Fun Facts

If you visit Disneyland in Anaheim, take a close look at the organ in the ballroom scene. It’s the original prop from the 1954 Disney film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It used to belong to Captain Nemo, but now it’s entertaining ghosts who are permanently partying. It fit in so perfectly that an exact replica was made for the Mansion at Disneyworld and Tokyo Disneyland.

You might also be interested to know that one of the members of the Mello-Men, who recorded “Grim Grinning Ghosts” for the Haunted Mansion, was the stentorian and fabulously-named Thurl Ravenscroft - who’s perhaps more well-known as the voice of Tony the Tiger in Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes ads.

Can you spot the spider? Years ago a man somehow got in to Disneyland with a 22. He shot at the duelists in the Mansion and, since the glass was too large to replace without removing the roof, they covered the hole with a spiderweb. The man also took a shot at some of the dinosaurs in the Primeval Diorama.

The spooky voice that narrates the Haunted Mansion ride is that of the Pillsbury Doughboy. An actor named Paul Frees, who was to Disney what Mel Blanc was to Warner Brothers.

He supplied the voices for both, as well as many of the pirates in Pirates of the Caribbean and most of the characters in “Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln” (except Abe himself).

He was also the voice of John Lennon in the old Beatles cartoons and Boris Badenov in the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show.

Did you know? Constance Hatchaway is the name of the attic bride.

At the attraction in Disneyland, the room is, in fact, two elevators with no ceilings that are being lowered slowly to give the illusion that the room itself is stretching; this brings the guests down to loading area, below ground level. The ceiling above is a piece of fabric called a scrim, which conceals the hanging body until it is lit from above. This elevator effect was necessary to lower the guests below the level of the park-circling railroad at Disneyland. The actual ride building of this attraction is located outside of the berm surrounding the park, and the Disney Imagineers developed this mechanism to lower the guests to the gallery leading to the actual ride building.

This stretching room effect is duplicated at the three Mansions at other Disney theme parks, but only one of these requires guests being moved beyond the railroad tracks. The Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland attractions have stretching rooms with ascending ceilings, rather than descending floors. Only Phantom Manor at Disneyland Paris uses the same descending floor as Disneyland, to transport guests toward the structure containing the major portion of the ride.

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