April 24, 2020 • 32 mins
The second 2013 episode in the story of the Haunted Mansion going from concept to fully-realized theme park attraction covers the reboot the team went through after the World's Fair and the loss of their leader.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, listeners. This episode is part of our new playlist
to help everybody get through these times we're living in.
It's our host faves playlist. Yeah, these are just some
of our personal favorites, ones that we had a particular
affinity for, and because these are stressful and trying times,
we tried to stick to the ones that weren't quite
(00:22):
as dour. So hopefully they'll give you a little lift,
Stay safe. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome to the
podcast I'm calling from. I'm Tracy Wilson, and we left
(00:44):
you with a cliffhangers time around. We were talking about
the history of the home and Mansion in Disneyland and
how it came to be built and how that concept
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, uh, really Crump and Yale Gracie were
(01:09):
two gentlemen that we're working on effects that we're going
to go into the Haunted Mansion, and they had done
this 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 their stakeholders
in Disneyland got to walk through it and experience it.
(01:31):
They were all completely blown away by it. So amazing
UH was 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
(01:52):
long lines and log jams. And there's a h term
that's often 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
(02:12):
take to reset some of the effects for each new
group coming through on the tour was just still not
going to be workable. In addition to this whole timing issue,
Walt 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
(02:34):
happy with it. And then, to make matters worse, 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 christine
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
(02:55):
the kind of place you'd look at and go that
is haunted. Yeah, So that had been a little bit
of a problem. And back when 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 extraction. There had never been an
(03:17):
agreement on how it was actually going to look, 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,
(03:38):
had been part of the plan for Disneyland since Walt
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,
(04:00):
and they have been banging their heads working on 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
(04:20):
Team or WED depending on what you prefer, which 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,
(04:40):
the Haunted Mansion, as it was now officially was being called,
would be open to guests and haunts. 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 cata pulled forward. But even so it was
(05:02):
not quite at the pace that was hoped for. Uh.
And while the exterior of the Haunted Mansion was in
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
(05:23):
copy for a real estate sign that would be inviting
ghosts to move into this home in Disneyland. And here's
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
(05:46):
left out in the sunshine. Enjoy active retirement in this
country club atmosphere for the fashionable address for famous ghosts,
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,
(06:09):
send resume of past experience to Ghost Relations Department, Disneyland.
Please do not apply in person. I love that it's
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
(06:31):
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,
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
(06:52):
often this misconception that the World's Fair actually came before
Disneyland opened, and that because some of the pieces that
won't work on for the World's Fair moved into Disneyland.
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
(07:13):
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
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,
(07:37):
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
gone back to work in the studios, but Rolly Crump
and Yale Gracie returned to the mansion, and Walt added
Mark Davis, Claude Coats, and x Attencio to the mix.
X is short for Xavier yes Um and Mark Davis,
(08:02):
who had worked on other Disneyland attractions, was tasked with
creating the inhabitants of the mansion, so the ghosts were
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
(08:25):
starting with some kind of a clean slate story wise,
so 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
(08:47):
the project and that they had decided to add an omnimover,
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 Doom Buggies
were formed, uh, which are the cars that go through
the Haunted Mansion. And one of the installations that Disney
(09:08):
and his team had done for the World's Fair was
this people mover that had been developed in conjunction with
the Ford Motor Company. Uh, and it was basically this
omni mover 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
(09:30):
that you will see. And there is still a people
mover Magic Kingdom. Oh, it's in Magic Kingdom. You were right,
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
(09:50):
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
sitting in a little are yeah for like ten minutes,
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
(10:11):
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,
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
(10:32):
was just drawing these bizarre things that no one knew
what to do it. 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,
But yeah, his style of art is really unique. Um,
it's now pretty much accepted that his some of his
crazy designs are what led to the famous Dama squallpaper
(10:54):
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 sketches and some of these works he was puzzling over,
it's very similar style to some 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
(11:15):
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. 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,
(11:38):
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. 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
(11:59):
what he the 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 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
(12:23):
making this museum show, he came up with all kinds
of odd and wonderful things for it. He pulled out
things he had worked on earlier in the attractions development
process and embellished their designs, and he envisioned lots 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
(12:46):
followed the guests, portraits that morphed and changed before people's eyes.
There was even a haunted fortune teller's cart. So all
Disneyland projects, including the Haunted Mansion, went back on hold
(13:07):
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 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
(13:27):
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 open three years ago? Yes? Uh,
and then things kind of take a really rough turn.
At this point, Pirates of the Caribbean is under construction
and almost complete. I think. Uh. Tomorrowland was being refurbished,
(13:49):
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 six to remove a tumor
in 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
(14:10):
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 no longer a referee in the whole Haunted Mansion project,
which had always had a problem of just big personalities
(14:32):
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 there's to be the one that goes forward.
Of course, it could be contentious. Um and with or
W E D leadership felt that the best solution at
this point was to put the team of Mark Davis
(14:53):
and Claude Coats in charge of the mansion. Uh. At
this point, the Haunt the Pirates of the Caribbean had
launched and they had 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
the men kind of felt like he should be the
one that was in charge, with the other taking a
(15:13):
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. Then there
was the grief over the loss of Disney. The headbutting
of the two leaders created this perfect storm for what
had become really one of the most contentious battles in
(15:35):
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, character driven stuff,
whereas Coates, who was an environmental designer, wanted it to
(15:56):
be about spooky, scary erie. And because they are 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 over something.
It seems so small, but you can see how when
(16:16):
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.
I mean, I'm a creative people and married to a
creative person, and I know we can have some tempers. Yeah,
(16:40):
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. No, it's fun. It is fun.
I mean, it's you're kind of enjoying everyone experiencing it.
And for some people it is the terror of it.
And it's that's part of like what makes any haunted
(17:01):
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
least verbally, that was how it settled. But even so,
the attraction kind of is segmented, and if you think
(17:24):
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 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,
the creepy coffin with the guy talking out of it
and the long hallway trip, and there aren't a lot
(17:45):
of characters about. There are 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
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
(18:08):
and the Big Pepper's 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
funner we're gonna set the stage and then we're gonna
have a story. Yeah, and some people of you and said,
like as a this kind of set up a perfect
(18:28):
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
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
(18:50):
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 bowl stylistic minds. Yea poor
guy just like makes sense of this. We've built it,
figure something out well, and you and I both edit
as some of our work here. Yeah, And we know
(19:10):
that feeling of 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 and you have to find
a way to make peace. And if you've ever seen
interviews with Extensio, I have to say I can see
(19:35):
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.
And so you can see where and and he'll talk
about often how you know, Walt Disney one of his
greatest um, what Extencio feels is one of Disney's greatest
(19:56):
triumphs was that he could see what 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
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
(20:19):
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
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
(20:42):
an ingenious solution to this problem. Well, and it wound
up being a really memorable one. Yeah. I've been to
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
(21:05):
know you don't remember giant piles of stuff when you
were five. Yeah, it's usually impression kind of piecemeal. And
one of the few absolutely clear memories I have of
Disney from the trip when I was five is the
hitchhiking ghosts and the Haunted Mansion. 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
(21:26):
that they're not in the car when I leave, like
Phineas come on in the car. So at long last.
On August nine, nineteen sixty nine, more than eighteen years
after the project had started, and six years after the
empty house that appeared on in a corner of Disneyland,
(21:49):
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 any one.
I also want to gripe away 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
(22:12):
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 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
(22:34):
probably want it done and they want to go home
and have a life. That has nothing to do with
the Honted Mansion. But it was immensely successful from day one.
There are photographs from day one where you can just
see the crowd. Just the line goes on forever. Uh.
(22:57):
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. That's a people leader, that's
how that works. So there was a rumor leading up
to the opening that one of the reporters at a
press viewing had had a heart attack and died, causing
(23:20):
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 referred
to as the hat Box Ghost. And this is one
(23:41):
that if you were into Disney, particularly if you were
into the Hunt 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.
It didn't work as planned at the angle at which
guests we're seeing it in the place that it was
(24:03):
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. Uh.
An updated version of it appeared at d twenty three,
which is the official Disney convention, just last month so
(24:25):
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. Gaermo del Toro 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 Ghost will be prominently featured. But
what plans, if any Disney really has for the character
(24:47):
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 there's a site called doom Buggies dot com,
and I think they have a picture that someone managed
to take very early on in those either preview days
or one of the first days that it was open
before it got pulled, where you can see what the
(25:09):
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 in Paris is set in a wild West mining town,
and Mystic Manner in Hong Kong has an adventurer kind
(25:32):
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
would expect to see Hemingway hanging out. Uh. And the
Mystic Manner is almost like a marriage of that concept
(25:52):
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 Danny Elfman, so you
know it's awesome. Each holiday season, the original Anaheim Hanted
Mansion in the Tokyo Disneyland Hanted Mansion. Uh, they both
get a Nightmare before Christmas overlay, which is called Haunted
(26:14):
Mansion Holiday. And so from roughly the beginning of October
through the end of the year and usually the first
couple 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 Halloween
Town because it's kind of turned into a Halloween Town
situation and it is amazing. I cried the first time
(26:36):
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
claims of actual ghost sightings in the various haunted mansions
around the world, both by guests and by cast members.
(26:57):
He and there's always the story 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
apocryphal stories where people are like, no, we vacuum that
right up. Um, So if you think you might want
(27:17):
to do that, no, that you're not. Really They're going
to end up in a vacuum. And that seems inconsiderate
of other 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 of the idea of getting other people's remains on
(27:39):
me while I'm in a theme park. Rod, You're 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
Ralei Crump's Museum of the Weird because as they were,
you know, really ramping up towards the last chunk of production,
(27:59):
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 they're set back and
(28:21):
it's just kind of a natural cool effect that when
you go by the way they're painted, they look like
they're bust 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 doesn't
dump out into a gift shop, and the souvenir stand
(28:43):
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.
There have even been rumors that it's going to be
its own attraction eventually, but so far those have not materialized.
(29:07):
There's 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 know, there's there's always more
to talk about with then I mansion much more. Yeah,
I mean, we've hit on some of the higher points,
but there's so much story there in legacy, and because
(29:30):
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, he's led a wildlife in many ways.
And he doesn't really hold back. He's very fun excitencia.
(29:51):
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 by fire, but they still seem to
look back at it kind of lovingly because they recognize
what it became. Yeah, if I had been working at
Disney in the in the fifties, I'm sure I would
(30:13):
be waxing or epsodic 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 their dream job would be to work for Disney,
and it was even for these guys. But I think
(30:33):
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,
I really want to work for Disney. Uh So he
(30:54):
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.
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 We'll let the haunts
rest for now. Thank you so much for joining us
(31:18):
today for this classic. If you have heard any kind
of email address or maybe a Facebook you are l
during the course of the episode, that might be obsolete.
It might be doubly obsolete because we have changed our
email address again. You can now reach us at History
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(31:41):
I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
Hey, listeners. This episode is part of our new playlist
to help everybody get through these times we're living in.
It's our host faves playlist. Yeah, these are just some
of our personal favorites, ones that we had a particular
affinity for, and because these are stressful and trying times,
we tried to stick to the ones that weren't quite
(00:22):
as dour. So hopefully they'll give you a little lift,
Stay safe. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome to the
podcast I'm calling from. I'm Tracy Wilson, and we left
(00:44):
you with a cliffhangers time around. We were talking about
the history of the home and Mansion in Disneyland and
how it came to be built and how that concept
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, uh, really Crump and Yale Gracie were
(01:09):
two gentlemen that we're working on effects that we're going
to go into the Haunted Mansion, and they had done
this 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 their stakeholders
in Disneyland got to walk through it and experience it.
(01:31):
They were all completely blown away by it. So amazing
UH was 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
(01:52):
long lines and log jams. And there's a h term
that's often 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
(02:12):
take to reset some of the effects for each new
group coming through on the tour was just still not
going to be workable. In addition to this whole timing issue,
Walt 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
(02:34):
happy with it. And then, to make matters worse, 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 christine
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
(02:55):
the kind of place you'd look at and go that
is haunted. Yeah, So that had been a little bit
of a problem. And back when 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 extraction. There had never been an
(03:17):
agreement on how it was actually going to look, 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,
(03:38):
had been part of the plan for Disneyland since Walt
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,
(04:00):
and they have been banging their heads working on 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
(04:20):
Team or WED depending on what you prefer, which 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,
(04:40):
the Haunted Mansion, as it was now officially was being called,
would be open to guests and haunts. 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 cata pulled forward. But even so it was
(05:02):
not quite at the pace that was hoped for. Uh.
And while the exterior of the Haunted Mansion was in
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
(05:23):
copy for a real estate sign that would be inviting
ghosts to move into this home in Disneyland. And here's
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
(05:46):
left out in the sunshine. Enjoy active retirement in this
country club atmosphere for the fashionable address for famous ghosts,
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,
(06:09):
send resume of past experience to Ghost Relations Department, Disneyland.
Please do not apply in person. I love that it's
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
(06:31):
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,
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
(06:52):
often this misconception that the World's Fair actually came before
Disneyland opened, and that because some of the pieces that
won't work on for the World's Fair moved into Disneyland.
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
(07:13):
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
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,
(07:37):
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
gone back to work in the studios, but Rolly Crump
and Yale Gracie returned to the mansion, and Walt added
Mark Davis, Claude Coats, and x Attencio to the mix.
X is short for Xavier yes Um and Mark Davis,
(08:02):
who had worked on other Disneyland attractions, was tasked with
creating the inhabitants of the mansion, so the ghosts were
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
(08:25):
starting with some kind of a clean slate story wise,
so 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
(08:47):
the project and that they had decided to add an omnimover,
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 Doom Buggies
were formed, uh, which are the cars that go through
the Haunted Mansion. And one of the installations that Disney
(09:08):
and his team had done for the World's Fair was
this people mover that had been developed in conjunction with
the Ford Motor Company. Uh, and it was basically this
omni mover 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
(09:30):
that you will see. And there is still a people
mover Magic Kingdom. Oh, it's in Magic Kingdom. You were right,
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
(09:50):
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
sitting in a little are yeah for like ten minutes,
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
(10:11):
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,
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
(10:32):
was just drawing these bizarre things that no one knew
what to do it. 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,
But yeah, his style of art is really unique. Um,
it's now pretty much accepted that his some of his
crazy designs are what led to the famous Dama squallpaper
(10:54):
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 sketches and some of these works he was puzzling over,
it's very similar style to some 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
(11:15):
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. 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,
(11:38):
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. 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
(11:59):
what he the 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 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
(12:23):
making this museum show, he came up with all kinds
of odd and wonderful things for it. He pulled out
things he had worked on earlier in the attractions development
process and embellished their designs, and he envisioned lots 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
(12:46):
followed the guests, portraits that morphed and changed before people's eyes.
There was even a haunted fortune teller's cart. So all
Disneyland projects, including the Haunted Mansion, went back on hold
(13:07):
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 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
(13:27):
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 open three years ago? Yes? Uh,
and then things kind of take a really rough turn.
At this point, Pirates of the Caribbean is under construction
and almost complete. I think. Uh. Tomorrowland was being refurbished,
(13:49):
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 six to remove a tumor
in 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
(14:10):
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 no longer a referee in the whole Haunted Mansion project,
which had always had a problem of just big personalities
(14:32):
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 there's to be the one that goes forward.
Of course, it could be contentious. Um and with or
W E D leadership felt that the best solution at
this point was to put the team of Mark Davis
(14:53):
and Claude Coats in charge of the mansion. Uh. At
this point, the Haunt the Pirates of the Caribbean had
launched and they had 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
the men kind of felt like he should be the
one that was in charge, with the other taking a
(15:13):
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. Then there
was the grief over the loss of Disney. The headbutting
of the two leaders created this perfect storm for what
had become really one of the most contentious battles in
(15:35):
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, character driven stuff,
whereas Coates, who was an environmental designer, wanted it to
(15:56):
be about spooky, scary erie. And because they are 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 over something.
It seems so small, but you can see how when
(16:16):
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.
I mean, I'm a creative people and married to a
creative person, and I know we can have some tempers. Yeah,
(16:40):
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. No, it's fun. It is fun.
I mean, it's you're kind of enjoying everyone experiencing it.
And for some people it is the terror of it.
And it's that's part of like what makes any haunted
(17:01):
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
least verbally, that was how it settled. But even so,
the attraction kind of is segmented, and if you think
(17:24):
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 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,
the creepy coffin with the guy talking out of it
and the long hallway trip, and there aren't a lot
(17:45):
of characters about. There are 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
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
(18:08):
and the Big Pepper's 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
funner we're gonna set the stage and then we're gonna
have a story. Yeah, and some people of you and said,
like as a this kind of set up a perfect
(18:28):
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
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
(18:50):
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 bowl stylistic minds. Yea poor
guy just like makes sense of this. We've built it,
figure something out well, and you and I both edit
as some of our work here. Yeah, And we know
(19:10):
that feeling of 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 and you have to find
a way to make peace. And if you've ever seen
interviews with Extensio, I have to say I can see
(19:35):
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.
And so you can see where and and he'll talk
about often how you know, Walt Disney one of his
greatest um, what Extencio feels is one of Disney's greatest
(19:56):
triumphs was that he could see what 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
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
(20:19):
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
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
(20:42):
an ingenious solution to this problem. Well, and it wound
up being a really memorable one. Yeah. I've been to
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
(21:05):
know you don't remember giant piles of stuff when you
were five. Yeah, it's usually impression kind of piecemeal. And
one of the few absolutely clear memories I have of
Disney from the trip when I was five is the
hitchhiking ghosts and the Haunted Mansion. 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
(21:26):
that they're not in the car when I leave, like
Phineas come on in the car. So at long last.
On August nine, nineteen sixty nine, more than eighteen years
after the project had started, and six years after the
empty house that appeared on in a corner of Disneyland,
(21:49):
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 any one.
I also want to gripe away 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
(22:12):
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 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
(22:34):
probably want it done and they want to go home
and have a life. That has nothing to do with
the Honted Mansion. But it was immensely successful from day one.
There are photographs from day one where you can just
see the crowd. Just the line goes on forever. Uh.
(22:57):
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. That's a people leader, that's
how that works. So there was a rumor leading up
to the opening that one of the reporters at a
press viewing had had a heart attack and died, causing
(23:20):
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 referred
to as the hat Box Ghost. And this is one
(23:41):
that if you were into Disney, particularly if you were
into the Hunt 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.
It didn't work as planned at the angle at which
guests we're seeing it in the place that it was
(24:03):
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. Uh.
An updated version of it appeared at d twenty three,
which is the official Disney convention, just last month so
(24:25):
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. Gaermo del Toro 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 Ghost will be prominently featured. But
what plans, if any Disney really has for the character
(24:47):
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 there's a site called doom Buggies dot com,
and I think they have a picture that someone managed
to take very early on in those either preview days
or one of the first days that it was open
before it got pulled, where you can see what the
(25:09):
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 in Paris is set in a wild West mining town,
and Mystic Manner in Hong Kong has an adventurer kind
(25:32):
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
would expect to see Hemingway hanging out. Uh. And the
Mystic Manner is almost like a marriage of that concept
(25:52):
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 Danny Elfman, so you
know it's awesome. Each holiday season, the original Anaheim Hanted
Mansion in the Tokyo Disneyland Hanted Mansion. Uh, they both
get a Nightmare before Christmas overlay, which is called Haunted
(26:14):
Mansion Holiday. And so from roughly the beginning of October
through the end of the year and usually the first
couple 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 Halloween
Town because it's kind of turned into a Halloween Town
situation and it is amazing. I cried the first time
(26:36):
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
claims of actual ghost sightings in the various haunted mansions
around the world, both by guests and by cast members.
(26:57):
He and there's always the story 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
apocryphal stories where people are like, no, we vacuum that
right up. Um, So if you think you might want
(27:17):
to do that, no, that you're not. Really They're going
to end up in a vacuum. And that seems inconsiderate
of other 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 of the idea of getting other people's remains on
(27:39):
me while I'm in a theme park. Rod, You're 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
Ralei Crump's Museum of the Weird because as they were,
you know, really ramping up towards the last chunk of production,
(27:59):
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 they're set back and
(28:21):
it's just kind of a natural cool effect that when
you go by the way they're painted, they look like
they're bust 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 doesn't
dump out into a gift shop, and the souvenir stand
(28:43):
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.
There have even been rumors that it's going to be
its own attraction eventually, but so far those have not materialized.
(29:07):
There's 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 know, there's there's always more
to talk about with then I mansion much more. Yeah,
I mean, we've hit on some of the higher points,
but there's so much story there in legacy, and because
(29:30):
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, he's led a wildlife in many ways.
And he doesn't really hold back. He's very fun excitencia.
(29:51):
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 by fire, but they still seem to
look back at it kind of lovingly because they recognize
what it became. Yeah, if I had been working at
Disney in the in the fifties, I'm sure I would
(30:13):
be waxing or epsodic 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 their dream job would be to work for Disney,
and it was even for these guys. But I think
(30:33):
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,
I really want to work for Disney. Uh So he
(30:54):
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.
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 We'll let the haunts
rest for now. Thank you so much for joining us
(31:18):
today for this classic. If you have heard any kind
of email address or maybe a Facebook you are l
during the course of the episode, that might be obsolete.
It might be doubly obsolete because we have changed our
email address again. You can now reach us at History
podcast at i heart radio dot com, and we're all
over social media at missed in History and you can
subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcast, the
(31:41):
I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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