Today, well actually for the next few days (there's so much info to post that it would be too long and too overwhelming to read in one day!) I will be posting the various differences of Disney's The Haunted Mansion stateside and worldwide!
Today - we will be 'travelling' to the Octagonal Room!
The following are elements that are unique to each particular attraction.
Entrance
Disneyland:
Guests enter from New Orleans Square.
Years ago, the cemetery paid tribute to the Imagineers, much like the one at Florida and Tokyo, but was changed when the queue was expanded some time after the mid-80s, to make room for the handicapped entrance.
When plans were being made for a Young Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, Disney bought a hearse for the show. When plans for the show were scrapped, the hearse was given an invisible phantom horse and placed outside the Disneyland mansion.
Walt Disney World:
Guests enter from Liberty Square.
An invisible phantom horse and hearse, this one black, also waits here.
One feature unique to the Florida mansion is a tombstone for Madame Leota. On it is a bronze casting of her face that, by way of animatronics, occasionally opens its eyes and looks around. In March 2011 an interactive queue was added, featuring such elements as a murder mystery, a sea captain's grave that spits water, a musical crypt, a pipe organ, a library with moving books, and a book that writes itself. Many of the original graves were moved.
In the back of the pet cemetery, there is a headstone of Mr. Toad in tribute to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, which closed in 1998.
Tokyo Disneyland:
Guests enter from Fantasyland.
In comparison to the other mansions, the Tokyo mansion is more ramshackled and overgrown. A window hangs on its hinges, two ominous griffin statues rest at the entryway, and the gardens are overgrown and messy. Several crypts and fountains appear to be broken, the crypts emptied.
Disneyland Paris
Guests enter through Frontierland.
Hong Kong Disneyland
Guests enter through Mystic Point.
Foyer
Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland:
A portrait of the master of the house rests above the fireplace and slowly transforms into a portrait of a rotting corpse. In the entranceway there are also cobweb-covered chandeliers.
Disneyland:
Guests enter a small rectangular room containing a dusty chandelier and a wooden floor (in the design of a spider's web).
Disneyland Paris
A portrait of Melanie Ravenswood fades in and out through a mirror.
Octagonal Room
Disneyland and Disneyland Paris:
In the Disneyland version and Phantom Manor, the room is, in fact, a cleverly concealed OTIS elevator. The room is lowered slowly as the ceiling remains in place to give the illusion that the room is stretching. This brings the guests down to where the ride begins, below ground level. This elevator effect was necessary to lower the guests below the level of the railroad which circles Disneyland. The actual ride building of this attraction is located outside the berm surrounding the park, and the Disney Imagineers developed this mechanism to lower the guests to the gallery leading to the ride building.
Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland:
Guests enter a smaller chamber in which the floor is stationary while the ceiling itself rises, as do the portraits. As both rides (Florida and Tokyo) were built on stable ground, there was no need to lower guests down and out of the park. For the 2007 refurbishment, Walt Disney World's stretch room was given new wallpaper and stretching sounds. The original thunder sound effects were also replaced with more realistic, louder thunder and lightning effects. After the stretching sequence, as guests exit, they can hear the gargoyles whisper.
Disneyland Paris
Instead of the regular portraits, guests see four portraits of Melanie. In the first one, Melanie steps through a stream. In the second, she holds a parasol, in the third, she picks flowers, and in the fourth, she is having a picnic with her fiance. As the room stretches:
Melanie steps through a stream, and reaching for her foot is a hand, connected to a water monster.
Melanie clutches a parasol, while in a boat, above a vertical waterfall.
Melanie picks flowers, above a gravestone, while a skeleton emerges from the ground.
Melanie is having a picnic with her fiance, as ants raid their food, and a snake, scorpion, spider and water beetle approach.
The body of the groom, hanged from the rafters in the ceiling over the stretching room, replaces the hanged version of the "Ghost Host."
Tomorrow, our journey continues!
Could you be the 1 that they make more room for??!!! 999 ghosts wouldn't mind!
No comments:
Post a Comment