January 18, 2025, 2:12 PM ·
The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland reopened today after what amounts to a year-long refurbishment. It will be the first time guests have been able to experience the original Mansion since 2023, when it was transformed to the Nightmare Before Christmas for an increasingly lengthy stay. A brand-new queue and gift shop are part of the major changes. And it is the latter that has drawn the ire of theme park fans and, frankly, people with eyeballs, since it was first erected. There’s the unappealing, perhaps prefabricated design. There’s how awkward it looks whether you’re coming from Bayou Country or up from New Orleans Square. And then there’s the interior, where art created by artificial intelligence was found wrecking these halls. It is, by no means, Imagineering’s best work. And given the extreme lack of transparency, we don’t know who to blame. That’s become increasingly clear over the past decade of Imagineering. Rumors suggest projects are wildly over budget, with the see-saw between Business Interests and Creative Desires more lopsided than ever. But we do know what we can see: There’s something off at Walt Disney Imagineering. The recently opened Tiana’s Bayou Adventure was always going to receive somewhat mixed reviews because it replaced a classic, albeit one with, ah, skeletons in its closet. And foyer. You get the idea. But recent hotel projects have also fallen short of what Disney fans expect from the luxury entertainment company. The same can be said of long-gestating projects such as the Communicore Hall and Moana’s Journey of Water. If Imagineering is aware of these criticisms, I suspect they are, it’s less clear if they’re taking them seriously. The Los Angeles Times was given a tour of the Haunted Mansion by Kim Irvine, the executive creative director of the Disneyland arm of Walt Disney Imagineering. Her history with the resort is well known to fans; she is a second-generation Imagineer — her mother, Leota Toombs, provided the face for Madame Leota. When the subject of the knockoff art in the gift shop came up, this was Irvine’s response: “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.”It’s telling that Irvine’s first reaction is a defensive one. Yes, how did some of the most passionate, dedicated fans on god’s green earth notice a piece of art clearly created by artificial intelligence. That first reaction suggests dismay that Imagineering was caught, not that it happened in the first place. And then there’s the distancing. Who is the they that Irvine speaks of? If someone other than Imagineering was to blame for the design of the store, fair enough. I’m not here to adjudicate the power politics of a company as large as Disney. But if it was Imagineering, there is no “they” to speak of. Irvine is responsible for the output of the outfit she is, presumably, paid handsomely to manage. That’s part of the gig. The interview goes on to cover the update to the Bride in the Haunted Mansion, no longer a ghostly murderer as has been the case for the past 20 years. No, the Bride will now strike a more somber tone; she is now a victim of heartbreak, not a greedy axe murderer. The new bride, and new tone, better fit the aesthetic the attic long captured. The melancholy of the “Bridal Chorus” has always clashed thematically with the Bride’s sinister grin.But here too, Irvine’s messaging is odd:”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.”This is probably worthy of its own piece, but were you celebrating someone chopping off her husband’s heads? Or was it merely a piece of the loose narrative that has been told in the Haunted Mansion since the 1960s? You didn’t build a statue to this would-be axe murderer in downtown Anaheim, you included her in a macabre ghost house. What are we doing here? The interview culminates in the infamous stretching room, where the Hanging Man, implied to be our disembodied Ghost Host, has been the subject of speculation for years. It appears he has survived this latest cut, though Irvine indicates this has more to do with the challenges associated with modifying the structure than anything else. “We’re still looking at that,” Irvine says. “That one is complicated, structurally … One thing at a time.”This sort of thing has been tricky for Disney in the past. The less savory aspects of Pirates of the Caribbean have long since been binned, though those changes are somewhat undercut by retaining Johnny Depp’s likeness throughout the attraction. And it remains unclear to me whether those changes were responding to guest criticism or, well, something else. (The recent changes made to Jungle Cruise, on the other hand, were long overdue.)Changes to the Bride also seem to be responding to criticism that does not exist. Constance Hatchaway (subtle, the Haunted Mansion is not) appeared in gobs of merch over the past several years, at least suggesting fans were, well, still fans. Changing the Bride makes sense thematically, but it’s not clear that’s why Imagineering made the swap. And it’s that lack of clear direction, limited ambition and fear of criticism that makes me increasingly skeptical Imagineering is capable of making the right call for the right reason. Is removing the Hanging Man the right way to go? I don’t know. But I’m unconvinced Imagineering knows either; and I’m even less convinced they’re up to the challenge of developing a worthy replacement.* * *
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