Foxx Nolte - Boundless Realm: Deep Explorations Inside Disneys Haunted Mansion (Theme Park Design Book)

Boundless Realm

Deep Explorations Inside Disneys Haunted Mansion

Foxx Nolte

Inklingwood Press

FIRST EDITION
Published by Inklingwood Press

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanic methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations for critical, educational, and non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This book is not associated with The Walt Disney Company. Quotations and images used throughout this book either have permission to be used or are used under Fair Use for educational and research purposes. Various nomenclature including theme park names, land names, attraction names, and intellectual property is copyright its respective owner.

Although every precaution has been taken to verify the accuracy of the information contained herein, no responsibility is assumed for any errors or omissions, and no liability is assumed for damages that may result from the use of this information.

Many thanks to the early Haunted Mansion web pioneers: Jeff Baham, Jared Grey, and Tim McKenny.

For research, fact checking and general support: Mike Lee, Dan Olson, Tom Morris, Chris Merritt, Michael Crawford, Brandon Wane, Steven Vagnini, Brice Croskey, Dave Ensign, Cory Doctorow, Martin Smith, Steven Curler and Jon Plant.

Also thanks to my parents, Bill and Dee, for raising a weird kid.

The bourgeois interior of the 1860s to the 1890s - with gigantic sideboards distended with carvings, the sunless corners where potted palms sit, the balcony embattled behind its balustrade, and the long corridors with their singing gas flames - fittingly houses only the corpse.

- Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street

Over the years Disney repeated to his animators: Make it read ! Meaning, make the action distinct and recognizable. No contradictions, no ambiguities.

- Bob Thomas, Walt Disney:
An American Original

In the lexicon of Disney, there are several familiar moods: music, magic, family, happy endings. Oh, and one more. Terror.

None of the rest of it works without the critical element of fear. Without sorrow, joy is empty; without peril, triumph has no meaning. Walt Disney seems to have had a deep understanding of the dark side of life that he used to heighten the heroism in his works. When creating his stories for animation, live-action films, television, and even Disneyland, Walt Disney was fearless about using fear as a primary element.

From Mickeys early nemesis Pete to the terpsichorean undead of Skeleton Dance ; from the various witches and stepmothers of classic animation, to the dark, accursed deity Chernabog, to the Headless Horseman; Disney culture is rife with fright. Walt knew that peril is necessary in building compelling storytelling.

Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston wrote in their classic 1993 book The Disney Villain , When we would see his face screwed up, eyes half closed, trying to figure out what villainous act would do the most harm, we felt he had experienced much of that from bullies in his own childhood. He certainly met much villainy throughout his life. The greater his success, the more conflict he encountered as others tried to take it away from him.

Walts Midwestern childhood was no doubt infused with family ghosts stories, spooky rural legends, and campfire tales of hauntings and bewitchment. Most towns had a haunted house, a deserted farmhouse or abandoned town home that was the subject of whispers and unease.

Its no surprise that when Disneyland was being designed, Disney Legend Harper Goffs earliest renderings of Main Street, U.S.A. featured just such a haunted house.

When Disneyland opened, the villains of Walts animated features were ported over into the Fantasyland dark rides based upon those stories - Captain Hook menaces Peter Pan in Never Land to this day, and the Wicked Queen transforms into a haggard peddler woman to threaten Snow White. In 1983, a new Pinocchio attraction brought the little wooden boys nemeses to dimensional life, from Foulfellow and Gideon to Stromboli and Monstro the Whale. Each of them has a propelling story element: the peril of the hero and the Guest as the surrogate.

When Walts haunted house finally opened at Disneyland a few years after his passing, its interesting to note that it takes a strange viewpoint on fearan eerie tour of a dusty and long-abandoned house begins subtly, on the trail of the tingling spine, and progresses apace, growing in its tempo and thematic temperament to a frenetic, but comedic climax in the graveyardwith the visitors to this strange mansion themselves acting as the fulcrum between comedy and creepiness.

More than anything, and beyond the clinical necessity of conflict in creating compelling stories, Walts final fright, perhaps more than any other of his works, reveals his attitude about fearthat being scared can be really fun.

Walt said once, What I understand about kids that nobody else understands, is that they think its delicious to be frightened, Walts friend and the star of Mary Poppins , Dick Van Dyke, recalled. Kids love to be scared. They love ghost stories. And he always put the witch or something in there, to give them that delicious goose bump. He knew.

JEFF KURTTI is the most prolific nonfiction legacy author in Disney history, with more than 40 volumes to his credit over 25 years. A leading authority on The Walt Disney Company, its founder, and its history, he is also a writer-director of award-winning documentary content, and a respected public speaker. For several years, he worked for Walt Disney Imagineering, the theme park design division of The Walt Disney Company, and then for the Corporate Special Projects department of Disney. Since 1995, Kurtti has enjoyed a career as an author, writer, and consultant in the motion picture, theater, and themed design industries, including as creative director, content consultant, and media producer for The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco .

If it can be believed, there was a time when it was not terribly fashionable to like the Haunted Mansion . In the past twenty years, the attraction has graduated from tradition to cultural institution, and I have been there to see it. After fifty years it and its older sister Pirates of the Caribbean have finally begun to approach something resembling respectability - the two default examples for those who want to hold up the craft of the themed show as something that could be called Art . Yet there was a point in time where not only the Haunted Mansion , but the entire institution of the kind of sensibility which it represented seemed to be sitting on crumbling foundations.