Memories of the Haunted Mansion
Page 3 of 4

Haunted Mansion - Tokyo Disneyland
Opened April 15, 1983

Inside the Belly of the Beast

Perhaps my biggest thrill at the Haunted Mansion was my backstage tour. The cast member entrance to backstage is through a very narrow alleyway. From there you descend into an intestine like maze of stairs, hallways, and unmarked doors. Everything offstage is painted in a soft off-white, which made me think of an insane asylum I visited once. I only visited ... really.

We sat down in the break room and waited for clearance for our tour. While waiting we watched cable TV on an old Videopolis Sony TV, enjoying an afterlife of its own--ghost images and all.

Our tour started in the Haunted Mansion control room. I had never ridden all the way around on the doombuggies. I had never seen the black curtain. But I had heard rumors of this room. To actually be in it was beyond words.

I soon had an even bigger shock. On the wall was a blueprint of the Haunted Mansion. I examined it with great interest. It provided a really detailed layout of the ride, with major effects and rooms labeled in blue. Also, down in the lower right corner was another huge surprise--the names of the Imagineers who worked on the layout. One of those names looked awfully familiar. It was my grandfather's name, Vic Greene.

I knew that Grandpa Vic had worked on the attraction. I have vague recollections of seeing his tombstone out behind the queue when I was a young kid. But I never actually had confirmation of his role until seeing his name on the blueprint. If anyone has them, I am looking for copies of more things with my grandfather's name on it. Maybe you know the text of his tombstone, or have a picture of it. I would also like to talk to anyone who worked with him at WED (now known as Walt Disney Imagineering). Until then, I will be satisfied knowing that he had a hand in one of the most magical places on earth.

The lead at the time was very cool and showed us the track monitoring system and how some of the safety procedures worked. Then quickly and quietly - guests were still on the ride after all - we went off on a full tour of the attraction. One of the highlights of the tour was to stand in the banquet room. From the hallway, the door opens directly below the tracks of the Doombuggies. We had to be careful to stay out of the lights, lest our reflections be added to those of the dancing ghosts. Our guide pointed out how the men lead the women in real life, but in the reflection the women are leading the men.

We also popped behind the walls to see how the changing portrait effect works. Our tour guide explained how the changes used to work, and that they could resync them with the lightening, but management didn't want them to. At many points backstage you're actually walking beneath the tracks of the omnimovers, so you have to be quiet. However, you get to hear all the disembodied shrieks and screams of the frightened ghosts... er guests.

Finally, we ended our tour in the sound room where everything had recently been converted to digital tracks. Each projected image could be displayed from the Laserdisc system and we could spot-check every sound bite for quality. This was one of my favorite rooms and I could have stayed in there for hours.