Saturday marks the 45th Anniversary of the grand opening of DISNEYLAND's classic Haunted Mansion attraction, so we'll be taking a look at this classic attraction all week!
When Walt Disney first began drawing up plans for a New Orleans Square at DISNEYLAND, it always included a forbidding looking mansion at the riverbend. Strangely enough though, Mr. Disney never quite had a handle on what would be inside that building. One of the first concepts was a "Museum of the Weird", an idea being worked on by Rolly Crump, pictured below. This iteration of the mansion would have been a walk-through concept, sort of like a cross between a wax museum and a Ripley's Museum, except filled with oddities created for the attraction, rather than real life items.
While the idea gained some traction within the company, the fact that it was a walk-through (which would reduce the number of guests who would be able to experience it) coupled with Walt not being fully sold on the idea doomed this version of the attraction. Mr. Crump along with another imagineer named Yale Gracey would keep at it, however. The work on this museum, however, would not go to waste as elements of the project would be incorporated in the Haunted Mansion.
