Happy anniversary...

...a day late...to the Disneyland Haunted Mansion.

I've never been to Disneyland. But I have been to the Disneyworld Haunted Mansion in Orlando several times. It's fun.

Jim Denney's new book, Walt's Disneyland, gives some of the background on how this attraction came into being and some of its evolution. According to Jim:

Though the Haunted Mansion was not opened until two and a half years after Walt's death, a haunted house was one of the earliest ideas Walt had for his Park. In 1951, when Walt planned to build Mickey Mouse Park near the Burbank studio [Disney realized that the proposed site was going to be too small], he assigned conceptual artist Harper Goff to prepare drawings of a..."ghost house."

Eventually, the walk-through concept for the attraction was abandoned and it became one of the most successful dark rides, including loading guests in cars that take them through ail the spooky doings in a New Orleans-style mansion that appears to the very definition of respectability on the outside, but is full of ghosts and ghouls and cornball humor on the inside. I enjoy this attraction for its humor as well as for the audioanimatronix.

Happy belated anniversary to the Haunted Mansion.

Thanks to my daughter for linking to this video on Facebook.



[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]