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Jack Skellington has left the building for now as the Haunted Mansion reopens this weekend in its classic glory—but with some majorly surprising updates.
In a feature in the Los Angeles Times, Disneyland’s executive creative director of Imagineering Kim Irvine talked about some key changes made to one of the Haunted Mansion’s most memorable characters—the bride—to harken back to the mystery of its origins when the park opened.
“We thought, what if we change the story back a little bit to the original story that the Imagineers had about a lost bride in the attic mourning the loss of her husbands,” she told the LA Times. “It was a sad thing. It was a story about lost love.”
Gone is the fan-favorite Black Widow backstory, which was part of the attraction’s last update in the early aughts. It featured a bride with an interesting sense of agency who added a fun sinister element to the ride with the gag of her numerous husbands’ disappearing heads (disappearing, because she axe-murdered them). Times change, as do Disney attraction elements, and Disney Experiences has opted to go back to a more mysterious take.
“The bride that used to be in there was an axe murderer, and in this day and age we have to be really careful about the sensitivities of people,” Irvine said. “We were celebrating someone chopping off her husband’s heads, and it was a weird story. I know the fans—some will like it and some will say, ‘Oh, you changed something again.’ That’s our job. That’s what we’re here for.”
Now reinstated as just the forlorn presence of a haunting bride, whose lovers have seemingly ghosted her for reasons unknown—perhaps they died or perhaps they just left her at the altar—it will be interesting to see how this mythology fits into the energy of the attraction. We’ll be visiting soon to get a better sense of the bride’s new story and projection effects before making too much of a call to support not only women’s rights but also women’s wrongs.
The Haunted Mansion is now open at the Disneyland Resort in time for the park’s 70th celebration later this year.
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