When The Haunted Mansion reopens tomorrow, January 18, following the removal of the annual Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay, it will be the first time the best Disneyland ride, in its classic form, has been available to guests at Disneyland since August of 2023. The extended closure, due to the construction of a new Haunted Mansion queue outside the building, makes this reopening especially anticipated, but when the mansion opens, it still won’t look quite like it used to.
Walt Disney Imagineering has taken the opportunity to update one of the Haunted Mansion’s major sequences. In addition to improving the technology, the actual story being told has been changed. But this may not be the last major change coming to the mansion.
The Haunted Mansion’s Bride Uses New Technology To Tell An Old Story
One of the most well-known pieces of the Haunted Mansion is The Bride. In the Haunted Mansion’s attic, you find a woman in a wedding dress standing in the corner. Imagineer Kim Irvine (who has a personal connection to the Haunted Mansion), tells The Los Angeles Times that the new mansion will go back to an earlier version of the character compared to what had been there previously. She explained…
When you look back on the original stories of the attic it was much more about our bride who was sadly standing in the corner of this attic, kind of tossed away with the rest of the lost things that were up there…we thought we would kind of move back towards that. She still has all the husbands that she’s lost through the years, but they just disappeared and she doesn’t know what happened to them.
The version of the Bride we had immediately previous was a much darker character. As riders approached her we saw various wedding photos of the same woman with different husbands. Then their heads would vanish. It was clear that the woman was a Black Widow Bride who had murdered multiple husbands.
The new Bride is accompanied by new portraits. In these the husbands will disappear entirely, not just their heads, indicating that the men vanished, but the reason is left mysterious.
To go along with the old story is new technology. The projection effects of the Bride have been completely redone. Now the ghostly Bride is no longer standing in the corner, but floating, while looking forlorn at her loss.
Interestingly, the candelabra the Bride is holding is identical to the one that is seen floating by itself earlier in the attraction. The candelabra has apparently also been added to the later graveyard sequence, giving the impression the Bride is wandering the entire mansion.
The Iconic Hanging Man May Still Be Replaced Down The Road
Another part of the Haunted Mansion, the famous Hitchhiking Ghosts, has also apparently seen some sort of update, though exactly how is apparently being kept under wraps until the attraction reopens. However, Kim Irvine also confirms that another part of the Mansion is being considered for a future change.
The Haunted Mansion has always been a strange blend of horror and humor, and arguably the scariest part of the entire attraction comes at the very beginning. The disembodied Ghost Host that narrates your experience reveals that he only found one way to escape the famous Stretching Room, by hanging himself from the rafters.
It’s been rumored before that the effect could get replaced. Kim Irvine confirms to the Times that the image, clearly one of suicide, is potentially triggering in the modern age. And so while it hasn’t changed yet, it’s under consideration. Irvine explained…
We’re still looking at that. That one is complicated, structurally … One thing at a time.
I’m honestly not sure how I feel about this. I completely understand the feeling that such an image may not be appropriate today, though it doesn’t hit me that way personally. So I can’t adequately gauge it.
And the hanged man, revealed after the guests have been in total darkness, is the scariest part of the ride, possibly the scariest thing at all of Disneyland. Perhaps it could be replaced with something equally chilling, but it seems more likely that taking it out would shift the ride’s delicate balance. This may be the structural complications that Irvine is referring to. Changing the scene could require changing a lot more.
What these recent updates, and the possible future ones make clear, is that the Haunted Mansion, like all Disneyland attractions, will never be truly done.