Things You're Just Supposed to Know

Most of the time, Long-Forgotten assumes that readers are already familiar with basic facts
about the Haunted Mansion. If you wanna keep up with the big boys, I suggest you check out
first of all the website, Doombuggies.com. After that, the best place to go is Jason Surrell's book,
The Haunted Mansion: Imagineering a Disney Classic (NY: Disney Editions; 2015). That's the
re-named third edition of The Haunted Mansion: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies (NY:
Disney Editions, 2003; 2nd ed. 2009). Also essential reading is Jeff Baham's The Unauthorized
Story of Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion (USA: Theme Park Press, 2014; 2nd ed. 2016).

This site is not affiliated in any way with any Walt Disney company. It is an independent
fan site dedicated to critical examination and historical review of the Haunted Mansions.
All images that are © Disney are posted under commonly understood guidelines of Fair Use.

________
.

Monday, November 17, 2014

A 1973 Ride Through the Disneyland Haunted Mansion

.
(This is just a quick snack of a post to hold you over for the big one coming up next.)


The Mansion in 1973

In an earlier post, we dissected an audio ride-thru recording of the Disneyland HM from about 1976. Here's a recording made a few years before that. The quality is pretty good for a 1973 tape. My thank you to the responsible parties who made it available.

The Haunted Mansion 1973


What can be said about this new tape? Well, it sounds a lot like the 1976 recording, not surprisingly. At least to my ear it doesn't really add any new information to what we gleaned from the other tape, so in that sense it's bound to be a bit anticlimactic.

Hey, it's good to have anyway.

It sounds like it was a busy day.

Believe it or not, my biggest takeaway from this tape was the realization that people were just as rude back then as they are today, chattering and laughing throughout the Ghost Host's spiel and giving out obnoxious, fake screams in the stretching gallery. Gee, and here I remembered (or chose to remember) people as being a little more considerate back then, because every trip used up an E-ticket, and I figured that people would be less likely to squander a precious "E" by engaging in such antics.


But people are people.


11 comments:

  1. Great post as usual. I'm usually here for the artwork and rare photos, so that great audio clip was a bonus. : )

    I have no doubt you may be very busy, but I was wondering if a post will/could be written about the 2003 HM movie and game. Thanks to this blog, I recognised many scrapped DL ideas that made it through, like the original changing portraits and the giant orange and black spiders. But I was curious as to if there was more, such as if the movie's mansion has any real life "parents," or what could have inspired any of the game's puzzles (specifically the toy box one...)

    Thank you very much, keep up the great work!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You know, I think a lot of it has to do with the number of people. The more people, the ruder. Hence, your point about it being crowded probably directly affects your next point...Unless I'm wrong...then never mind...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you!
    The 2003 movie was a major disappointment for many of us, and I personally don't have much inclination to dissect it piece by piece. Not surprisingly, there are countless nods to the actual ride in the movie, but I haven't noticed any references to "scrapped ideas." Practically all movie tarantulas are the photogenic Orange-Kneed Mexican variety, and the changing portraits in the movie are simply variations on ones that really exist in the ride. I'm afraid I don't know what game you're referring to.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm actually rather pleased with the movie's CGI effects, especially for 2003 quality. I did not care much for the plot...

      As for the game, check here for the synopsis: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haunted_Mansion_(video_game)

      You can also find playthroughs on You Tube, however I will warn you of the bad recording quality... ^.^;

      Delete
  4. The attic bride was always much creepier when there wasn't anything really alluding towards her. Here it seems just creepy. No wedding music playing, just screaming and the sound of her heart beating through the attic. Then she just shows up at the end of the attic before you exit to the grave yard scene. She was always the scariest ghost to me in the mansion just because she was mysterious, random, didn't really fit in with the silly part of the ride. It actually scared me as a kid.

    ReplyDelete
  5. One thing they didn't seem to do yet in the 1973 tape is say the lines along with the narrator: "...and NO DOORS!" etc.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wonder if any of those old Graveyard Pop-Up noises are still in WDI's sound archive anywhere... If they are, I'm doubtful they've been transferred to digital. Most likely still just sitting on a magnetic tape.

    What's interesting is that several of the Graveyard Pop-Up noises here sound different than the ones on the '76 tape. For example, in that one, the Pop-Up in front of the band uses a combo scream/laugh, but in the tape posted above, it uses one of the shrieks from the CoD instead. It makes me curious if any of the other pop-ups ever got their sounds "swapped", and if so, how many unique pop-up noises are there?

    (Fun fact: The original audio track listing for WDW's Mansion refers to each and every one of them as a "Blast Up", even though the only "true" blast-ups are the ones that shoot up on the rails using a blast of air. The only one left is in front of the Man and Woman at Card Table in California's Graveyard.)

    ReplyDelete
  7. HBG2, it might just be me since others seem to reference it, but I can't seem to make out the heartbeat sound effect in the attic in either this recording or the 1976 one. I can definitely hear the ballroom music fading out and the graveyard music fading in, but can't make out anything else beside the pop-up screams. Can you hear it?

    ReplyDelete
  8. I noticed that the Graveyard music is in some other note. I think it sounds better than how it does today honestly.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Great recording. For me it's the "definitive"COD. So out of control and wild. The attic I remember, jumping with every Ghost....

    ReplyDelete