October 14, 2017 • 32 mins
We're revisiting the second installment in the story of the Haunted Mansion. This one goes from concept to fully-realized theme park attraction and covers the reboot the team went through after the World's Fair and the loss of their leader.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, Happy Saturday. Today's classic continues last Saturday's story of
how Disneyland's Haunted Mansion came to be the iconic attraction
that it is today. So join us while we talk
about the happy Haunts and the bumps in the road
that resulted in one of Disney's crown jewels, and as always,
beware of hitchhiking ghosts. Welcome to stuff you missed in
(00:28):
history class from works dot com. Hello, welcome to the
podcast I'm calling from. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and we
left you with a cliffhangers time around. We were talking
about the history of the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland and
how it came to be built and how that concept
(00:51):
went from just an idea in the early fifties to
becoming an actual thing that park visitors know about today,
because it really is quite a long and winding road
for that that right in particular. Uh. And so when
we left off, really Crump and Yale Gracey were two
gentlemen that we're working on effects that we're going to
go into the Haunted Mansion, and they had done this
(01:14):
really amazing uh demonstration where they kind of made a
mock up of the whole attraction and how it would work,
and other imagineers and Walt and other stakeholders in Disneyland
got to walk through it and experience it. They were
all completely blown away by it. So amazing. Uh. Was
(01:34):
also very slow. Yeah, those amazing effects had really wowed
the whole crowd, but they also took a way too
long to play out. Uh. And the show was deemed
inefficient at that point, So there was no way they
could move people through quickly enough to avoid long lines
and log jams. And there's a h term that's often
(01:55):
used for rides when they're talking about um load and
how quickly they can get things through that they wanted
them to be people eaters, like, they had to just
be able to move people through really quickly. Uh. And
so even if some of the elements of this show
had been omitted, the time it was going to take
to reset some of the effects for each new group
coming through on the tour was just still not going
(02:15):
to be workable. In addition to this whole timing issue.
While it had kind of cool and on this idea
of the Haunted House being a walk through attraction, Sleeping
Beauty's Castle features a walk through story display that's been
there since the opening, and he had really never been
too happy with it. And then, to make matters worse,
(02:36):
we talked about this in the first episode. There had
been a debate over whether the exterior should look pristine
or just a shambles. UH. Walt wanted it to look
pristine to match the rest of the park, and other
designers wanted it to look crumbling, like a crumbling old
mansion and a little rundown like a haunted house. Normally
would the kind of place you'd look at and go
that is haunted me. Yeah, So that had been a
(02:58):
little bit of a problem, and by Quinn ken Anderson,
who was head of UH this project at the time,
UH had been talking to Walt about it, he just
decided he would move to focusing on the interior and
they would table this issue. But they had just stopped
talking about the outside of the attraction. There had never
been an agreement on how it was actually gonna look,
(03:19):
and so that remained unresolved. So as the nineteen fifties
came to a close, so did plans for a Disneyland
Haunted House, and they basically put the whole thing on hold. Yeah,
So the Haunted House, uh, just to um review quickly,
had been part of the plan for Disneyland since Walt
(03:39):
first envisioned the whole park in so they had spent
almost a decade at this point working on things, and
then they just had to kind of say goodbye to
it for a bit. Yeah, and sometimes I get frustrated
when I am banging my head against something trying to
work on it for like an hour and a half
and they have been banging their head is working on
(04:00):
this for like ten years. Yeah, I mean, not the
whole team, although they do go on for many more years.
But so the Haunted House project then languished until so
it was a couple of years, but what was still
really eager to expand the park, and the W E.
D Team or WED depending on what you prefer, which
(04:21):
eventually became Disney Imagineering, decided that they were going to
once again take on this troubled project. There was such
a strong desire to get this thing up and running
that they started passing out handbills in the park that
very year, announcing that in nineteen sixty three, two years
down the road, the Haunted Mansion, as it was now
officially was being called would be open to guests and haunts.
(04:44):
So a little bit of let's light a fire under
ourselves to get this done, and also a little bit
maybe putting some of the cart before the horse. Yeah,
I mean they were throttled by the deadline, and so
construction really did kind of catapult forward, but even so
was not quite at the pace that was hoped for. Uh.
And while the exterior of the Haunted Mansion was in
(05:05):
place pristine by the way, they went with Walt's pristine plan,
which is not really a surprise. Uh. In nine three,
the exterior was completely done, but the interior was far
from finished. Walt asked Martins Sklar to come up with
copy for a real estate sign that would be inviting
ghosts to move into this home in Disneyland. And here's
(05:28):
the sign that appeared outside the empty building. Do you
want to read this? I bet you like it? Sure? Uh.
It reads Notice all ghosts and restless spirits post lifetime
leases are now available in this haunted mansion. Don't be
left out in the sunshine. Enjoy active retirement in this
country club atmosphere for the fashionable address for famous ghosts.
(05:52):
Ghosts trying to make a name for themselves and ghosts
Afraid to Live by themselves. Leases include license to scare
the daylights out of guests visiting the Portrait Gallery, Museum
of the Supernatural, Graveyard, and other happy hunting grounds. For reservations,
send resume of past experience to Ghost Relations Department, Disneyland.
Please do not apply in person. I love that it's
(06:15):
so charming. So things were behind schedule at this point,
but they were progressing along. Guests were getting at least
a little sense of the flavor of the attraction because
the exterior was there, and so things were kind of
back on course. But then they were put on hold
again when Walt agreed to build four attractions for the
nineteen sixty four to nineteen sixty five World's Fair. Yeah,
(06:39):
and this is an interesting one as a brief aside.
I have heard people say before when you're talking about
disney history, like you do, which I do. Uh, there's
often this misconception that the World's Fair actually came before
Disneyland opened, and that because some of the pieces that
Walt worked on for the World's Fair moved into disney Land.
(07:00):
I think there's been this confusion about the timing of
when Disneyland happened, but in fact it was up and running.
They just paused on all current projects. Um, because those
four projects that Walt was doing for the World's Fair
ate up all of his time and all of the
time of the designers and artists that he routinely used,
because he had put them all to work on these
(07:21):
World's Fair projects. Uh So every project for Disneyland that
was going on, including the Haunted Mansion, was just going
to have to wait until the attractions for the New
York displays were complete. Once the World's Fair projects were completed,
it was time to go back to the Haunted Mansion.
So in July nineteen sixty four, the team was reassembled
and it shuffled around a little bit. Ken Anderson had
(07:44):
gone back to work in the studios, but Rollie Crump
and Yale Gracie returned to the mansion, and Walt added
Mark Davis, Claude Coats, and x Attensio to the mix.
X is short for Xavier yes Um and Mark David,
who had worked on other Disneyland attractions, was tasked with
creating the inhabitants of the mansion, so the ghosts were
(08:06):
under him. Uh. Claude Coates put his skills as a
background artist to work, uh, designing the environments throughout the attraction,
and Extencio worked on the script. He had just done
one for Pirates of the Caribbean, so every member had
a role to play and assigned duties. But they were
starting with kind of a clean slate story wise, so
(08:26):
initially they were all coming up with pitches for different
versions of the story that would run the Hide Mansion. Yeah,
and uh, just for clarification, so really Crump and um
Yale Gracie were still working on effects, so we didn't
mention them, but they were all still working on it. Uh.
And there was another major element of this reboot of
the project and that they had decided to add an omnimover,
(08:49):
which is a car system rather than a walk through
as had originally been envisioned, so that they could keep
people moving through this attraction at the rate of thousands
of people per hour. So that's how the Doomed Keys
were formed, uh, which are the cars that go through
the Haunted Mansion. And one of the installations that Disney
and his team had done for the World's Fair was
this people mover that had been developed in conjunction with
(09:11):
the Ford Motor Company. Uh, And it was basically this
omnimover system and that had been a really great success
at the World's Fair, so it pretty quickly was that
concept was adopted over, not just into the Haunted Mansion,
but in several places in Disney. That's a common element
that you will see. And there is still a people
mover Magic Kingdom. Oh, it's a magic Kingdom. You were right,
(09:35):
I was smashing them all in my head together. Well,
it seems it's in Tomorrowland, which is a little futuristic,
so people it's easy to do that, to slip it
over to like Epcot's Future World. Yeah, it's a great
place to take a break, especially if it's hot out
to eat a nice craol ride. You get to go
inside some of the attractions while you just sit placidly.
Pretty much anything that involves sitting in a boat or
(09:57):
sitting in a little car, yea for like ten minute,
about ten minutes awesome. Yes, Roly Crump's work when they
were working on concepts was way outside of what the
other men were working on, and even he admitted when
Watt was reviewing everybody's work, but he didn't know how
it fit into the attraction. He had designed things like
a melting candleman and as sentient walking chair. Yeah. So,
(10:20):
as they were all pitching these new versions of the
Haunted Mansion story and like how it would all go
together in terms of uh continuous thematic thread, Roly Crump
was just drawing these bizarre things that no one knew
what to do with, and he was off in his
own world of weak, weird kind of. I mean, he's
still alive today and he talks about it a lot. Uh,
(10:42):
But yeah, his style of art is really unique. Um,
it's now pretty much accepted that he his some of
his crazy designs are what led to the famous Damma
squallpaper that's got the eyeballs in the Haunted Mansion. For
a while, it was a matter of debate over where
that actually came from. But if you look at some
of his early sketch is and some of these works
he was puzzling over its very similar style to some
(11:05):
of the pieces there. Um. And so after having done
this review where Roly Crump is like, I don't know
how it fits in. It's I'm just spit bawling weird
things that I think, are you know, a little bit
more new and interesting than the standard like haunted mansion
fair Um, because you know, he didn't want to do
the same stuff that any other haunted house would have.
(11:25):
He wanted unique and interesting and outside of what people
had experienced before. Uh So, apparently after not sleeping on it.
Because interviews with Crump, he loves to tell this story,
and he specifically always mentions that when uh Waltz comes
to see him the next morning, that he was actually
there before really Crump got there, sitting in his chair.
(11:46):
He was wearing the same clothes as the day before,
and said that he couldn't get any sleep because he
was thinking about what to do with these designs. Walt
had decided at that point that Role's designs were going
to be part of what he called a museum of
the weird that would fall at the end of the
attraction as guest exited, and that they could walk through
at their own pace, so kind of the way that people,
um will know, now, many rides in any Disney park
(12:10):
will kind of shoot you out into a gift shop.
This was going to shoot you out into this weird museum. Yeah,
Roly Crump's Museum of the weird. Once Crump had been
tasked with making this museum show, he came up with
all kinds of odd and wonderful things for it. He
pulled out things he'd worked on earlier in the attractions
development process and embellished their designs, and he envisioned lots
(12:33):
of things that will kind of ring familiar to those
who've been to the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland or disney World,
like a seance with floating furniture, marble busts whose gazes
followed the guests, portraits that morphed and changed before people's eyes.
There was even a haunted fortune teller's cart. Shall we
(12:57):
get back to the Haunted Mansion? Nothing would these people?
I love it so much so all Disneyland projects, including
the Haunted Mansion, went back on hold again when it
was time for the installations at the World's Fair to
be moved into their permanent residence in Disneyland, And even
after the task was completed, other projects were then prioritized
(13:19):
over the now basically beleaguered Haunted Mansion. Yeah, that's poor.
Things been going on forever. They just were trying to
drag it to the finish line. Empty buildings, standing there
with a sign in front of it. Nobody can go
in because there's not stuff in it. Yet. People are like,
wasn't this supposed to been years ago? Yes? Uh, and
then things kind of take a really rough turn. At
(13:43):
this point, Pirates of the Caribbean is under construction and
almost complete, I think. Uh. Tomorrowland was being refurbished, work
on a second park in Florida was underway, and Walt died,
and to some people it seemed very sudden, But I
think it's one of those cases where he never talked
about being sick. Uh. He had undergone a surgery in
November of nineteen sixty six to remove a tumor in
(14:03):
his lung that had been discovered when he went in
for treatment of a neck injury that he had gotten
from a sporting injury. Uh, and then just that following month,
December fifteenth of that same year, he died of acute
circulatory collapse that was associated with his lung cancer. So
this was really just emotionally devastating for the people who
worked for him, and losing Walt meant that there was
(14:26):
no longer a referee in the whole Haunted Mansion project,
which had always had a problem of just big personalities
clashing and disagreeing over how to do things. Yeah, and
especially when it's set up in that way where you
have a lot of really brilliant people and you're like,
everybody pitched me a new version of this, and they
all want their's to be the one that goes forward.
Of course, it could be contentious. Um and with or
(14:49):
W E D leadership felt that the best solution at
this point was to put the team of Mark Davis
and Claude Coats in charge of the mansion. Uh. At
this point, the Haunt the Pirates of the Caribbean had launched,
and they had worked a lot on it and it
had been very successful, so they seemed like the ideal team. However,
it turned out that after that big success, each of
(15:11):
the men kind of felt like he should be the
one that was in charge, with the other taking a
secondary management role. And you can imagine how well that
played out. Yeah. At this point, there had been a
decade of exasperating on again, off again production, and then
there was the grief over the loss of Disney. The
headbutting of the two leaders created this perfect storm for
(15:32):
what had become really one of the most contentious battles
in Disney imagineering history. It sounds silly, but the question
of whether the Haunted Mansion should be funny or scary
caused these huge arguments and a giant split in the
development team. Yeah, Mark Davis really preferred more of the funny,
(15:52):
character driven stuff, whereas Coates, who was an environmental designer,
wanted it to be about spooky, scary erie. Because they
were having such a hard time co managing this project,
it just became this tug of war between these two concepts,
and designers were kind of lining up on either side
of the debate, and it really was just constant bickering
(16:13):
over something. It seems so small, but you can see
how when the stakes are high, because it is a
thing that's gone on forever. You have just lost your leader,
you are a little chuffed with your you know, success,
and feel like you're not maybe not getting as much
credit as you want. You could see how it could
quickly become this boiler pot, especially with a bunch of
creative people. Well, I'm a creative people. I'm married to
(16:36):
a creative person, and I know we can have some tempers. Yeah,
you know what I think is funny what the jump
scare at the very beginning of the ride, when all
the little kids completely lose their minds. This is because
I'm a terrible person. Now it's fun. It is fun.
I mean, it's you're kind of enjoying everyone experiencing it.
(16:57):
And for some people it is the terror of it.
And it's that's part of like what makes any haunted
house like kind of fun is watching people freak out,
So I understand, So how do they get over this?
Holly Well, eventually, um Dick Irvine, Richard Irvine, who was
the w E D Vice president of design, he kind
of sided more with Mark Davis's vision and so at
(17:19):
least verbally, that was how it settled. But even so,
the attraction kind of is segmented, and if you think
about it when you go through it, it's almost like,
here's the Cloud Coats part, Here's the Mark Davis part.
Um Coats's vision for the Moody and Creepy is really
more the first half of the ride, like when you're
going through all those environments and you're seeing you know,
(17:39):
the creepy coffin with the guy talking out of it
and the long hallway trip and there aren't a lot
of characters about there aren't a lot of like ghosts
that you see. You have like this about mood, like
the doors that are knocking themselves exactly. And then the
second half becomes more about the characters and the illusions
(18:00):
that Mark Davis was really a fan of. So that's
when you start seeing the ghosts in the ballroom and um,
you know Leo to Seance and all of those elements
and the Big Peppers ghost illusion which is the ballroom. Um,
that's when all of that happened. So it's kind of
like the ambiance portion at the front and then the
(18:20):
funner we're gonna set the stage and then we're gonna
have a story. Yeah, And some people have even said,
like as a this kind of set up a perfect
like act break to the story of the Haunted Mansion,
that it did break out in that way that one
half favors one design philosophy and one half favors the other.
So this was only ex Atensio's second ride script. Before
(18:44):
he had written the script for Pirates, he had been
a storyboard artist who worked in the story department at
Disney Studios, and it failed to him to find some
kind of way to marry all these disparate elements that
had been thrown out by this team that was of
two different kind of incompatible stylistic minds. Yeah, poor guy
just like makes sense of this. We've built it, figure
(19:07):
some outing out well, and you and I both edit
as some of our work here. Yeah, And we know
that feeling when you get something that is like somebody
sent you their notes salad and you're like, how do
I make this note salad into a thing one thing
that's not note salad. Now picture two note salads and
they argue with each other and you have to find
(19:28):
a way to make peace. And if you've ever seen
interviews with Extensio, I have to say I can see
where he was the perfect person for this job because
he has a very um calm demeanor. He seems very
you know, sweet and earnest, uh, but also extremely smart.
(19:49):
And so you can see where and and he'll talk
about often how you know, while Disney one of his
greatest um what Exctencio feels is one of Disney's greatest
triumphs was that he could see people were capable of
even if they had never done it and didn't know
they could. Uh. And so that's kind of how he
became a scriptwriter on shows. Disney just said, I think
you're the guy to do this, and he's like, I
(20:09):
don't know how to do this, You'll be fine, and
he was. Uh. And so in the end he drew
inspiration from that real estate signed copy that Marty Sclar
had written. And so that's how he wove the story
of the nine happy Haunts throughout the Haunted Mansion that
are ready to recruit number one thousand and it could
be you. So all the way from the stretching portrait
(20:30):
room to the hitchhiking ghosts, it's all about, you know,
these many different spirits that have made their home in
the Haunted Mansion and how they would love to invite
another member, which I think it's kind of fabulous and
an ingenious solution to this problem. Well, and it wound
up being a really memorable one. Yeah. I've been to
(20:51):
Disney twice in my life, once when I was five
and once when I was in my late thirties. Uh.
And from that five year old to me, you watch
me freak out and um, one of the because you know,
you don't remember giant piles of stuff when you were
five it's usually impression, kind of piecemeal. And one of
(21:13):
the few absolutely clear memories I have of Disney from
the trip when I was five is the hitchhiking ghosts
in the Haunted region. Yes, they're very lovable. I think
I was quite concerned that one of them actually was
coming home with me. I'm always quite sad that they're
not in the car when I leave. Like Phinny has
come on so at long last. On August nine, nineteen
(21:45):
sixty nine, more than eighteen years after the product had started,
and six years after the empty house that appeared on
in a corner of Disneyland, finally the Haunted Mansion opened
its doors. Yeah, if you ever want perspective on a
work project, just remember like Golf was doing his designs,
his first sketches in I also want to gripe away
(22:08):
less about like video games that get perpetually delayed or
maybe never happen. Usually that does not go on for
eighteen years. Yeah, that's it's a long time. And I
can only and I think that also led to kind
of some of the I mean, we we talked about
it tying in, but I can only imagine the fever
pitch of potential frustration and just taught nerves by the
(22:32):
end of it. While they're having all those arguments about
the style of it, and they've just been on this
project for some of them a decade or more, just
be it. They just probably want it done and they
want to go home and have a life. That has
nothing to do with the hont To Mansion. But it
was immensely successful from day one. There are photographs from
day one where you can just see the crowd. Just
(22:52):
the line goes on forever. Uh. And a week later,
the Haunted Mansion set a single day attendance record. Two thousand,
five hundred and sixteen guests went through its doors one day.
I have a hard time imagining that many people's leader.
That's how that works. So there was a rumor leading
up to the opening that one of the reporters at
(23:14):
a press viewing had had a heart attack and died,
causing the ride to be redesigned at the last minute.
Extensio has said that the preview period for attractions always
reveals some problems that need tweaking, but no, no one
died of fright. One of the early tweaks to the
ride was the removal of a character that is now
(23:35):
referred to as the hat Box Ghost. And this is
one that if you are into Disney, particularly if you're
into the Haunt imagine you know about uh. This featured
an elderly looking ghost that was holding surprise a hat box,
and his head was supposed to vanish off of his
shoulders and then appear in the hat box and then
switch back again. But the allusion never worked quite right.
(23:56):
It didn't work as planned at the angle at which
guests would see it in the place that it was
meant to go in the mansion from their doom buggies,
so it just never worked well enough and they ended
up pulling it really quickly because they didn't want a
mediocre effect. Um. And as I said, the hat Box
Ghost is now immensely popular amongst Hana Mansion fans. H
An updated version of it appeared at d twenty three,
(24:19):
which is the official Disney convention, just last month so
this summer, and there have been rumors that if Germo
del Toro's Haunted Mansion movie ever comes to Fruition, which
is another on again, off again, on again, off again,
people say it's canceled. Gaermma Deltor will say in an interview. No,
we're still working on it, so we don't really know. Uh,
but the rumor is that the good old hat Box
(24:40):
Ghost will be prominently featured. But what plans, if any
Disney really has for the character is not known to
the public at this time to the best of my knowledge.
So hopefully hat Box comes back. There is a I
think there is a site called well, I know that
they're a site called doom Buggies dot com, and I
think they have a picture that someone may naged to
take very early on in those either preview days or
(25:03):
one of the first days that it was open before
it got pulled, where you can see what the hat
Box Ghost looks like. Nice. He's very popular. Versions of
the Haunted Mansion have been installed in Walt disney World
in Florida and Tokyo Disneyland. Reimagined versions of the attraction
appear in Disneyland, Paris and Hong Kong. Disneyland. Phantom Manner
(25:23):
in Paris is set in a wild West mining town,
and Mystic Manner in Hong Kong has an adventurer kind
of world explorer theme. Yeah, it's almost for people that
have been to Disney and years prior this place is
now closed, but there used to be a place in
Downtown Disney called the Adventurers Club, which is kind of
like an old school hunting club, like the place you
(25:44):
would expect to see Hemingway hanging out. Uh. And the
Mystic manner is almost like a marriage of that concept
and the Haunted Mansion idea, so they have slightly different twists.
The Phantom manner is fascinating and it has really good music.
Mystic Manner has music done by day any Elfman, so
you know it's awesome. Each holiday season, the original Anaheim
(26:06):
Hanted Mansion in the Tokyo Disneyland Haunted Mansion, UH, they
both get a nightmare before Christmas overlay, which is called
Haunted Mansion Holiday. And so from roughly the beginning of
October through the end of the year and usually the
first couple of days of January, instead of going and
seeing the usual haunts that you would see on the attraction,
the visitors get to see Jack and Sally and Zero
and Oogie Boogie and the rest of the inhabitants of
(26:28):
Halloween Town because it's kind of turned into a Halloween
Town situation and it is amazing. I cried the first
time I was on, and I'm not embarrassed to tell
you because I also love Nightmare before Christmas. Um, it's lovely.
I wish I could go every year, but I never
managed to do so. So uh, probably will not be
a surprise to anyone that there have been many, many
(26:48):
claims of actual ghost sightings in the various haunted mansions
around the world, both by guests and by cast members.
He and there's always the stories of people scattering ashes
in the mansion. I don't like that idea, no, and
Disney doesn't either. I don't know if there have ever
been any confirmed ones, but uh, you'll hear kind of
(27:10):
apocryphal stories where people are like, no, we vacuum that
right up. Um, So if you think you might want
to do that, no, that you're not. Really They're going
to end up in a vacuum, and that seems inconsiderate
of Yeah, it's not good, you know. I don't want
to dison how people choose to express their grief and
their wishes of loved ones. I do not really approve
(27:33):
of the idea of getting other people's remains on me
while I'm in a theme park. Rod I adn't right,
I understand there's no where I would rather be scattered,
but you know, those are the rules. And what is
missing in this final build of the Haunted Mansion was
Raley Crump's Museum of the Weird because as they were,
(27:53):
you know, really ramping up towards the that last chunk
of production, they realized it wasn't gonna work. Um, So
it got scrapped. But many of his ideas for the
museum are in the attraction itself. Uh And as we mentioned,
like the seance room with the floating furniture that was
his idea originally. The busts that follow people, which is
a really cool trick. They're actually cast in recess, so
(28:17):
they're set back and it's just kind of a natural
cool effect that when you go by the way they're painted,
they look like they're bus standing outside, but they're actually
a negative and it looks like they're following you. It's awesome. Um.
And what's interesting is that, um there is in some
of the parks there's a souvenir stand outside because it
(28:38):
doesn't dump out into a gift shop, and the souvenir
stand looks a lot like really Crump's Haunted Fortune Teller
cart which is kind of fun. And that's another thing
that there have been rumblings about through the years that
the Museum of the Weird is being kicked around as
a possible starting point for a full length feature film script,
that it's going to be incorporated into a video game.
(28:59):
There have even and rumors that it's going to be
its own attraction eventually, but so far those have not materialized.
There was a story I think that l A Times
ran like three years ago, that Ahmed Zappa was working
on a script treatment about it, and then Disney was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
that's not happening. So you don't know, there's there's always
more to talk about with hot imagine more. Yeah, I mean,
(29:22):
we've hit on some of the higher points, but there's
so much story there and legacy, and because so many
of those imagineers are still with us and are often, um,
you know, make appearances or do interviews. Really Crump's book
came out at the end of last year, and it's
quite fun. He's kind of a pistol. He's got an
interesting history both in and outside of Disney, and you know,
(29:44):
he's led a wildlife in many ways, and he doesn't
really hold back. He's very fun excitencia. Like I said,
just comes across as the sweetest man you would ever
want to meet on the planet. And they love to
wax rapsodic and talk about the old times and working
on this project. And I'm sure it was a trial
I fire, but they still seem to look back at
it kind of lovingly because they recognize what it became. Yeah,
(30:05):
if I had been working at Disney in the in
the fifties, I'm sure I would be waxing or rephsodic
about that all the time, even if it was really hard,
because of what it grew into. Yeah, and it does
sound like it again. It's one of those things where
we see it today and it's a huge, massive company
and you know, uh, many people talk about how they
(30:27):
their dream job would be to work for Disney, and
it was even for these guys. But I think people
don't realize it wasn't like you instantly get rich. Like
I was watching an interview with Roly Crump not too
long ago, and he was saying when he got hired
at Disney, they offered him less than half of what
he was making working in Uh. I think a ceramic
tile factory, and he was like, I have a kid
on the way, I don't know what to do. Man,
(30:49):
I really want to work for Disney. Uh So he
took it, and he had to take a second job.
Like I mean, these weren't like Pie in the Sky,
super dreamy, easy coasting jobs. They worked really, really hard.
Word so I could see, we're looking back, you would
be very proud of that work because you really had
to be committed. Uh So that's our who let the
Hawks rest for now? Hey, as we close out this
(31:12):
Saturday Classic, we wanted to mention that ex Atensio, who
we spoke about as being still alive in the second installment,
did pass away on September tenth of this year. If
you listen to last week's Classic, which is part one
of this, you may recall that we mentioned at the
beginning that we selected these episodes specifically is our way
to acknowledge his death and honor his memory. If you
(31:33):
want to email us, our email address is History Podcast
at how stuff Works dot com, and you can find
us across the spectrum of social media as Missed in History.
You can also find us at missed in History dot com,
and you can visit our parent company, how stuff Works
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
(31:59):
and thousands of other topics, visit how staff works dot com.
M
Hey, Happy Saturday. Today's classic continues last Saturday's story of
how Disneyland's Haunted Mansion came to be the iconic attraction
that it is today. So join us while we talk
about the happy Haunts and the bumps in the road
that resulted in one of Disney's crown jewels, and as always,
beware of hitchhiking ghosts. Welcome to stuff you missed in
(00:28):
history class from works dot com. Hello, welcome to the
podcast I'm calling from. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and we
left you with a cliffhangers time around. We were talking
about the history of the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland and
how it came to be built and how that concept
(00:51):
went from just an idea in the early fifties to
becoming an actual thing that park visitors know about today,
because it really is quite a long and winding road
for that that right in particular. Uh. And so when
we left off, really Crump and Yale Gracey were two
gentlemen that we're working on effects that we're going to
go into the Haunted Mansion, and they had done this
(01:14):
really amazing uh demonstration where they kind of made a
mock up of the whole attraction and how it would work,
and other imagineers and Walt and other stakeholders in Disneyland
got to walk through it and experience it. They were
all completely blown away by it. So amazing. Uh. Was
(01:34):
also very slow. Yeah, those amazing effects had really wowed
the whole crowd, but they also took a way too
long to play out. Uh. And the show was deemed
inefficient at that point, So there was no way they
could move people through quickly enough to avoid long lines
and log jams. And there's a h term that's often
(01:55):
used for rides when they're talking about um load and
how quickly they can get things through that they wanted
them to be people eaters, like, they had to just
be able to move people through really quickly. Uh. And
so even if some of the elements of this show
had been omitted, the time it was going to take
to reset some of the effects for each new group
coming through on the tour was just still not going
(02:15):
to be workable. In addition to this whole timing issue.
While it had kind of cool and on this idea
of the Haunted House being a walk through attraction, Sleeping
Beauty's Castle features a walk through story display that's been
there since the opening, and he had really never been
too happy with it. And then, to make matters worse,
(02:36):
we talked about this in the first episode. There had
been a debate over whether the exterior should look pristine
or just a shambles. UH. Walt wanted it to look
pristine to match the rest of the park, and other
designers wanted it to look crumbling, like a crumbling old
mansion and a little rundown like a haunted house. Normally
would the kind of place you'd look at and go
that is haunted me. Yeah, So that had been a
(02:58):
little bit of a problem, and by Quinn ken Anderson,
who was head of UH this project at the time,
UH had been talking to Walt about it, he just
decided he would move to focusing on the interior and
they would table this issue. But they had just stopped
talking about the outside of the attraction. There had never
been an agreement on how it was actually gonna look,
(03:19):
and so that remained unresolved. So as the nineteen fifties
came to a close, so did plans for a Disneyland
Haunted House, and they basically put the whole thing on hold. Yeah,
So the Haunted House, uh, just to um review quickly,
had been part of the plan for Disneyland since Walt
(03:39):
first envisioned the whole park in so they had spent
almost a decade at this point working on things, and
then they just had to kind of say goodbye to
it for a bit. Yeah, and sometimes I get frustrated
when I am banging my head against something trying to
work on it for like an hour and a half
and they have been banging their head is working on
(04:00):
this for like ten years. Yeah, I mean, not the
whole team, although they do go on for many more years.
But so the Haunted House project then languished until so
it was a couple of years, but what was still
really eager to expand the park, and the W E.
D Team or WED depending on what you prefer, which
(04:21):
eventually became Disney Imagineering, decided that they were going to
once again take on this troubled project. There was such
a strong desire to get this thing up and running
that they started passing out handbills in the park that
very year, announcing that in nineteen sixty three, two years
down the road, the Haunted Mansion, as it was now
officially was being called would be open to guests and haunts.
(04:44):
So a little bit of let's light a fire under
ourselves to get this done, and also a little bit
maybe putting some of the cart before the horse. Yeah,
I mean they were throttled by the deadline, and so
construction really did kind of catapult forward, but even so
was not quite at the pace that was hoped for. Uh.
And while the exterior of the Haunted Mansion was in
(05:05):
place pristine by the way, they went with Walt's pristine plan,
which is not really a surprise. Uh. In nine three,
the exterior was completely done, but the interior was far
from finished. Walt asked Martins Sklar to come up with
copy for a real estate sign that would be inviting
ghosts to move into this home in Disneyland. And here's
(05:28):
the sign that appeared outside the empty building. Do you
want to read this? I bet you like it? Sure? Uh.
It reads Notice all ghosts and restless spirits post lifetime
leases are now available in this haunted mansion. Don't be
left out in the sunshine. Enjoy active retirement in this
country club atmosphere for the fashionable address for famous ghosts.
(05:52):
Ghosts trying to make a name for themselves and ghosts
Afraid to Live by themselves. Leases include license to scare
the daylights out of guests visiting the Portrait Gallery, Museum
of the Supernatural, Graveyard, and other happy hunting grounds. For reservations,
send resume of past experience to Ghost Relations Department, Disneyland.
Please do not apply in person. I love that it's
(06:15):
so charming. So things were behind schedule at this point,
but they were progressing along. Guests were getting at least
a little sense of the flavor of the attraction because
the exterior was there, and so things were kind of
back on course. But then they were put on hold
again when Walt agreed to build four attractions for the
nineteen sixty four to nineteen sixty five World's Fair. Yeah,
(06:39):
and this is an interesting one as a brief aside.
I have heard people say before when you're talking about
disney history, like you do, which I do. Uh, there's
often this misconception that the World's Fair actually came before
Disneyland opened, and that because some of the pieces that
Walt worked on for the World's Fair moved into disney Land.
(07:00):
I think there's been this confusion about the timing of
when Disneyland happened, but in fact it was up and running.
They just paused on all current projects. Um, because those
four projects that Walt was doing for the World's Fair
ate up all of his time and all of the
time of the designers and artists that he routinely used,
because he had put them all to work on these
(07:21):
World's Fair projects. Uh So every project for Disneyland that
was going on, including the Haunted Mansion, was just going
to have to wait until the attractions for the New
York displays were complete. Once the World's Fair projects were completed,
it was time to go back to the Haunted Mansion.
So in July nineteen sixty four, the team was reassembled
and it shuffled around a little bit. Ken Anderson had
(07:44):
gone back to work in the studios, but Rollie Crump
and Yale Gracie returned to the mansion, and Walt added
Mark Davis, Claude Coats, and x Attensio to the mix.
X is short for Xavier yes Um and Mark David,
who had worked on other Disneyland attractions, was tasked with
creating the inhabitants of the mansion, so the ghosts were
(08:06):
under him. Uh. Claude Coates put his skills as a
background artist to work, uh, designing the environments throughout the attraction,
and Extencio worked on the script. He had just done
one for Pirates of the Caribbean, so every member had
a role to play and assigned duties. But they were
starting with kind of a clean slate story wise, so
(08:26):
initially they were all coming up with pitches for different
versions of the story that would run the Hide Mansion. Yeah,
and uh, just for clarification, so really Crump and um
Yale Gracie were still working on effects, so we didn't
mention them, but they were all still working on it. Uh.
And there was another major element of this reboot of
the project and that they had decided to add an omnimover,
(08:49):
which is a car system rather than a walk through
as had originally been envisioned, so that they could keep
people moving through this attraction at the rate of thousands
of people per hour. So that's how the Doomed Keys
were formed, uh, which are the cars that go through
the Haunted Mansion. And one of the installations that Disney
and his team had done for the World's Fair was
this people mover that had been developed in conjunction with
(09:11):
the Ford Motor Company. Uh, And it was basically this
omnimover system and that had been a really great success
at the World's Fair, so it pretty quickly was that
concept was adopted over, not just into the Haunted Mansion,
but in several places in Disney. That's a common element
that you will see. And there is still a people
mover Magic Kingdom. Oh, it's a magic Kingdom. You were right,
(09:35):
I was smashing them all in my head together. Well,
it seems it's in Tomorrowland, which is a little futuristic,
so people it's easy to do that, to slip it
over to like Epcot's Future World. Yeah, it's a great
place to take a break, especially if it's hot out
to eat a nice craol ride. You get to go
inside some of the attractions while you just sit placidly.
Pretty much anything that involves sitting in a boat or
(09:57):
sitting in a little car, yea for like ten minute,
about ten minutes awesome. Yes, Roly Crump's work when they
were working on concepts was way outside of what the
other men were working on, and even he admitted when
Watt was reviewing everybody's work, but he didn't know how
it fit into the attraction. He had designed things like
a melting candleman and as sentient walking chair. Yeah. So,
(10:20):
as they were all pitching these new versions of the
Haunted Mansion story and like how it would all go
together in terms of uh continuous thematic thread, Roly Crump
was just drawing these bizarre things that no one knew
what to do with, and he was off in his
own world of weak, weird kind of. I mean, he's
still alive today and he talks about it a lot. Uh,
(10:42):
But yeah, his style of art is really unique. Um,
it's now pretty much accepted that he his some of
his crazy designs are what led to the famous Damma
squallpaper that's got the eyeballs in the Haunted Mansion. For
a while, it was a matter of debate over where
that actually came from. But if you look at some
of his early sketch is and some of these works
he was puzzling over its very similar style to some
(11:05):
of the pieces there. Um. And so after having done
this review where Roly Crump is like, I don't know
how it fits in. It's I'm just spit bawling weird
things that I think, are you know, a little bit
more new and interesting than the standard like haunted mansion
fair Um, because you know, he didn't want to do
the same stuff that any other haunted house would have.
(11:25):
He wanted unique and interesting and outside of what people
had experienced before. Uh So, apparently after not sleeping on it.
Because interviews with Crump, he loves to tell this story,
and he specifically always mentions that when uh Waltz comes
to see him the next morning, that he was actually
there before really Crump got there, sitting in his chair.
(11:46):
He was wearing the same clothes as the day before,
and said that he couldn't get any sleep because he
was thinking about what to do with these designs. Walt
had decided at that point that Role's designs were going
to be part of what he called a museum of
the weird that would fall at the end of the
attraction as guest exited, and that they could walk through
at their own pace, so kind of the way that people,
um will know, now, many rides in any Disney park
(12:10):
will kind of shoot you out into a gift shop.
This was going to shoot you out into this weird museum. Yeah,
Roly Crump's Museum of the weird. Once Crump had been
tasked with making this museum show, he came up with
all kinds of odd and wonderful things for it. He
pulled out things he'd worked on earlier in the attractions
development process and embellished their designs, and he envisioned lots
(12:33):
of things that will kind of ring familiar to those
who've been to the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland or disney World,
like a seance with floating furniture, marble busts whose gazes
followed the guests, portraits that morphed and changed before people's eyes.
There was even a haunted fortune teller's cart. Shall we
(12:57):
get back to the Haunted Mansion? Nothing would these people?
I love it so much so all Disneyland projects, including
the Haunted Mansion, went back on hold again when it
was time for the installations at the World's Fair to
be moved into their permanent residence in Disneyland, And even
after the task was completed, other projects were then prioritized
(13:19):
over the now basically beleaguered Haunted Mansion. Yeah, that's poor.
Things been going on forever. They just were trying to
drag it to the finish line. Empty buildings, standing there
with a sign in front of it. Nobody can go
in because there's not stuff in it. Yet. People are like,
wasn't this supposed to been years ago? Yes? Uh, and
then things kind of take a really rough turn. At
(13:43):
this point, Pirates of the Caribbean is under construction and
almost complete, I think. Uh. Tomorrowland was being refurbished, work
on a second park in Florida was underway, and Walt died,
and to some people it seemed very sudden, But I
think it's one of those cases where he never talked
about being sick. Uh. He had undergone a surgery in
November of nineteen sixty six to remove a tumor in
(14:03):
his lung that had been discovered when he went in
for treatment of a neck injury that he had gotten
from a sporting injury. Uh, and then just that following month,
December fifteenth of that same year, he died of acute
circulatory collapse that was associated with his lung cancer. So
this was really just emotionally devastating for the people who
worked for him, and losing Walt meant that there was
(14:26):
no longer a referee in the whole Haunted Mansion project,
which had always had a problem of just big personalities
clashing and disagreeing over how to do things. Yeah, and
especially when it's set up in that way where you
have a lot of really brilliant people and you're like,
everybody pitched me a new version of this, and they
all want their's to be the one that goes forward.
Of course, it could be contentious. Um and with or
(14:49):
W E D leadership felt that the best solution at
this point was to put the team of Mark Davis
and Claude Coats in charge of the mansion. Uh. At
this point, the Haunt the Pirates of the Caribbean had launched,
and they had worked a lot on it and it
had been very successful, so they seemed like the ideal team. However,
it turned out that after that big success, each of
(15:11):
the men kind of felt like he should be the
one that was in charge, with the other taking a
secondary management role. And you can imagine how well that
played out. Yeah. At this point, there had been a
decade of exasperating on again, off again production, and then
there was the grief over the loss of Disney. The
headbutting of the two leaders created this perfect storm for
(15:32):
what had become really one of the most contentious battles
in Disney imagineering history. It sounds silly, but the question
of whether the Haunted Mansion should be funny or scary
caused these huge arguments and a giant split in the
development team. Yeah, Mark Davis really preferred more of the funny,
(15:52):
character driven stuff, whereas Coates, who was an environmental designer,
wanted it to be about spooky, scary erie. Because they
were having such a hard time co managing this project,
it just became this tug of war between these two concepts,
and designers were kind of lining up on either side
of the debate, and it really was just constant bickering
(16:13):
over something. It seems so small, but you can see
how when the stakes are high, because it is a
thing that's gone on forever. You have just lost your leader,
you are a little chuffed with your you know, success,
and feel like you're not maybe not getting as much
credit as you want. You could see how it could
quickly become this boiler pot, especially with a bunch of
creative people. Well, I'm a creative people. I'm married to
(16:36):
a creative person, and I know we can have some tempers. Yeah,
you know what I think is funny what the jump
scare at the very beginning of the ride, when all
the little kids completely lose their minds. This is because
I'm a terrible person. Now it's fun. It is fun.
I mean, it's you're kind of enjoying everyone experiencing it.
(16:57):
And for some people it is the terror of it.
And it's that's part of like what makes any haunted
house like kind of fun is watching people freak out,
So I understand, So how do they get over this?
Holly Well, eventually, um Dick Irvine, Richard Irvine, who was
the w E D Vice president of design, he kind
of sided more with Mark Davis's vision and so at
(17:19):
least verbally, that was how it settled. But even so,
the attraction kind of is segmented, and if you think
about it when you go through it, it's almost like,
here's the Cloud Coats part, Here's the Mark Davis part.
Um Coats's vision for the Moody and Creepy is really
more the first half of the ride, like when you're
going through all those environments and you're seeing you know,
(17:39):
the creepy coffin with the guy talking out of it
and the long hallway trip and there aren't a lot
of characters about there aren't a lot of like ghosts
that you see. You have like this about mood, like
the doors that are knocking themselves exactly. And then the
second half becomes more about the characters and the illusions
(18:00):
that Mark Davis was really a fan of. So that's
when you start seeing the ghosts in the ballroom and um,
you know Leo to Seance and all of those elements
and the Big Peppers ghost illusion which is the ballroom. Um,
that's when all of that happened. So it's kind of
like the ambiance portion at the front and then the
(18:20):
funner we're gonna set the stage and then we're gonna
have a story. Yeah, And some people have even said,
like as a this kind of set up a perfect
like act break to the story of the Haunted Mansion,
that it did break out in that way that one
half favors one design philosophy and one half favors the other.
So this was only ex Atensio's second ride script. Before
(18:44):
he had written the script for Pirates, he had been
a storyboard artist who worked in the story department at
Disney Studios, and it failed to him to find some
kind of way to marry all these disparate elements that
had been thrown out by this team that was of
two different kind of incompatible stylistic minds. Yeah, poor guy
just like makes sense of this. We've built it, figure
(19:07):
some outing out well, and you and I both edit
as some of our work here. Yeah, And we know
that feeling when you get something that is like somebody
sent you their notes salad and you're like, how do
I make this note salad into a thing one thing
that's not note salad. Now picture two note salads and
they argue with each other and you have to find
(19:28):
a way to make peace. And if you've ever seen
interviews with Extensio, I have to say I can see
where he was the perfect person for this job because
he has a very um calm demeanor. He seems very
you know, sweet and earnest, uh, but also extremely smart.
(19:49):
And so you can see where and and he'll talk
about often how you know, while Disney one of his
greatest um what Exctencio feels is one of Disney's greatest
triumphs was that he could see people were capable of
even if they had never done it and didn't know
they could. Uh. And so that's kind of how he
became a scriptwriter on shows. Disney just said, I think
you're the guy to do this, and he's like, I
(20:09):
don't know how to do this, You'll be fine, and
he was. Uh. And so in the end he drew
inspiration from that real estate signed copy that Marty Sclar
had written. And so that's how he wove the story
of the nine happy Haunts throughout the Haunted Mansion that
are ready to recruit number one thousand and it could
be you. So all the way from the stretching portrait
(20:30):
room to the hitchhiking ghosts, it's all about, you know,
these many different spirits that have made their home in
the Haunted Mansion and how they would love to invite
another member, which I think it's kind of fabulous and
an ingenious solution to this problem. Well, and it wound
up being a really memorable one. Yeah. I've been to
(20:51):
Disney twice in my life, once when I was five
and once when I was in my late thirties. Uh.
And from that five year old to me, you watch
me freak out and um, one of the because you know,
you don't remember giant piles of stuff when you were
five it's usually impression, kind of piecemeal. And one of
(21:13):
the few absolutely clear memories I have of Disney from
the trip when I was five is the hitchhiking ghosts
in the Haunted region. Yes, they're very lovable. I think
I was quite concerned that one of them actually was
coming home with me. I'm always quite sad that they're
not in the car when I leave. Like Phinny has
come on so at long last. On August nine, nineteen
(21:45):
sixty nine, more than eighteen years after the product had started,
and six years after the empty house that appeared on
in a corner of Disneyland, finally the Haunted Mansion opened
its doors. Yeah, if you ever want perspective on a
work project, just remember like Golf was doing his designs,
his first sketches in I also want to gripe away
(22:08):
less about like video games that get perpetually delayed or
maybe never happen. Usually that does not go on for
eighteen years. Yeah, that's it's a long time. And I
can only and I think that also led to kind
of some of the I mean, we we talked about
it tying in, but I can only imagine the fever
pitch of potential frustration and just taught nerves by the
(22:32):
end of it. While they're having all those arguments about
the style of it, and they've just been on this
project for some of them a decade or more, just
be it. They just probably want it done and they
want to go home and have a life. That has
nothing to do with the hont To Mansion. But it
was immensely successful from day one. There are photographs from
day one where you can just see the crowd. Just
(22:52):
the line goes on forever. Uh. And a week later,
the Haunted Mansion set a single day attendance record. Two thousand,
five hundred and sixteen guests went through its doors one day.
I have a hard time imagining that many people's leader.
That's how that works. So there was a rumor leading
up to the opening that one of the reporters at
(23:14):
a press viewing had had a heart attack and died,
causing the ride to be redesigned at the last minute.
Extensio has said that the preview period for attractions always
reveals some problems that need tweaking, but no, no one
died of fright. One of the early tweaks to the
ride was the removal of a character that is now
(23:35):
referred to as the hat Box Ghost. And this is
one that if you are into Disney, particularly if you're
into the Haunt imagine you know about uh. This featured
an elderly looking ghost that was holding surprise a hat box,
and his head was supposed to vanish off of his
shoulders and then appear in the hat box and then
switch back again. But the allusion never worked quite right.
(23:56):
It didn't work as planned at the angle at which
guests would see it in the place that it was
meant to go in the mansion from their doom buggies,
so it just never worked well enough and they ended
up pulling it really quickly because they didn't want a
mediocre effect. Um. And as I said, the hat Box
Ghost is now immensely popular amongst Hana Mansion fans. H
An updated version of it appeared at d twenty three,
(24:19):
which is the official Disney convention, just last month so
this summer, and there have been rumors that if Germo
del Toro's Haunted Mansion movie ever comes to Fruition, which
is another on again, off again, on again, off again,
people say it's canceled. Gaermma Deltor will say in an interview. No,
we're still working on it, so we don't really know. Uh,
but the rumor is that the good old hat Box
(24:40):
Ghost will be prominently featured. But what plans, if any
Disney really has for the character is not known to
the public at this time to the best of my knowledge.
So hopefully hat Box comes back. There is a I
think there is a site called well, I know that
they're a site called doom Buggies dot com, and I
think they have a picture that someone may naged to
take very early on in those either preview days or
(25:03):
one of the first days that it was open before
it got pulled, where you can see what the hat
Box Ghost looks like. Nice. He's very popular. Versions of
the Haunted Mansion have been installed in Walt disney World
in Florida and Tokyo Disneyland. Reimagined versions of the attraction
appear in Disneyland, Paris and Hong Kong. Disneyland. Phantom Manner
(25:23):
in Paris is set in a wild West mining town,
and Mystic Manner in Hong Kong has an adventurer kind
of world explorer theme. Yeah, it's almost for people that
have been to Disney and years prior this place is
now closed, but there used to be a place in
Downtown Disney called the Adventurers Club, which is kind of
like an old school hunting club, like the place you
(25:44):
would expect to see Hemingway hanging out. Uh. And the
Mystic manner is almost like a marriage of that concept
and the Haunted Mansion idea, so they have slightly different twists.
The Phantom manner is fascinating and it has really good music.
Mystic Manner has music done by day any Elfman, so
you know it's awesome. Each holiday season, the original Anaheim
(26:06):
Hanted Mansion in the Tokyo Disneyland Haunted Mansion, UH, they
both get a nightmare before Christmas overlay, which is called
Haunted Mansion Holiday. And so from roughly the beginning of
October through the end of the year and usually the
first couple of days of January, instead of going and
seeing the usual haunts that you would see on the attraction,
the visitors get to see Jack and Sally and Zero
and Oogie Boogie and the rest of the inhabitants of
(26:28):
Halloween Town because it's kind of turned into a Halloween
Town situation and it is amazing. I cried the first
time I was on, and I'm not embarrassed to tell
you because I also love Nightmare before Christmas. Um, it's lovely.
I wish I could go every year, but I never
managed to do so. So uh, probably will not be
a surprise to anyone that there have been many, many
(26:48):
claims of actual ghost sightings in the various haunted mansions
around the world, both by guests and by cast members.
He and there's always the stories of people scattering ashes
in the mansion. I don't like that idea, no, and
Disney doesn't either. I don't know if there have ever
been any confirmed ones, but uh, you'll hear kind of
(27:10):
apocryphal stories where people are like, no, we vacuum that
right up. Um, So if you think you might want
to do that, no, that you're not. Really They're going
to end up in a vacuum, and that seems inconsiderate
of Yeah, it's not good, you know. I don't want
to dison how people choose to express their grief and
their wishes of loved ones. I do not really approve
(27:33):
of the idea of getting other people's remains on me
while I'm in a theme park. Rod I adn't right,
I understand there's no where I would rather be scattered,
but you know, those are the rules. And what is
missing in this final build of the Haunted Mansion was
Raley Crump's Museum of the Weird because as they were,
(27:53):
you know, really ramping up towards the that last chunk
of production, they realized it wasn't gonna work. Um, So
it got scrapped. But many of his ideas for the
museum are in the attraction itself. Uh And as we mentioned,
like the seance room with the floating furniture that was
his idea originally. The busts that follow people, which is
a really cool trick. They're actually cast in recess, so
(28:17):
they're set back and it's just kind of a natural
cool effect that when you go by the way they're painted,
they look like they're bus standing outside, but they're actually
a negative and it looks like they're following you. It's awesome. Um.
And what's interesting is that, um there is in some
of the parks there's a souvenir stand outside because it
(28:38):
doesn't dump out into a gift shop, and the souvenir
stand looks a lot like really Crump's Haunted Fortune Teller
cart which is kind of fun. And that's another thing
that there have been rumblings about through the years that
the Museum of the Weird is being kicked around as
a possible starting point for a full length feature film script,
that it's going to be incorporated into a video game.
(28:59):
There have even and rumors that it's going to be
its own attraction eventually, but so far those have not materialized.
There was a story I think that l A Times
ran like three years ago, that Ahmed Zappa was working
on a script treatment about it, and then Disney was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
that's not happening. So you don't know, there's there's always
more to talk about with hot imagine more. Yeah, I mean,
(29:22):
we've hit on some of the higher points, but there's
so much story there and legacy, and because so many
of those imagineers are still with us and are often, um,
you know, make appearances or do interviews. Really Crump's book
came out at the end of last year, and it's
quite fun. He's kind of a pistol. He's got an
interesting history both in and outside of Disney, and you know,
(29:44):
he's led a wildlife in many ways, and he doesn't
really hold back. He's very fun excitencia. Like I said,
just comes across as the sweetest man you would ever
want to meet on the planet. And they love to
wax rapsodic and talk about the old times and working
on this project. And I'm sure it was a trial
I fire, but they still seem to look back at
it kind of lovingly because they recognize what it became. Yeah,
(30:05):
if I had been working at Disney in the in
the fifties, I'm sure I would be waxing or rephsodic
about that all the time, even if it was really hard,
because of what it grew into. Yeah, and it does
sound like it again. It's one of those things where
we see it today and it's a huge, massive company
and you know, uh, many people talk about how they
(30:27):
their dream job would be to work for Disney, and
it was even for these guys. But I think people
don't realize it wasn't like you instantly get rich. Like
I was watching an interview with Roly Crump not too
long ago, and he was saying when he got hired
at Disney, they offered him less than half of what
he was making working in Uh. I think a ceramic
tile factory, and he was like, I have a kid
on the way, I don't know what to do. Man,
(30:49):
I really want to work for Disney. Uh So he
took it, and he had to take a second job.
Like I mean, these weren't like Pie in the Sky,
super dreamy, easy coasting jobs. They worked really, really hard.
Word so I could see, we're looking back, you would
be very proud of that work because you really had
to be committed. Uh So that's our who let the
Hawks rest for now? Hey, as we close out this
(31:12):
Saturday Classic, we wanted to mention that ex Atensio, who
we spoke about as being still alive in the second installment,
did pass away on September tenth of this year. If
you listen to last week's Classic, which is part one
of this, you may recall that we mentioned at the
beginning that we selected these episodes specifically is our way
to acknowledge his death and honor his memory. If you
(31:33):
want to email us, our email address is History Podcast
at how stuff Works dot com, and you can find
us across the spectrum of social media as Missed in History.
You can also find us at missed in History dot com,
and you can visit our parent company, how stuff Works
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
(31:59):
and thousands of other topics, visit how staff works dot com.
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