria’s Era, a book found in the Walt Disney Imagineering Information Research Center in Glendale, California.

• Legendary creature designer Rick Baker originally modeled the Haunted Mansion film’s singing busts after Marc Davis, Thurl Ravenscroft, Blaine Gibson, Paul Frees and even Walt Disney himself! Only the Frees and Ravenscroft busts made it into the film.

• Did you know Paul Frees, voice of the Ghost Host, also provided voices for Ludwig Von Drake, Boris Badenov, the Pillsbury Doughboy and many of the Pirates of the Caribbean, including the infamous Auctioneer?

• Originally the haunted mansion film script was set in upstate New York with a manor house inspired by the Walt Disney World attraction but director Rob Minkoff and production John Myhre felt the movie should feature a mansion inspired by the Disneyland attraction so they moved the action to New Orleans.

• Imagineer Leota Toombs, Mademe Leota’s face and namesake, rehearsed her incantations on the night of her daughter and future imagineer Kim Irvine’s school dance, prompting Kim’s surprised date to ask “Wow, what’s up with your mom??,” can you imagine? We can only imagine her date’s scared face.

• An ill-fated bride was featured in almost every proposed version of the Disneyland Haunted Mansion, dating back to Imagineer Ken Anderson’s very first creative treatment in 1957.

• X Atencio’s tongue-in-cheek epitaph eulogizing “Master Gracey”, a nod to Imagineer and master of illusion Yale Gracey, has led both fans and cast members to consider him the true, if unofficial, lord of the manor. In fact, the Haunted Mansion movie crew decided to honor the tradition and dub the master of their house “Gracey,” too.

• The Haunted Mansion’s infamous “eye wallpaper,” long credited to Imagineer Marc Davis, was actually a collaboration between “Museum of the Weird” creator Rolly Crump and Claude Coats.

Related – Spine-Thrilling Fact You May Not Know About the Tower of Terror

Did you know all these thrilling fun facts? If you didn’t, we hope you learned something new to surprise your friends next time you ride The Haunted Mansion! Just be careful because a ghost might follow you home. Aaaah!

Credit: D23

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