Expansion and Enhancements coming to Disneyland's Haunted Mansion

Dear Prudence7 days ago

I saw it in a tiktok video and I was like NO WAY 😫😭 Disney, COME ONNNN

mickEblu8 days ago

Wow. SMH. That’s embarrassing.

Dear Prudence8 days ago

I absolutely agree. One of the cat figures that's in the queue I literally have in my yard. I am so disappointed 😞

DrStarlander8 days ago

The AI artwork was very notable and on-topic, so it got a lot of coverage. But countless material/sourcing failures occurred throughout the project. Here's one that astounds me. Under that porch overhang there are various props hanging and they were hung from bright, shiny, zinc-coated eye-bolts, the kind you can buy from Home Dept, Lowe's, or Ace Hardware. They were installed "as is" and entirely un-themed, and jarring in their cheapness and lack of effort. If you go on Etsy, you can find historic-looking hardware in less than one minute of searching, such as these...which are...hold on, this is is a real budget buster...$1.45 each. The Etsy seller-maker described these as follows: "One of these small (#8) blacksmithed screw eyes. These eyelets are made from #8 screw eyes from the hardware store. I put them in the furnace and hammer the loop flat, then quench the hot piece in oil to give it a durable black finish. Great for hanging all kinds of things. Price is per eye. More than one available. (Select the quantity you want.) Combined shipping for more than one." Huh. That looks and sounds just about perfect for a 19th century carriage house, right? It's a no-brainer. It's cheap. It's a few clicks away on Etsy. You can't get ANY easier than that (compared to the kind of effort and legwork the original Imagineers had to do to get things done). And the people who built that shop couldn't even click a few buttons online, apparently. They couldn't even get out a can of Krylon spray paint, to do a kinda-bad job. I'm incensed by this project. It's a shocking pageantry of low-initiative, laziness and low standards.

Dear Prudence8 days ago

I still can't believe the gift shop used AI for art/décor. 😫

Adventureland Veranda8 days ago

MMRR was an interesting experience. Finally got to ride it this past week. We all seemed to think it was just okay, but yeah definitely missing the IT factor like the classic attractions. If felt gimmicky at times and more physical props would be a plus.

mickEblu8 days ago

Current WDI just seems to be missing that IT factor. Some instances like MMRR they can throw enough money and tech at something to make it Ok enough to help mask that fact but they re just missing that je ne sais quoi.

Disstevefan18 days ago

To be fair, they were planning this for 10 years ;)

Adventureland Veranda8 days ago

I was surprised how small the interior is and the decor seems like it's lacking something - heart, whimsy, fun, and imagination. I liked the NOS shop much better than what was done here. Also, the store at WDW has way more charm than the Home Depot shed. You are spot on concerning the source material, the possibilities are endless.

DrStarlander9 days ago

Personally, my take is that everything at the parks is "by Imagineering." Maybe that's technically not true, but as customers, we shouldn't have to know, and we shouldn't have different standards of quality from one aspect of the park to another because of what group of people -- who all work for the same company -- worked on it. Especially if that info is not made transparent. When I go to a restaurant, I expect the food to be on-standard without knowing whether the restaurant's actual chef de cuisine is there that day, or whether the dish is made by the sous chef or anyone else. It doesn't matter, and I shouldn't have to know. And what is significant is that Imagineering has long been one of their valued brands. It was an elite, imprimatur of quality, and it was "a stick," so to speak, that they beat down the competition with. They had Imagineering. Universal, and others, did not. From the earliest days of the Disneyland television show through decades of books and documentaries, they've touted their Imagineering brand. So, when the quality goes down, naturally, Imagineering will be blamed...not a nameless, unknown operations or merchandising group we have not been told about. If Disney can't deliver the level of quality that would avoid criticism because they, intermittently, have less talented (not actual Imagineers) employees building things in their parks, they have an organizational problem to solve. And it's an urgent problem. Because, especially in this era of online critical reviews and absolute coverage of everything they do, they will largely be judged by their failures rather than their achievements. Someone at the company who should be advocating for the Imagineering brand (and its long-term value to the company, including in fending off competition from Universal) needs to go to the top, and explain what's happening, and what the risk is, and propose the organizational changes that will ensure high standards are met, moving forward. And they need to quickly clean up some of the recent messes that are ongoing, highly visible symbols of diminished quality, and agitators of negative goodwill. As far as the Haunted Mansion gift shop goes, specifically, it should have been a tour de force of themed environmental design, every square inch, inside and out. Not because it deserved more attention than other projects -- everything should be great -- but because the source material is so juicy. It's meat falling off the bone. It's an absolute layup. You would have to go to extraordinary measures of malpractice to screw it up. Which they did. And the longer it sits there unimproved, the more harm it does.

Too Many Hats9 days ago

Great post. I appreciate your detailed breakdown of all the shortcomings. If WDI played any significant role in this eyesore, they are in worse shape than I thought. I agree with you that Disney parks fans need to hold WDI more accountable; too often we give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they faced impossible budget or creative restrictions, when often their mismanaged priorities and unforced limitations are self-imposed (see: Tiana’s Bayou Adventure; Web-Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure; Smuggler’s Run, etc.). However with regard to the Home Depot shed erected in front of the Haunted Mansion, I guess I just assumed it’s more of a rushed Consumer Products mandate than a WDI project. I have no evidence to back that up; it’s just a suspicion. If we find out Kim and Charita dreamed up the shed themselves, we are in trouble.

lazyboy97o9 days ago

Do you consider The Haunted Mansion to be a “pre-made blueprint with extra flourishes added”? That is a kit for a wood building. This is a steel structure. You cannot just hit Ctrl+F and replace wood with steel on drawings. They are giving projects way more than they need. Choosing to poorly spend money doesn’t mean enough wasn’t provided. Nothing about this gift shop is the result of insufficient funds. Just throwing more money at it was not going to result in something better.

Charlie The Chatbox Ghost9 days ago

It might have been constructed in the park, but it's very clearly a design made by someone outside Disney. https://legacypostandbeam.com/new-pre-designed-barn-kit-the-armstrong-4236/ Sure, it's not 1 to 1, so if that doesn't make it prefab, then let's go with "pre-made blueprint with extra flourishes added". By "cheaper", I meant quality-wise. Smaller and cheaper, as in scope and quality. I wasn't meaning they were monetarily cheaper than past projects- they're more expensive, but I personally believe they're still being affected by budget cuts and changes. When I said that budgets are being affected by Disney funneling profits from the parks to other divisions, I don't mean the projects are less expensive than in the past. They're obviously more expensive than in the past, but their budgets are still being affected. Nearly every announced project has had some big grand concept art, before reality being something much smaller in scope, likely as a result of smaller budgets. Could be more of a marketing problem, since Disney announces stuff way too early nowadays. So yeah, projects aren't cheaper in monetary cost, but they're not proportionately budgeted for what they need, and they come off cheaper. Leota's Gift Shop being a prime example- cheap project from start to finish. Disney, for whatever reason, isn't giving the parks the budgets they need when they totally could.

lazyboy97o9 days ago

This thread, including the post immediately before yours, has plenty of photos showing it clearly is not a prefab building. They also show it is not a kit or even pre-engineered. They definitively show that it is not wood. This is not an accurate assessment. You’re even criticizing revenue being generated by the parks division. Projects have not ended up cheaper in about twenty years. Disney’s project budgets aren’t just large, they’re obscenely large.