When Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion reopens Saturday in its classic, non-holiday form it will essentially mark the completion of a nearly yearlong refurbishment project, one that added significant backstory and lore to one of the resort’s most famed and mysterious attractions.
A fixture at the park since its 1969 opening, the Haunted Mansion has been the subject of regular tinkering, its illusions evolving and changing as technology — and culture — advances.
This update will be no different. One of the Mansion’s signature scenes has been remade, and now has a much more somber story to tell.
Walt Disney Imagineering, the secretive arm of the company devoted to theme park experiences, has once again revisited the ride’s trademark attic scene, long home to a tortured bride. There’s still a bride, but she’s never quite looked or acted like this.
It’s not the only major change to an attraction developed during the Walt Disney era. An expanded queue has added narrative-focused gardens and a greenhouse to where guests will wait in line, while a new gift shop adjacent to the ride’s exit expands on the storyline of Mademe Leota, seen in the attraction as a disembodied floating head in a séance scene. Imagery at ride’s end, in which a “ghost will follow you home,” has also been updated.
Walt Disney Imagineering has unveiled a new version of the Haunted Mansion bride, this one appearing to float while holding a candelabra. A beating red heart is seen in her chest, a nod to earlier versions of the figure.
(Richard Harbaugh / Disneyland Resort)
As for the would-be honeymooner in the attic, she’s now utilizing the latest in projection technology, appearing to float before guests as she holds a three-pronged physical candelabra, giving corporal depth to her ethereal glow, which hovers away from a shattered window of a wall. Her blindingly red heart, in a nod to the park’s original vision of the bride, still beats in time to an elongated, gloomy rendition of Richard Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus.”
Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion has for about 55 years stood as a love letter to humanity’s most hedonistic tendencies. Gluttony, greed, sloth, lust and even murder have been on display in its cryptic halls. We’re all going to bite it in the end, the Mansion seems to tell us, so let’s live it up. There are no gilded gates here, but there is one heck of a party, complete with serenading busts, ballroom dancers, excitable opera singers, drunken buffoonery and portraits locked in an endless duel.
And now there’s heartbreak.
The new bride in the Haunted Mansion appears to float, and she is surrounded by pictures of past loves. The men gradually disappear in each portrait, creating a sense of constant loss.
(Richard Harbaugh / Disneyland Resort)
In an exclusive preview of the revamped scene on Tuesday morning at Disneyland, where operations have not been interrupted by the L.A. area fires, I stood across from the new bride for a number of minutes. I marveled at how the hidden-in-the-floor projections allow the ghost to levitate, but also increasingly felt a sense of mourning. Like many locals, my emotions are heightened at the moment, but I was also struck at how much more clearly defined the bride’s face is now, appearing grief-stricken and lovesick. I tell Kim Irvine, the longtime creative director with Imagineering at Disneyland, that unlike the previous bridal scene, here I’m feeling a sense of sorrow.
That’s intentional, Irvine says, noting the team wanted to heighten the “sadness in her face.”
“We thought, what if we change the story back a little bit to the original story that the Imagineers had about a lost bride in the attic mourning the loss of her husbands,” she says. “It was a sad thing. It was a story about lost love.”
The last time the attic received a major overhaul was in the mid-2000s, and that figure, known as the “black widow bride,” had more aggressive, sinister story to tell. Holding an axe, she was portrayed as a murderous, wealth-seeking seductress who had beheaded her husbands, evident by their heads disappearing from the wedding portraits scattered around the attic. Those pictures are still present, only now the full bodies of the men vanish — leaving their departure up to the imagination.
Irvine says the attic scene was redone, in part, because the projection technology on the prior figure had become so outdated as to necessitate regular maintenance. But rather than update what was there, Irvine saw an opportunity to add a greater contrast with the more festive waltz in the prior room as well as to embellish the Mansion’s tale.
The candelabra, for instance, that the character is holding is identical to the one visible floating in an earlier hall scene, now implying the bride is broodingly wandering the Mansion. Additionally, the candelabra will appear a third time, materializing in a cemetery crypt in the ride’s final act.
The expanded Haunted Mansion grounds are filled with an abundance of details and new fixtures — some slightly spooky, others more mystical.
(Richard Harbaugh / Disneyland Resort)
“The bride that used to be in there was an axe murderer, and in this day and age we have to be really careful about the sensitivities of people,” Irvine says. “We were celebrating someone chopping off her husband’s heads, and it was a weird story. I know the fans — some will like it and some will say, ‘Oh, you changed something again.’ That’s our job. That’s what we’re here for.”
Irvine knows the vast Disneyland fanbase will be paying close attention. As one of Disneyland’s most celebrated attractions, and one created by a cadre of Walt’s original Imagineers, fan attachment to the Haunted Mansion is strong.
The expanded grounds of the Haunted Mansion are dedicated to various characters found inside the attraction, including a section of the gardens inspired by Madame Leota.
(Richard Harbaugh / Disneyland Resort)
And the Disney faithful are especially protective of the Haunted Mansion. To wit: an online controversy erupted earlier this winter when it was discovered that the new shop adjacent to the ride contained a piece of art that was created by artificial intelligence. The presence of AI art felt particularly egregious knowing the value Imagineering places on authentic, hand-crafted work.
The moment clearly weighed on Irvine. “How they can find one thing out of all this cool stuff,” Irvine says of the fan outcry, trailing off as she stood in the shop full of artfully created oddities and references to tarot and mysticism. She stresses that the AI art was a temporary placeholder, noting there are many objects coming to the shop — more paintings and tapestries among them — that are in the process of being fireproofed before final install.
“They felt like it would be appropriate for a short time until they could put something else in,” Irvine says of the ill-fated art. “They never intended to do anything bad, and it is gone now. We’re going to bring something back in that is hand-painted, like all of these other pieces are.”
Irvine’s connection to the Mansion runs deep, and is extremely personal. A veteran with Imagineering for nearly 55 years, Irvine just may be the only living creative at the company who worked with and was mentored by Walt’s initial team of designers, including that of her mother, Leota Toombs, one of the first women to work for Imagineering and the inspiration for Madame Leota.
A painting of Madame Leota, inspired by the late, real-life Imagineer Leota Toombs, hangs in the Haunted Mansion’s gift shop. Toombs was the mother of Kim Irvine, the Imagineer who oversaw recent additions to the Mansion and its grounds.
(Richard Harbaugh / Disneyland Resort)
In the shop, officially designated as Madame Leota’s Somewhere Beyond, hangs a portrait of Toombs in her Haunted Mansion guise. The painting was inspired by one of Irvine’s photos of her mother, and if you look closely you’ll spot Kim’s face in the crystal ball that Leota is holding. “That’s what she was seeing into the future,” Irvine says.
Such hidden details abound — instruments that appear to hover, a chair in the shape of the Mansion’s “Doombuggy” ride vehicle and nods to Leota’s spiritual connection to cats. The low-hanging chandelier one spies when first entering the shop used to dangle inside the Mansion itself, having to be removed when more illusions were added.
“We made this in the early ’80s to go over the crystal ball before it floated,” Irvine says. At the time, Imagineering wanted to update a relatively “common” chandelier with a spookier, spider web-inspired look.
A chandelier that hangs in the Haunted Mansion gift shop was once found inside the attraction itself.
(Richard Harbaugh / Disneyland Resort)
The shop, Irvine says, has been in the works for about a decade. It’s designed as a carriage house, and the story is Madame Leota has taken it over a live-in space. Irvine says its created to rhyme with the Mansion, particularly in its color scheme, utilizing the same tones of green and white, only with different places of emphasis. If the design is less ornate, Irvine notes that’s purposeful, pointing out Antebellum carriage houses were “a little bit knocked down.”
Its size was a challenge. “To shoehorn anything into tiny Disneyland is really hard,” Irvine says, adding, “a lot of people in merchandising would have preferred it was bigger.”
The changes to the queue were driven, in part, by other forces as well, namely to ensure the winding line was up to modern ADA standards and to better handle bottlenecks for Disneyland’s current crowds. Here, too, Irvine looked to expand on the Mansion’s narrative, creating multiple sections with different tones — an ever-so-slightly purple-hued garden is Madame Leota’s space, and a more contemplative area is dedicated to the master of the house, a former sea captain whose narrative has shifted over the years.
A sense of sadness permeates that part of the garden — mermaids drape their hair over the light fixtures, and contrasting female statuaries — one prideful and one sorrowful — are meant to nod to his less than ideal romantic relationships. “His love, his life, his lady, was the sea,” Irvine says.
An area of the expanded Haunted Mansion queue is dedicated to the master of the house, who, according to the attraction’s lore, is said to have been a sea captain. The space is one built for reflection.
(Richard Harbaugh / Disneyland Resort)
Leota’s spot is more irreverent. Of particular interest is a not-so-hidden conduit that runs up the side of the centerpiece tree. Here, Irvine created a tribute to late Imagineer Rolly Crump, known for his whimsical art and one of the first artists to work on the Mansion. “Rolly Crump used to do a thing he called the ‘Egyptian eye,’” Irvine says. “A lot of his drawings for the Mansion have that, so I hand-painted it on the conduit to make it look like a snake and put his initials on the top.”
The gardens are a mix of original and found objects. Irvine stops to point out some Imagineering crafted grates, which hide utilities with astrological flourishes, and says she scoured antique shops from “Pasadena to Temecula” looking for items that would fit. She’s happy to share where she collected a piece. A pair of sleeping lions, for instance, Irvine found in the back pages of a catalog for a Chicago statue company, and two iron griffins were hiding in the corner of an Alhambra marble shop.
Irvine says she isn’t bothered when fans discover where an item was procured. “It would be impossible for us to make everything,” Irvine says.
As Irvine walks the ground, pointing out various weeping trees and plants, she also spots areas to continue to tinker. She wonders if a grassy nook in front the Mansion is too pristine as she laments the fact that a fountain relocated from nearby New Orleans Square is no longer pumping water, noting such complex construction wasn’t in the budget. She points to an iron horse on an utility box, quickly adding the direction of the face and handle may someday need to be changed.
And there may still be more work to do inside the Mansion. When Imagineering last made updates to the attraction in 2021, Irvine’s team spoke of potentially removing the hanging corpse in the stretching room, noting such an image could be triggering for some guests. “We’re still looking at that,” Irvine says. “That one is complicated, structurally … One thing at a time.”
For a palace dedicated to the dead, the Haunted Mansion remains a living entity.