Over the past 20 years, Disneyland Resort celebrated the holiday season with a Nightmare Before Christmas overlay theme at the Haunted Mansion. It’s a beloved theme among Disneyland fans. In fact, many believe it should be a holiday theme we get at Disney World’s Haunted Mansion, too. Keep reading to see what makes the Nightmare Before Christmas theme so wonderful for the Haunted Mansion!
Disneyland – Nightmare Before Christmas overlay at Haunted Mansion
Every year before Halloween Time at Disneyland l, the Haunted Mansion receives a Nightmare Before Christmas overlay and becomes Haunted Mansion Holiday. The overlay stays at the attraction through both Halloween and Christmas.
The ride takes about three weeks to transform into Haunted Mansion Holiday and back again. It closes again in early January for the overlay to be removed, but it reopens later that month.
“Pumpkin King Jack Skellington has been busy decorating the Haunted Mansion with frightfully festive touches inspired by Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Experience some of your favorite sights, special seasonal surprises—and scare-aracters from the movie. Sally, Oogie Boogie and other Nightmare nasties will be on hand to wish you ‘Season’s Screamings!’”
As part of the Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay, the Grand Hall gets a gingerbread masterpiece that changes every year. For 2021, the team decided to pay homage to all previous houses in celebration of this beloved tradition’s 20th anniversary. This year’s Franken-house stitches together favorite elements from the previous 19 houses!
Dead-icated fans of the attraction, which pays tribute to “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” every Halloween Time through holiday season, will no doubt devour the details in this year’s gingerbread house and its nods to past years. It’s easy to spot 2009’s Scary-Go-Round House, 2015’s Gingerbread Card House, 2014’s Gingerbread Zombie House and Tim’s personal favorite, the Giant Man-eating Wreath House from 2005, but other creepy contributions are more, uh, subtle.
Related: Watch Magic Kingdom Transform from Halloween to Christmas Overnight
Haunting Holiday Displays
This year, the bakery used more than 200 pounds each of gingerbread dough and powdered sugar, about 50 pounds of egg whites and more than a pound of glitter to make the mini mansion spellbindingly sparkly. “Every year the team works tirelessly to create this masterpiece, and we have people who’ve worked on it every year,” Gracie said. “My favorite part is getting on the attraction and seeing the house as a guest because we can see all the work that these cast members put in, in its finished glory.”
And in case anyone doesn’t realize that Haunted Mansion Holiday is marking 20 years, Tim designed a reminder in the pumpkin patch in front of the mansion. “It’s a remembrance wreath on an easel, like the ones people would use to memorialize the dead,” Tim said. In the middle is a tombstone-like representation of Jack’s face with a nod to his 20 years at the mansion. “It’s both funereal and Christmas-y, which is exactly what Jack would want.”
Related: When Do They Pull Down The Christmas Decorations At Walt Disney World?
Would you like to see this spooky holiday theme come to Disney World?
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