The Disney Frontier Blog

Disney podcast superstar Ricky Brigante from the Inside the Magic Podcast has created a dream job video for the CareerBuilder.com competition. I posted about this competition back in January. Here is the video:

Click here to vote for him!

Like It’s a Small World, the Haunted Mansion also receives special treatment during the holidays. What better theme to use for this attraction then The Nightmare Before Christmas. This video shows the decorations on the outside and the scene on the inside.

Previously, I reported that Ricky from the Inside the Magic Podcast was working on a Haunted Mansion themed room. He has completed it and it looks awesome. Boy am I jealous. He posted several pictures including a Quicktime Virtual Reality file.

I am inspired to ask the question after seeing the progress that Ricky is making on his Haunted Mansion room. If you listen to the Inside the Magic podcast, then you know what a fan he is of the attraction and he has now dedicated a room in his house to the theme. It looks like it will be a lot of fun when it’s done.

I don’t have an extra room in my house but both my kids would love it if their room was done out completely around a theme. However, there is a huge difference between buying wall hangings and theming the entire room like Ricky is doing.

If I had the luxury of a project like this, I would want to build a room themed around vintage disney memorabilia. If you go to the Disneyland Hotel, they have a huge glass case on one wall with old Disney and Disneyland merchandise from both the park and from stores. Things like lunch boxes, puzzles, games, figures and much more (I’ll take a picture the next time I’m there).

How about you? What kind of room would you build?

Technorati Tags: Haunted Mansion, decorations, Vintage

Daveland Blog has posted a fantastic aerial photo of Disneyland from 1966. You can see huge amounts of construction going on at the park including the Haunted Mansion, Its a Small World and Pirates of the Caribbean. Click through to his site and view the large file. You can zoom in on certain areas to see fine details. Also, check out the comments, there is some good conversation going on.

Technorati Tags: 1966, aerial, Disneyland, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Vintage

Oogie Boogie gets in on the Christmasy action. Photo courtesy of wdwinfo.com.

This is a picture of the giant pile of pumpkins. Photo courtesy of wdwinfo.com.

This photo is a close up of the crazy countdown clock on the outside of the mansion. Photo courtesy of wdwinfo.com.

If I had a really good camera, my photos of the Haunted Mansion in holiday mode would have turned out much better. In fact, upon reviewing them I have decided not to even use them. Luckily, there is a great gallery of lovely pictures available online at DIS. They are to be credited for this shot of the mansion exterior at dusk. Beautiful.

Oh, and spoilers will follow, so if you haven’t seen the movie or want to be surprised by the ride, skip this post!

According to what I’ve heard, anyone visiting Disneyland between early October and New Year’s is now treated to a new version of the Haunted Mansion ride. Themed on the sweetly dark little Tim Burton/Disney gem The Nightmare Before Christmas, the “Haunted Mansion Holiday” tells the story of Jack Skellington’s brief career as Sandy Claws. Keith and I were lucky enough to see it on our Halloween trip, about two years after we found out about the change and vowed to experience it for ourselves.

Now, I absolutely love the Haunted Mansion. It’s arguably one of my favorite rides in the park, and I never miss it. I’ve always been fond of most macabre, spooky, goth-influenced books, music, films, and so-forth. I went in expecting to be a solid proponent of the Nightmare Before Christmas makeover.

The outside of the mansion was awesome. There was a twisted clock face hanging from the upper balcony, a grove of jack-o-lanterns staked in place on the hill, and, at night, the glow of hundreds of candles and lit pumpkins along the porches. Like I said, beautiful — and much darker than most Disney fare.

Thinking back to the movie, there are two distinct themes carried out in Tim Burton’s visual style. There’s the dark, creepy Jack and Sally imagery of HalloweenTown.

And there’s the sweet, fluffy, day-glo glitter of ChristmasTown. In the film, these thematic elements work together to tell the story. The Haunted Mansion Holiday sort of merges the two, with day-glo winning out and Oogie Boogie more prominently featured than Sally, or other characters that are more Halloween.

If you like the Christmas element of the movie, you’ll absolutely love the ride. If you’re looking for the Halloween element (which we were, of course, on Halloween weekend), you’ll catch it mixed in more subtly. Zero floating in place of the floating candleabra, the pile of jack-o-lanterns in the snow, and the mini-Sally along the last few moments of the ride, were the shining moments for me.

I left the ride glad that I saw it once, but sorry that I wouldn’t get a chance to visit the real Haunted Mansion this trip. And I was also surprised that the Jack and Sally store, relocated to a new space in New Orleans, seemed not to have as much fun Nightmare stuff as it has in years past. Still, the experience was worth the fastpass for me, even just to know I was seeing something that only a small percentage of park visitors ever get to see.

From YouTube User KohrsFilm: This is a movie I made a long time ago. It’s the same as the Haunted mansion ride at Disneyland. I made the sets out of construction paper and paper bags. I redid the audio because my high little kid voice doing the Ghost Host just sounded stupid.

[via Boing Boing]