Major Section of Haunted Mansion Reportedly Being Axed To Satisfy Sensitive Guests
Rumor has it that a major change is heading for Haunted Mansion at Disneyland Resort.
Disney’s theme parks are packed with top-tier attractions, but few have reached icon status quite like Haunted Mansion. First opened at Disneyland Park in 1969, the dark ride put its own immersive spin on the haunted house concept, with guests boarding Ominmover vehicles known as a “Doom Buggy” to explore a New Orleans mansion packed with “999 Happy Haunts.”
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In the decades since it first opened in New Orleans Square, the Haunted Mansion has inspired similar attractions across the globe. At Walt Disney World Resort’s Magic Kingdom Park and Tokyo Disneyland, the Haunted Mansion is built in a Gothic revival style and boasts a slightly longer ride experience.
Meanwhile, Disneyland Paris is home to Phantom Manor, which has a look more in line with the rest of the park’s Frontierland aesthetic. The attraction itself is also tonally darker than its sister parks. On the other end of the spectrum, Hong Kong Disneyland’s equivalent, Mystic Manor, is free of any references to ghosts or death due to differences in Chinese culture. Instead, it focuses on a magic box that brings inanimate objects to life in a Victorian manor.
The attraction has even inspired two separate adaptations: one in 2003 starring Eddie Murphy and one in 2023 starring LaKeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson, Rosario Dawson, and Danny DeVito. Both failed to set the box office alight or impress critics but have developed cult followings in their own right.
Despite all the varieties worldwide, Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion is still often considered the best of the lineup. It’s undergone its fair share of changes over the years, with new scares and technology integrated into the attraction. A festive overlay, Haunted Mansion Holiday – inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) – was also introduced for the first time in 2001 and continues to run at the park every Halloween and Christmas.
That will be the case in 2024. Before that day comes, however, the ride needs to complete its ongoing refurbishment. It first closed in January 2024, with Disney revealing that the queue would be totally reimagined during its closure “to immerse guests in enhanced theming,” with other new additions introduced to “build on the story and lore of the Haunted Mansion.”
But those may not be the only changes heading to Haunted Mansion. Rumor has it that when guests experience the regular version of the attraction again (most likely in 2025, as the ride will be in Haunted Mansion Holiday mode when it returns later this year), it may do so without one familiar scare.
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Fans are abuzz on Reddit that Disney is currently in the process of removing the hanging corpse seen in the stretching room before guests board the ride. Haunted Mansion’s disembodied “Ghost Host” points out that as the room has no doors or windows, it has no way out. “Of course,” he adds, “there’s always my way,” with lightning then illuminating a hanging corpse hanging from the ceiling.
There have been rumors that Disney will remove this effect from the attraction in order to be more sensitive and not trivialize suicide. Some guests have complained that this scene feels particularly triggering, with petitions even set up in the past.
Disney is well aware of these complaints. Back in 2021, Michele Hobbs – who works as a producer for Walt Disney Imagineering and previously managed a refurbishment of the attraction – told Los Angeles Times that the scene’s removal has “been discussed for sure” and that “it’s definitely something that we’re thinking about.”
On Haunted Mansion Holiday, the ceiling of the stretching room is covered with a tarp. The idea is that this tarp will remain in place all year round, and something else will be projected during this section of the ride.
Nooses have been removed from other versions of Haunted Mansion in the past. Nearly all the nooses were removed from Phantom Manor at Disneyland Paris in 2023, except for the one that appears during the stretching room scene.
Sensitivity updates have also occurred to other attractions, such as the removal of “we wants the redhead” from Pirates of the Caribbean (which saw said redhead become a pirate auctioning off loot instead of an object at an auction) and the replacement of Splash Mountain – which was inspired by the problematic film Song of the South (1946) – with Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. These changes have kicked in at all Disney locations with these attractions, with the exception of Tokyo Disneyland.
For now, the Haunted Mansion rumor is just that: a rumor. However, considering the fact that Disney itself has admitted to considering this switch in the past, we wouldn’t be surprised if these rumors are correct and the attraction debuts sans-noose in 2025.
Do you think Disneyland should remove the noose from Haunted Mansion?
