After-Action Report: Haunted Mansion Holiday

We must face it: Haunted Mansion Holiday is something we, as Disneyland fans, need to reckon with.* Yet in the 21 months this blog has been active, the only thoughts I have shared on the matter are that a) I wish it didn't go up so early in the year, and b) I adore the thing it temporarily replaces. I haven't ever given my actual opinion on the thing itself, as a holiday overlay. So here it is:

Eh, it's okay.

As a rule, I am far more forgiving of temporary ride alterations than permanent ones. The latter have to constitute a definite improvement on the original for me to approve of them, while the former just have to be moderately entertaining since, after all, I'll have the original back soon enough. Even if I can't stand a temporary change, all I have to do is wait it out.

I'm happy enough to put Haunted Mansion Holiday in the “moderately entertaining” pile. I like some of the music, the visuals in the stretching room are pretty sweet, and I like seeing the new gingerbread house each year. (Though this year's is a little...uh...) I even think the often criticized mismatch between the existing Haunted Mansion imagery and the Tim Burton additions kind of works with the concept—the Halloweentown characters are imposing their style on the Mansion, are they not?

Of course, I am well aware that this is the kind of cheap post-hoc rationalization for lazy attraction design that Disney's own Marketing Department apologists like to use: “Of course it sucks. We were going for suck.” So I don't give it too much weight. And there's plenty else to criticize about the endeavor.

I just don't find myself criticizing it on the level of “This is a travesty against everything Disneyland outght to stand for” like many commenters do. It's more along the lines of “This could have and should have been done better.” So what I'll do here is, I'll go over various aspects of the ride, explain what I do and don't like about them, and then—as a bonus bit of Armchair Imagineering—sketch out an alternate way of adding The Nightmare Before Christmas to the Haunted Mansion for the holiday season that hopefully makes more sense and is more engaging.

The Premise

“Jack Skellington and all his friends like Christmas so much, they decided to share it—their version of it, that is—with another cast of spooky Disney characters.”

Um...okay? Actually, apart from the fact that the overlay gets installed when Jack really should be concentrating on his own damn holiday, the idea doesn't inherently stink on ice. In The Nightmare Before Christmas, Jack is an artist who feels stuck in a creative rut and wants to break out of it, which goal is not helped by the fact that his usual audience just wants more of the same, every time.** Maybe after learning his lesson about appropriating another's culture holiday and imposing his vision on a world that's not prepared for it, he's still trying to find a new audience that will appreciate his fusion style Christmas. And hey—here's a big house full of ghosts that only pretend to terrorize, just like his townfolk! As concepts go, it's not devoid of potential.

Unfortunately, the execution leaves several things to be desired.

Visual Design

The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of the cornerstones of Tim Burton's career (even though he didn't direct it), due in no small part to its arresting visual style:

 

 

 

Whatever you might think of the movie, you can't deny that it's instantly recognizable. Moreover, Burton's off-kilter environments, stylized characters, and near-monochrome palettes are not entirely dissimilar to some of the Mansion's motifs. There is ground here for a compromise between the two styles.

Does Haunted Mansion Holiday constitute a compromise? Certainly not:

 

 

  

In fact, not only are these lurid neon colors and flat designs completely out of tune with the Haunted Mansion, they are not very reminiscent of The Nightmare Before Christmas! The additions resemble neither the somber, washed-out colors and gritty textures of the film's Halloweentown nor the festive brilliance of Christmastown. What they resemble, if anything, is Oogie Boogie's lair during his song sequence:

Thus a stylistic problem becomes a narrative one—Oogie Boogie is the villain of the piece, Jack Skellington's enemy. Why are his design sensibilities all over Jack's pet project? (And why is he hanging out at the end of the ride like he's one of the good guys?)

So much for harmony with the source material...how are the Holiday additions in and of themselves?

I'm gonna go ahead and call this one a mixed bag. Like I said, the stretching room provides some good visuals, with traditional stained-glass windows that crack into monster faces with jagged teeth. The “skeletal” tree in the Ballroom has something going for it, and I've always been fond of the exterior wreaths and garlands, with their weird mishmash of foliage—some of it black!—and sprays of berry-sized pumpkins. Lose the rubbery cartoon skulls and pinstriped ribbons and these would make very nice Halloween decorations:

On the other hand...the loading area display has got to go. Literally the only point of that thing is to say “Look how many characters from the movie there are, doing Christmas things!” And it says it with cheap, flat figures (so they can all be crammed into the narrow space between the track and the wall) displaying simple movements that anyone reasonably handy can knock together in their garage.

Oh, and the Graveyard additions are pretty gauche, and the brightness of all that snow spoils the low-light atmosphere and every effect that depends on it. Had to be said.

Music

This is one of the things I mentioned above as something I like about Haunted Mansion Holiday, at least in part, and...look. Nice music is one of my weaknesses. If my ears are happy, the rest of me is likely to follow, and I can't rule out the possibility that I would despise this overlay if not for...not Danny Elfman's tunes, not even Buddy Baker's, but Gordy Goodwin's.

Goodwin is the composer responsible for the original score played in Haunted Mansion Holiday, from the minor-keyed arrangement of “Up on the Housetop” heard in the Foyer, to the atonal “We Wish You a Scary Christmas” chant at unload, passing through two rearrangements of “Carol of the Bells” and a jazzed-up medley of “Deck the Halls” and “Jolly Old St. Nicholas” along the way, and a few new melodies as well. Some of the ride still boasts his work—the tension-building music in the stretching room is pretty memorable—but since 2003, most of it has unfortunately been replaced with covers of songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas, particularly an exceptionally repetitive instrumental of “Kidnap the Sandy Claws.” I especially miss the one that used to play from the Portrait Hall through the Corridor of Doors: a rambling, nearly tuneless (yet euphonious) melody with wordless vocals that sound like a children's choir, that somehow manages to be energetic and subdued at the same time, suggestive of all kinds of mischief for the final quarter of the year.

Why couldn't they have hung onto that?

Other Stuff

Credit where credit is due; there are some pretty nice effects installed for Haunted Mansion Holiday. It has its own set of five changing portraits, and a few years ago, they updated the technology on that so that instead of just fading back and forth like normal, there's a little CGI Zero that flies through them and causes them to change. Not jaw-droppingly awesome, but it's the sort of thing that makes you take a second look to verify that you did in fact see what you thought you saw.

Some of the choices made in updating it are a little odd, though. For example, this year, a Sally animatronic was placed in the Graveyard scene, to great fanfare. She's cute enough:

But all she does is gaze worshipfully at Jack Skellington and tap her foot a little. Hardly cutting-edge tech, and her presence doesn't really add anything. Not that you'd know it from all the fan reactions of “FINALLY!”

Finally what? Finally Sally is in the ride? But she always was, in Little Leota's place beside the exit ramp:

She has also consistently been featured in a changing portrait, in the load-area tableau, and on one of Madam Leota's “Fortune Cards” (about which more in a bit). I guess you could say: finally there's a full-sized, three-dimensional Sally in the ride, but that's an awfully specific thing to complain about, especially when she has nothing to do except stand there.

So about Madam Leota... The more I think about it, the less sense the Holiday version of the Séance Circle makes. Tarot cards—or something approximating Tarot cards—are fine in association with Leota, as are mentions of other paraphernalia for fortunetelling and the occult. But why mash that stuff up with the Twelve—sorry, the Thirteen Days of Christmas? And the lyrics of Leota's chant are pure word salad:

“On the 13^th day of Christmas, my ghoul love gave to me

13 rings of power embracing strength that never ends

12 signs of the Zodiac that rule the future and transcend

11 candles floating the scent of mystery in the air

10 telling tea leaves that swirl with secrets yet to share

On the ninth day of Christmas, my ghoul love gave to me

9 magic crystals that sparkle with a force that is pure

8 balls of knowledge that answer with a truth that is sure

7 pearls of wisdom to keep my love bewitched to me

6 mystic mirrors reflecting futures yet to be

On the fifth day of Christmas, my ghoul love gave to me

5 lucky charms to understand the right from wrong

4 Wheels of Fortune to spin their rich and golden song

3 lifelines extending help to those in need

2 passion potions that love and romance may succeed

On the first day of Christmas, my ghoul love gave to me

A star, a brilliant star for my Fortune Card Tree.”

I could—but probably won't, so don't worry—write an entire post just pointing out all the weirdness and nonsense in that “poem.” It conflates vastly different definitions of words like “spin” and “lifelines” and several of the items mentioned are ascribed functions that have nothing to do with what they are. If I didn't know any better, I'd think the true purpose of the scene was to stuff in more characters, in the form of pictures on the cards.

Come to think of it, do I know better than that? I'm not sure I do...

How to Do It Better

Okay, enough negativity. I promised an alternate way of delivering the same goods—Halloweentown characters in the Haunted Mansion for the holiday season(s)—and here we go.

See, I think the biggest problem with Haunted Mansion Holiday, narratively speaking, is that it produces the following hypothetical conversation:

Disneyland: Jack Skellington brought Christmas to the Haunted Mansion!

You: And then what happened?

Disneyland: And then...you got to ride it!

There's no sense that it matters for Jack Skellington to be bringing Christmas to the Haunted Mansion. So this alternate is devised mainly in the interest of fixing that.

The premise is basically the same, but more explicit about the fact that Jack is seeking an appreciative audience for his Christmas. The Foyer narration can do the heavy lifting of bringing across this idea—the stretching room is arguably the best part of the overlay and I'd want to keep it basically unchanged. The only difference is the implication that Jack is putting on this show for the ghosts and we happen to be in the way.

Once we get to the ride proper, there is more evidence of the Halloweentown incursions...but rather than screaming neon colors, it looks more like the stuff in the movie. The “Making Christmas” song sequence should be the main source of inspiration. Here and there where space allows, animatronic figures of Halloweentown characters express puzzlement that no ghosts seem to be around to appreciate the gifts. This is, of course, because as on the normal version of the ride, they are unable to materialize. They need help from Madam Leota (and us). So the Séance Circle ought to look pretty much as it usually does. With more Nightmare characters featured throughout the Mansion, we don't need to plump out their ranks with pictures on cards, and we certainly don't need that baffling chant. Leota can have a different chant, referencing Christmas and the visiting characters, but it should riff on the same themes as the regular one—she's awakening the spirits, not taking inventory in her occult shop.

The séance works, of course...but that's where things go wrong. In opening the portal for the ghosts, Leota (and we) accidentally opened it for Oogie Boogie as well! The Ballroom is a scene of chaos, with Oogie literally crashing the party in some sort of horrific contraption and the native ghosts fleeing before him. To accomplish this, instead of hovering gift boxes (?) on the “arriving guests” turntable, we have Haunted Mansion ghost figures...with terrified expressions and postures. Jack's gifts and decorations here are in disarray, scattered and mangled by Oogie's minions.*** The existing infrastructure can be used in creative ways—the Birthday Girl can be replaced with a monster that lunges at a frightened ghost sitting on the table, perhaps trapped up against the wreckage of the gingerbread house.

And now we begin to see garish-colored decorations, because Oogie Boogie is turning the Mansion into his new lair, with that distinctive gambling hall-cum-torture chamber motif. The Attic, which has always been the most genuinely scary part of the ride, is the ideal place to drive this point home. We can even keep the gift box popups; it's just that instead of creepy-cute, they'll be creepy-ugly.

That just leaves the Graveyard. It's a good thing it's a huge, complex scene, because it has a lot of work to do in resolving this serious problem. Jack and the Ghost Host rally the troops, as it were, to drive out the hostile interlopers. Confusingly, however, some of the Halloweentown citizens are still trying to have Christmas, and the ghosts are at last taking notice and playing along. So it's an even more chaotic scene than the ballroom, with little skirmishes intermingled with spooky caroling and the exchange of horrifying gifts.

Lastly, the Hitchhiking Ghosts scene. I'm not quite sure what to do with this. The most natural way to go with it, given what has come before, is to have Oogie's minions as the hitchhikers, getting the heck out of Dodge now that the Mansion has turned out to be such a tough nut to crack. It's a logical part of the narrative and it retains the “stinger” effect: “And one of them went with YOU, mwahaha!” On the other hand, a lot of people find the absence of the Hitchhiking Ghosts to be one of the things they dislike the most about the holiday overlay, and it wouldn't be much of a stretch to give them some wrapped gifts or something to be taking with them on their attempted journey. But either way, it would be better than Oogie Boogie spinning his wheel o' pranks, as if he has official sanction to be there.

I realize this scenario doesn't leave much time for the Mansion residents to enjoy Jack's Christmas, but maybe that could be sort of the point? The moral of the movie, after all, was that Jack should not have messed with someone else's holiday. Pacing things this way keeps the ride in tune with the themes of the movie, even while it experiments with a big variation on the plot.

Not that I expect the serious critics of Haunted Mansion Holiday to care much for it anyway, and I don't blame them. Consider this my attempt at a compromise...or an illustration of how smart Imagineering can make some sort of functioning money container out of the sows' ears descending from Upper Management.

* It's times like this I sorta envy the Orlando crowd.

** I imagine there are a lot of people working at Disney who often feel this way.

*** For the purposes of this exercise, he has minions. Beyond those three annoying kids.