The days are getting shorter. The sun hangs lower in the sky. A cool autumn breeze begins to settle in across the nation while the very first hints of Halloween make their way into neighborhoods and stores… and that means that for the 22nd year in a row, Disneyland’s iconic Haunted Mansion has closed, not to return until after the New Year.
Yep, for Imagineering fans, it’s the most divisive time of the year: when, yet again, Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion gains a new, festive tenant, trading some of its “Grim, Grinning Ghosts” for a swirling vortex of holidays. Today, we’ve collected the pros and cons of Haunted Mansion Holiday. Then we’ll ask you to tell us whether this fan-favorite, fan-frustrating Christmas-stylized takeover of the Mansion has overstayed its welcome…
The PROS of Haunted Mansion Holiday
1. Haunted Mansion Holiday brings a popular IP to the parks
Today, it’s hard to even imagine that when The Nightmare Before Christmas debuted in 1993, Disney didn’t want much to do with it. Threatening to break Walt Disney Feature Animation’s already-in-progress streak of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, Disney instead opted to release The Nightmare Before Christmas under the Touchstone Pictures banner – the more “adult-oriented” studio label that Eisner had ramped up in the ’80s. The film’s director, Henry Selick, famously recalled, “Their biggest fear, and why it was kind of a stepchild project, [was] they were afraid of their core audience hating the film and not coming.”
Obviously, a lot has changed. The Nightmare Before Christmas found its footing in the late ’90s and early 2000s as a sort of enduring, Hot Topic cult classic. Re-releases, licensing tie-ins, and the film’s annual appeal have made it a substantial success for the company, with Touchstone now papered over on the film’s intro with a retroactively added Disney title card. Disneyland even borrows Nightmare’s villain as the namesake and icon of its Halloween party, Oogie Boogie Bash.
There’s no question that thirty years has turned The Nightmare Before Christmas from a “stepchild” into a very reliable, recognizable, merchandisable, and handy IP for the franchise-focused Disney. Though fans may still clamor for a permanent presence for the inter-generational favorite, Haunted Mansion Holiday allows guests to see Jack, Sally, and Oogie Boogie in animatronic form, which is pretty cool! And frankly, there’s no better place or time than Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion…
2. Haunted Mansion Holiday makes great sense operationally
Whether The Nightmare Before Christmas counts as a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie is one of the enduring questions of our time. Luckily, it just sort of works out that via Haunted Mansion Holiday, it can be both. Haunted Mansion Holiday typically lasts from September through January, standing in as a special offering for both Disneyland’s “Halloween Time” promotion and the “Holidays at the Disneyland Resort” festivities. While you might argue that it’s a better fit for one than the other, there’s no question that fundamentally, it works.
Haunted Mansion Holiday also has a McRib-ness to it, becoming an annual tradition that many guests eagerly await. To say that it’s popular would be an understatement. Frankly, waits for (and the popularity of) Haunted Mansion Holiday are why Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion is about to undergo a queue expansion and retail space addition to begin with! As a “limited time” offering, Haunted Mansion Holiday is immensely popular, and a serves as a tremendous draw for locals to return to Disneyland each year at Halloween Time.
Speaking of which…
3. Haunted Mansion Holiday shows what Disneyland is capable of
It’s sometimes said that Disneyland is the world’s most popular regional theme park. Sure, it was the second most-visited park on Earth in 2022… but still, Disneyland is fundamentally still a park that caters more to regional audiences than international ones. Disneyland banks big on nostalgia, generational tradition, and initiatives to attract its “local and vocal” audiences to come back to the place they care about.
So while Disney World shies away from extensive ride overlays for fear of its once-in-a-lifetime guests missing the “real” version of the ride, Disneyland is constantly keeping its collection in flux. Without a doubt, Haunted Mansion Holiday is the most extravagant and expensive of the resort’s overlays; a highlight among a fabled lineup of holiday overlays, which has included rotating offerings like “it’s a small world holiday,” Jingle Cruise, Space Mountain: Ghost Galaxy, Luigi’s Honkin’ Halloween & Mater’s Graveyard Jambooree, and Guardians of the Galaxy: Monsters After Dark.
So you’ve got to give Haunted Mansion Holiday credit – it’s a fantastic overlay that completely changes the ride it inhabits. While it draws upon the best of Haunted Mansion’s existing scenes and effects, we’re talking about new music, new scenes, new animatronics. This is a serious work of Imagineering that’s very high quality and very emblematic of Disneyland’s commitment to keeping things fresh.
Of course, you don’t have to dig too deep into Disney Parks Facebook or Twitter groups to hear the other side of the story… On the next page, we’ll dig into the arguments against Haunted Mansion Holiday and ask for your thoughts on this divisive spooky-season overlay.
Let’s be clear: there’s no question that Disneyland’s annual Nightmare Before Christmas takeover of the Haunted Mansion is a clever way to bring a popular IP to the parks, a “McRib” style delight that brings the park’s local audience out in droves, and a fantastic showing of Disneyland’s unique ability to go big with seasonal specialties. But this E-Ticket Halloween conversion isn’t without its detractors. In fact, more and more Disneyland fans seem to be tiring of Haunted Mansion Holiday, and there are a few key reasons…
The CONS of Haunted Mansion Holiday
1. Haunted Mansion Holiday eats up half the year
In 2023, the Haunted Mansion closed on August 14 to begin its transformation to Haunted Mansion Holiday, re-opening with the start of the resort’s Halloween Time promotion on September 1. If 2022’s version of the ride was any indication, the holiday version could stay open as late as January 31, 2024. Assuming it takes a week to return the traditional ride (re-opening as itself on February 7, 2024), that means that altogether, Haunted Mansion Holiday will have taken 177 days out of the traditional ride’s operating calendar – 48.4% of the year!
Yes, including the three weeks of cumulative time needed to install then de-install the Nightmare Before Christmas version of the ride, Haunted Mansion Holiday eats up about half of the calendar year. Even if you love Haunted Mansion Holiday, that’s a really, really long time. To have the ride last from before Labor Day till essentially Groundhog’s Day is quite a commitment. It makes sense that Disney wants the most bang for their buck when it comes to the cost to install this elaborate overlay. But six months out of the year is a very long time for even the most expensive and ambitious seasonal schtick.
2. Haunted Mansion Holiday is more than twenty years old…
And it’s not just that Haunted Mansion Holiday lasts a long time within a year. It’s also been happening for a very long time in the grand scheme of things! After all, we’re talking about this annual overlay originating in 2001. The last time Disneyland guests could ride the classic Haunted Mansion during the spooky season, there was no California Adventure. Think about that. Space Mountain: Ghost Galaxy lasted from 2009 to 2019. The Christmas-themed Jingle Cruise, from 2013 to 2016. Only “it’s a small world holiday” has lasted longer (since 1997, though arguably, less intrusive to the original ride).
Though everyone – especially Disney Parks fans! – loves a tradition, you can understand why – after more than twenty years – even some of Haunted Mansion Holiday’s defenders concede that maybe it’s time to try something new. And – here’s the boldest idea – maybe that “something new” could be letting guests ride Disneyland’s built-in Halloween classic on Halloween…! Which brings us to…
3. … So Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion has missed more than twenty Halloweens
Sure, some might argue that the Nightmare Before Christmas version of the ride is actually more Halloween-related and more explicitly celebrational of the holiday than the original version of the ride. But even so, there’s no question that it’s very, very weird that Disneyland’s spookiest ride – a literal haunted house filled with spooky spirits – typically only operates from February through mid-August.
There’s not even really a comparison to be made here except to imagine that Disneyland had built the Possibilityland: Enchanted Snow Palace, and then every year at Christmastime, rewrapped it as an Up ride where Carl and Russell journey to the Arctic to celebrate Christmas there. It would work well enough, and be fresh and seasonal and clever… but fans might say, “Uh, the ride was actually already the perfect Christmas ride.” And after two dozen Christmasses of not seeing it in its original form, you can understand why they might be ready to retire the overlay.
4. There’s compromise to be found
Increasingly, fans are asking Disney to consider a compromise. Sure, Haunted Mansion Holiday is well-done and well-loved. But what if Haunted Mansion got to be itself for Halloween, closing for its two week changeover beginning on November 1st? Wouldn’t that allow Haunted Mansion Holiday to be ready by mid-November, serving as an anchor of the resort’s Christmas celebration, remaining through mid-January? That way, Haunted Mansion Holiday would still take up a large chunk of the ride’s calendar (in this case, about a quarter versus half) but would give fans time to enjoy the true Haunted Mansion during spooky season. (Arguably, Haunted Mansion Holiday is more of a Christmas-themed attraction than a Halloween one.)
Or, what if Haunted Mansion Holiday got its full September-through-January run, but every other year? Wouldn’t that only add to the ride’s “specialness” and its “McRib-ocity,” creating even more demand on the odd-numbers years when Jack and crew “wreck the halls”? Certainly, compromises like that could both keep Haunted Mansion Holiday alive and beloved while also respecting the original Haunted Mansion, perhaps even plussed with its own extra spooks during its Halloween Time years? This much is certain: there’s no easy answer to the Haunted Mansion Holiday debate.
But what are your thoughts on how – or if – Disney should keep its Nightmare Before Christmas overlay alive?
