Saturday, July 21, 2007

The Haunted Mansion behind the scenes - Artwork and Videos



Undoubtedly one of Disney's Magic Kingdom most favorite attraction, the Haunted Mansion is still one of the best E-Ticket ever made, the one you can ride forever , and it's still magical each time you ride it.

As everybody knows, Marc Davis designed most of the scenes of the Mansion...






...That WDI wizards - below, special effects master Yale Gracey - have recreate in 3D with Audio-Animatronics



But the guests are always wondering how some of the special effects were done.
The first video below is with Walt Disney himself presenting the future attraction surrounded with legendary Imagineers like Marc Davis and others...



The next one is from the Discovery channel and is a short walk-through with legendary Imagineer Tony Baxter. Tony don't reveal a lot of secrets in this one, but it's always a pleasure to see Tony!



This other 10 minutes video will tell you more about the history and the effects of the Mansion. And Tony Baxter, Marty Sklar, Bruce Gordon, sculptor Blaine Gibson, Wayne Jackson, and many other imagineers will show you much more of the "behind the scenes.



But it's this other 10 minutes youtube video that will show you the imagineers at work in the sixties, creating the ghosts of the mansion. This video is coming from Disney's tv show "The Wonderful World of Color" in which the Haunted Mansion made its debut.
The first part of it is with the imagineers and the second part is a ride-through with - guess who? - Kurt Russell and the Osmonds , and, yes, they were young at that time!



You can find much more renderings and the whole story of the making of the attraction in the great Jason Surell book - the best book ever written on the "Haunted Mansion" - a "must have" if you don't have it yet!



Artwork: copyright Disney

Videos: copyright Discovery channel and Disney

All my thanks to freedogshampoo, MegaRob64 and waltdisneyforever for their embedded youtube videos.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome site, I do hope at some point to get your book too ! I referenced it in a paper i wrote on the history of Rollercoasters. Great collection of things you have here.

Anonymous said...

Just a note, but all of the videos have been pulled due to terms of use violations.