My favorite attraction at WDW is the Haunted Mansion, period.
Why? Well, for one thing it’s a dark ride, and I really like dark rides. For another it’s just lots of fun – it has a great storyline that has a beginning, middle, and end, and the song (Grim Grinning Ghosts) is, to say the least, very catchy.
But the best thing about the HM is the way every inch of the attraction contributes to the story. It’s one of a very few attractions where the exterior is part of the show (the Tower of Terror is one of the notable others).
When you enter Space Mountain you don’t enter a mountain, you enter a large building. When you enter Pirates of the Caribbean (one of my favorites), you enter a large building. But when you enter HM, you enter a haunted mansion (all right, so the one in Florida appears to be a split-level, but it still looks like a real house). There’s a graveyard, a pet cemetery – all sorts of details that add to the story.
When my daughter and I took the “Keys to the Kingdom” tour a few years back, our guide led us into the HM through the “chicken exit” It’s a door off of the loading area next to the two (yes, there’s two) stretch rooms. Before you leave, you walk down a short corridor that’s decorated as a servant’s entrance. There’s a row of bells on the wall, and each one is labeled with the name of one of the house’s inhabitants (Master Gracey, Madame Leota, etc.). And this is an area that practically no one ever sees!
The ballroom scene is the single coolest visual display that I’ve ever seen anywhere. Based on a magician’s illusion that was devised 130 years ago, it still amazes first-time visitors today.
I never said that the Haunted Mansion was the single best attraction in Walt Disney World – that’s a subject for another day – but it’s always been, and probably will always be, my favorite.
