Haunted Mansion Holiday at Disneyland transforms the Haunted Mansion every Halloween and Christmas season into a Nightmare Before Christmas Halloween Town wonderland. Complete with iconic characters from the 1993 Tim Burton film (Jack Skellington, Sally, Oogie Boogie and more), memorable songs, and a unique narrative, Haunted Mansion Holiday brings the joy of the holiday season to Disneyland guests with a spooky twist reminiscent of the film its based on.
In this podcast episode, we dive into the history of Haunted Mansion Holiday since its 2001 debut and share some fun facts you might not have known about this attraction. The episodes includes a binaural scenic audio recording from the ride at Disneyland.
What is your favorite Disney holiday overlay? Tag me and join the conversation below.
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Welcome aboard Imagination Skyway, your grand podcast tour of the magic. I’m your host, Matthew Krul, and in today’s episode we’re going to discuss Haunted Mansion Holiday at Disneyland.
This seasonal attraction is personally my favorite overlay at Disney. Based on the 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas, Haunted Mansion Holiday turns the mansion into a holiday-inspired Halloween Town wonderland, complete with familiar characters and songs from the film that lovingly adapt to the Haunted Mansion scenes and sequences. In this episode, we’ll discuss the history of Haunted Mansion Holiday, share some details and fun facts you might not know about this ride, and enjoy a binaural scenic audio recording of the attraction.
At the end of the show, we’ll return to Imagination Central, where I’ll share ways in which you can stay connected with Imagination Skyway, how you can discuss this topic with others, and how you can help support and inspire the future of this show. Please remain seated, keep your hands and arms inside the podcast at all times, and enjoy your grand circle tour aboard Imagination Skyway.
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On October 29, 1993, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas debuted in theaters. With a relatively low budget of an estimated $18 million, this 76-minute stop-motion film follows the story of Jack Skellington, the pumpkin king of Halloween Town. Every year, Jack leads the resident ghosts, ghouls, vampires, witches, and goblins of Halloween Town on an annual autumnal quest to scare the citizens of the world. In the film, however, Jack grows tired of his never-ending purpose and begins searching for something new. It is through this existential quest that he discovers Christmas Town and conjures a plan to replace Santa Claus (or should I say “Sandy Claws”) as the new king of the holiday season. Despite his good intentions, Jack’s plans go awry as the citizens of Halloween Town can’t quite grasp the joy of the holidays, leading Jack on a new mission to save Christmas, reinstate Santa, and return to his Halloween duties.
The Nightmare Before Christmas was produced by Touchstone Pictures, a movie studio founded by Ron Miller for the Walt Disney Company in 1984 to enable the company to diversify into more mature films. By Disney studio standards, The Nightmare Before Christmas performed modestly at the box office, generating $99 million gross sales worldwide, 20% of what Aladdin produced worldwide the year before, but its low budget meant that the studio still profited from the endeavor.
While not an immediate box office success, The Nightmare Before Christmas soon developed a loyal base of fans. Its iconic characters—especially Jack Skellington, Sally, and Oogie Boogie—unforgettable songs (composed and sung by Danny Elfman, who voiced the singing parts for Jack while Chris Sarandon voiced the speaking parts), and charming story creatively blend Halloween and the holidays, providing a spooky-joyful atmosphere that can be celebrated for several months of the year.
Around the same time that The Nightmare Before Christmas debuted in theaters, Disney was continuing to experiment with attraction overlays at Disneyland. As a park with a high volume of local guests, Disneyland merited a number of special events and exclusive experiences to keep Southern California locals returning to the park.
One of the first holiday-focused overlays to come to Disneyland was the Country Bear Jamboree Christmas Special, which began in 1984 and sounded a little something like this.
A little over a decade later, in 1997, Disneyland installed a new holiday overlay at “it’s a small world”, which we discussed in our previous podcast episode about this iconic World’s Fair attraction. Featuring a blend of Jingle Bells and the immortalized Sherman Brothers hit, “it’s a small world” holiday is a tradition that has continued at Disneyland ever since, marking over 25 years of holiday magic.
While The Nightmare Before Christmas was not the most popular Disney holiday film, the Imagineers saw a unique opportunity to transform the Haunted Mansion into a Christmas wonderland using this spooky holiday film as their muse. On October 3, 2001, Haunted Mansion Holiday debuted at Disneyland, and let’s just say it was so popular that the attraction has returned every year since (except 2020) for over 20 holiday seasons, each year seeing growing crowds and wait times often reaching well over an hour.
Repurposing the Haunted Mansion into Haunted Mansion Holiday each year is no simple task. In fact, Haunted Mansion Holiday might be the most complex attraction overlay at Disney. According to a D23 article, the exterior of the mansion receives 400 flickering candles and 100 jack-o’-lanterns, along with a Santa Jack sleigh on the roof, a countdown to Xmas clock, and a number of additional props. Plus, inside and outside the attraction, the Imagineers add thousands of feet of “black gnarly” garland.
Meanwhile, inside the attraction, the Imagineers completely reanimate and redesign the stretching room sequence and the entire narration for the ride. That’s in addition to a significant number of props: over 200 bones next to Jack’s ghost dog, Zero, two dozen Halloween Town residents, a man-eating wreath, animatronic versions of Jack, Oogie Boogie, and Sally, a 10-foot tall gingerbread house, and a graveyard filled with 7,500 square feet of snow, 20 gallons of ultraviolet paint, and trees filled with 1,000 orange lights, not to mention life-sized Graveyard Ice Angels from the film and graveyard busts converted to singing jack-o’-lanterns. Inside and out, the ride is transformed with thousands of lights, props, and special effects. It’s not just a Haunted Mansion overlay. It’s a Haunted Mansion retheme.
In fact, the attraction receives an entirely different storyline and narration for the holiday season, and the narration is perhaps the part of the experience I love the most. Written in the style of Clement Clarke Moore’s famous poem, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (or as it was originally called in 1823, The Visit), Haunted Mansion Holiday’s narrative begins in the parlor sequence outside the stretching room with the following introduction: “twas a long time ago, longer now than it seems, in a place that perhaps you have seen in your dreams, for the story that you are about to be told, began in the holiday worlds of old. I know you’re curious to see what’s inside. It’s what happens when two holidays collide.” As Paul Frees had unfortunately passed by the time Haunted Mansion Holiday came to be, the Imagineers needed to find a new ghost host for the attraction. Fortunately, Disney Parks voice actor Corey Burton, who is also the voice of the parking lot trams, the pirate safety spiel, and even Scuttle from Journey of the Little Mermaid, lent his voice to the Haunted Mansion Holiday ghost host, sounding very much like Paul Frees himself.
As the instrumental theme for the attraction plays in the background—an ominous, slow-paced medley blending “Making Christmas” with “Deck the Halls”—the stretching room doors open to reveal a gallery of wreath-wrapped glass images replacing the original Haunted Mansion portraits. These images include presents underneath a Christmas tree, stockings hung above an open fire, and the mansion itself. When the sequence begins, the lights dim and the glass images break as the narration and music begin. As the walls ascend and the floor drops to the lower level, the images expand to reveal a man-eating wreath, a large snake, ghoulish Halloween-style gifts, and the Pumpkin King himself in his Sandy Claws outfit. As the sequence reaches its climactic moment, Jack breaks the glass ceiling and wishes everyone Happy Holidays with a gleefully sinister laugh. The lights go out as the original stretching room scream and crash sounds are heard, and the doors open to lead guests into the load area.
In the load area, the portrait hallway images are also replaced. Replacing the five original ghoulish photos (which you can also see in the first scene on the Magic Kingdom version of the ride) are images of Jack Skellington flying his magical sleigh in front of a full moon, a snowman, Jack Skellington in a snowy Halloween Town graveyard holding a holiday gift, the mansion, and Sally. If you look carefully, you’ll notice Jack’s ghost dog Zero flying from portrait to portrait. Meanwhile, behind the loading platform, guests will notice a large pop-up mural depicting the denizens of Halloween Town as they make preparations for Christmas.
Ascending the staircase, we pass a set of Halloween Town Christmas gifts and pass by the endless hallway, complete with jack-o’-lantern knights and a floating Zero merrily barking to doom buggies passing by. This leads us to the next hallway, where we travel backwards and suddenly come face-to-face with a man-eating wreath, whose glowing green eyes and menacing shark-like teeth make way for an unsuspecting snack.
As we enter the seance room, we see a note left on the reverse-spinning clock that reads, “To Leota: 13 Special Gifts for You! Sandy Claws”. The seance room is another one of my favorite scenes from this overlay. Complete with floating Christmas ornaments and Nightmare Before Christmas tarot cards, the room even features a transformed Madame Leota whose crystal ball has been changed into a floating crystal ornament. The seance sequence is narrated like the 12 days of Christmas with a bit of a Halloween twist, which makes it especially fun. As the original face and voice of Madame Leota (Leota Tombs and Eleanor Audley) had both passed away by the time this attraction was being developed, the Imagineers decided to turn to Leota Tombs’ daughter, Kim Irvine, who was also working as an Imagineer on the overlay, to portray the role her mother once played. It’s little details like these that make Disney creations so special.
This leads us into the iconic ballroom scene, and of course the Imagineers did not hold back from making some ghoulishly joyful updates to this sequence. In addition to a two-story Christmas tree and hundreds of holiday lights, the centerpiece for the room includes a 10-foot-tall gingerbread house which changes design every single year. The gingerbread house not only features impressive lights and props to depict the Halloween and Christmas seasons but also is made from 30 pounds of gingerbread and 120 pounds of frosting and icing. Also, if you look closely at the Christmas tree, you’ll notice it’s not the traditional spruce, fir, or pine. Instead, it’s a barren or perhaps even rotted Tim Burton style tree that’s decorated with glowing jack-o’-lanterns and skeleton heads. Even Zero gets in on the fun as he tries to place another jack-o’-lantern at the top of the tree.
Turning into the attic, we once again find added props and effects. Most notably, the attic is filled with Christmas gifts from Halloween Town, as if the toys are being readied for Jack’s sleigh. Wrapped in purple, orange, red, and black paper, often featuring images of skeletons, spiders, and bones, one could imagine the gifts inside might suddenly pop out and chase guests around the attic. While that doesn’t happen on Haunted Mansion Holiday, we instead find that in place of the ghost bride at the end of the sequence is a giant orange- and purple-striped snake eating Jack’s list of children who still need their gifts placed under the tree.
We pass underneath a part of the snake into a snow-covered graveyard. Even the hatbox ghost seems to have gotten into the holiday spirit as he dons a bit of mistletoe on his cap. As you look out to the graveyard, you’ll notice countless holiday details, including a snow-covered spiral hill (the same one Jack sings from in the film) complete with glowing jack-o’-lanterns and hundreds of red lights illuminating barren trees throughout the scene.
As we descend to the main level, we find that the graveyard caretaker is no longer present but we instead come face-to-face with two lifesize Jack Skellington and Zero animatronics. As Zero floats nearby holding a candy cane in his mouth, Jack gleefully wishes guests a Merry Christmas in his Sandy Claws outfit, carting a sack full of toys over his shoulder.
Across the way, an animatronic Sally gazes longingly at Jack from a neighbor gravestone. Throughout the graveyard, ribbons and bows adorn the sarcophagi and various ghosts don their holiday attire, playing a medley of Nightmare Before Christmas, Haunted Mansion, and classic holiday music. In place of the singing busts, five singing jack-o’-lanterns serenade guests with such classic songs as “Grim Grinning Ghosts” and “We Wish You A Scary Christmas”.
Passing underneath the Graveyard Ice Angels, we soon exit the graveyard back into the mansion and discover Oogie Boogie dressed as Santa Claus about to pull a roulette wheel to reveal our special gift from his very own Tricks and Treats list. This leads us to a set of three opened holiday gifts, each revealing a mirror. As we roll by, the mirrors reflect our holiday tricks and treats, which include such items as wrapped dynamite sticks, zombie gingerbread cookies, and man-eating candy canes.
This leads us into the unload area, where we exit our doombuggy and proceed up the moving walkway back to the park level. As we do so, we pass a miniature version of Sally, replacing Little Leota in this scene, as she urges us to hurry back and bids us a final holiday farewell.
As you can probably tell from this description alone, Haunted Mansion Holiday might be one of the best overlays at Disney, which is why it’s a tradition that continues at Disneyland year after year. Using the perfect film to blend spooky and merry, the ride maintains popularity that might even exceed the film it’s based on. If you’ve never seen the attraction in person, it’s worth planning a trip to Disneyland sometime between the months of September and December to see it for yourself. It’s a wonderful addition to the park and a tradition I hope Disney continues for years to come.
At this point, I’d love to take you with me for a ride on Haunted Mansion Holiday thanks to some binaural audio I recorded last month at the park. As with most scenic audio recordings, this experience is best enjoyed with headphones or earbuds, but listening on any speaker should still help virtually transport you to the ride. With that, let’s don our merry spooky attire and enjoy Haunted Mansion Holiday.
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Welcome back to Imagination Central. I hope you enjoyed this discussion of Haunted Mansion Holiday and perhaps even learned a bit more about the experience. More importantly, I hope that this episode has encouraged you to take the trip to Disneyland during the Halloween and holiday season to experience this attraction in person.
In either case, I’d like to turn this conversation over to you and ask for you to share your favorite Disney holiday overlay.
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