Kidnap the Magic: Disneyland Jack-o-Lanterns

Okay, help me out here. When did Halloween pumpkin carving become so...awesome? When I was a kid, riding my giant ground sloth to the playground, everyone I knew just drew a few triangles and circles on a pumpkin and cut them out with a kitchen knife. I felt fancy if I managed to include pupils in the eyes. I remember starting to see those specialty carving kits with the gnome-sized miter saws when I was in my teens,* and sometime between then and now, it just exploded as an artform.

Pumpkin has become a medium of sculpture in its own right—a feat all the more impressive when you remember that these globoid gourds are available only seasonally and the resulting creations are necessarily ephemeral. Despite its fragility, in the hands of an expert carver the flesh of a pumpkin can hold fine details as well as soft wood, and its translucency allows for subtle shading effects that only become apparent when the candle inside is lit. At the extreme end, we get stuff like this:

Most people probably don't have it in them to create anything that elaborate—I know I don't—but “rough image of a face” is no longer the default. Between the aforementioned carving kits and the widely available pattern templates, even the average neighborhood candy-giver is as likely to have pumpkins carved to resemble miniature scenes, or favorite media characters, as simple faces.

And occasionally, they turn to a Disney theme park for inspiration.

Disney jack-o-lanterns, per se...those are everywhere. Always quick to jump on the bandwagon of anything child-focused, Disney prints loads of pumpkin templates, in little booklets themed by character family. You've got your Mickey & Friends, your Princess, your Winnie The Pooh, your Pixar, probably your Jake and the Neverland Pirates. If you want a design specifically related to the parks, though, you're on your own. Naturally.

Nonetheless, some people pull it off, and it is my very great pleasure to show you some examples of their work. I had to work a bit harder than I anticipated (with some much appreciated help from The Sister) to collect all these...it turns out that Googling “Disneyland jack-o-lantern” doesn't bring up many examples of homemade carvings by private citizens.

So without further ado...

The Haunted Mansion is always a popular subject, of course. We'll start with the house itself:

This is a great “pair of jacks”:

The demon eye wallpaper makes for a good, eerie design that almost fits within the parameters of a traditional jack-o-lantern face:

This one of Madam Leota includes the séance instruments by virtue of additional carving on the back through which the light can project silhouettes:

And here we have two distinct takes on the Hitchhiking Ghosts:

Of course, there are many other attractions here. We wouldn't want the Tower of Terror to feel left out (especially as it's on the verge of closing):

As long as we're in California Adventure...I'm not positive that this one is meant to represent Grizzly Peak—the gape seems too wide—but it did come up in my searches. Bears are hardly traditional Halloween animals so it may well have provided inspiration:

Here's another example of a “maybe.” Whether it's meant to be specifically a Disney carousel or not, it's great work! You don't often see 360-degree designs:

This, on the other hand, is definitely a Disney castle...it's just not the one in Anaheim. I suppose we First Parkers have to take what we can get:

On the other hand, I want to find the person who did this and give them a great big consensual hug:

(Look at the detail on the filigree!)

I burst out laughing when I saw these two. Now that's dedication to Disneyland!

One final “maybe” here. The presence of the broom makes me think this jack-o-lantern is in honor of Fantasia, not Fantasmic!, but on the other hand Mickey never actually confronts Chernabog in the movie, and he does, albeit indirectly, in the show. And either way, this is amazing work:

And I'll close with this incredibly sweet portrait of the man who made it all possible:

I'll be honest: I would have liked to close out the month of October with some spectacular Halloween-themed Armchair Imagineering or craft project, but I just couldn't find the time. This was sort of a last-minute idea. But it was a lot of fun seeing what Disneyland fans come up with in the absence of much official support. And maybe this has inspired you to create your own Disneyland jack-o-lantern. It's not too late to go out and pick up another pumpkin or two, and there are so many icons from the park I didn't see represented in my search! Here are just a few that would look great in flickering candlelight:

If you do go with any of these (or anything from the parks, really), I want to see photos.

Happy Halloween!

* They've probably been out longer than that, and that's just when I started noticing them.