I have to admit, in my early days of visiting Disney parks I didn’t understand the appeal of the tours Disney offered. After all, I was already paying a not-insubstantial amount just to enter the park: why would I want to add more to it?
Of course, past me had a point: Disney’s selection of tours are pricey, just like every other offering in the parks. But I’ve come to realize that Disney’s tours offer unique entertainments you won’t find anywhere else, even if they can’t quite be called a value. What really changed my mind was Disney’s Happiest Haunts Tour, which takes place throughout the Halloween season at Disneyland Resort.
While Halloween is a great time to visit any Disney park, it’s a particularly spectacular time at Disneyland, which has some extra seasonal color. In addition to the standard fall decor, you’ll find both Space Mountain and the Haunted Mansion have holiday makeovers as well as a Halloween tree in Frontierland. Still, this doesn’t seem like enough to prevent the same tour from making a Disney World debut — and considering Disney’s fondness for holiday add-ons, it’s surprising that the tour hasn’t made an east coast appearance yet… but perhaps one year.
While the tour changes annually, the 2014 edition featured more rides, more treats, and an updated story. For those of you who won’t make it to Disneyland to experience this tour first-hand, here’s a look at this year’s Happiest Haunts.
1. You’ll need to coax your host into appearing
Like many Disney tours, this one starts with a plaid-clad tour guide walking us down Main Street. The highlights here are all Halloween-themed, with pumpkins, decor, and Halloween traditions being discussed as we stroll through the park. We’re treated to a pumpkin-decorated marshmallow at the Candy Palace to give us the sugar-power to make it through this 2.5 hour walking tour — it won’t be the last treat we’ll get, but it’s the last we’ll get for a while.
As we head towards the Haunted Mansion, we also make several attempts to summon our own happy haunt by reciting some of Madame Leota’s incantations…. but, with the sun still shining, it’s perhaps a bit too early for the park’s ghostly inhabitants to come out and play. By the time we’ve gotten through the Haunted Mansion, however, it’s nearly dusk and our tour group is joined by its very own ghost host in the form of Master Gracey himself.
Gracey makes for a rather surreal figure in the park: he wears a dark suit and tie with a cloak and his mannerisms are all slightly odd, which certainly makes him stand out from the casually dressed tourists.
2. Your tour guide is a resident of the Haunted Mansion
Master Gracey — a reference to imagineer Yale Gracey, who worked on the Mansion — isn’t a prominent character at Disneyland’s version of the Haunted Mansion, existing only as one of the portraits lined up in the portrait gallery (but he can’t be found at all during the Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay). At Disney World there are more references to Gracey, supposedly master of the house, whose portrait hangs in the foyer and whose tombstone — “Master Gracey laid to rest. No mourning please at his request.” — is outside. Though the Gracey on our tour never quite explains who he is, he’s clearly made out to be a ghost of some renown — and perhaps the master of the mansion, as he’s implied to be at Disney World.
The real story behind the Haunted Mansion is a bit vague, in part because it was cobbled together by imagineer Xavier Atencio based on a number of different scripts and concepts — but the story as told by Gracey during the tour somewhat resembles that of the Phantom Manor in Disneyland Paris. There, the Manor — the park’s version of the Haunted Mansion — is located near Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and the Manor’s story ties them together by saying the same man owned both properties… and their ghostly fates were quite intertwined: when one became a ghost town, so did the other.
3. You’ll skip the queues
In the tour, this story link is just enough to make it reasonable for us to go from riding the Haunted Mansion to riding Big Thunder Mountain Railroad… though the already tenuous connection isn’t stretched further to connect to the next two rides the tour takes: Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy. But do you care that the storyline is on the vague side when you get to enjoy some of the park’s spookiest offerings without any waiting in line? Probably not.
Missing from this year’s tour was a ride on the Tower of Terror. It seems likely that this was cut from the program so the tour could skip walking to Disney’s California Adventure which, while much closer to Disneyland than the Tower of Terror in Orlando is to Magic Kingdom, is still a bit of a trek. But with the opportunity to hit three of Disneyland’s best — Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder Mountain, and Space Mountain — plus Mr. Toad, it’s hard to feel like we missed out.
4. You’ll pick up a few treats
Some tour-goers may be disappointed at the lack of scares this tour offers: though Gracey is certainly strange and can be a bit creepy, the scare factor never gets worse than the content you’d find elsewhere in the park. While you get plenty of Halloween trivia and Disney history, don’t expect any big scares here: for that you’ll want to head over to Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights.
But we did get some tasty treats to enjoy during our tour. In addition to the marshmallow we got at the beginning of the tour, we also got a cookie and an exceptionally tiny pumpkin spice latte (adorable!) at the end of the tour. And alongside the edible treats, we also received a collectable pin: this year’s pin was a heavy silver key (just over 3″ long) with a black and white photo of the Haunted Mansion on one side and “Disney’s Happiest Haunts Tour” on the other. Repeat tourgoers will discover that each year there’s a unique pin to collect, each labeled with the date.
Is Happiest Haunts worthwhile?
This tour is a fun way to experience the best of the park’s holiday season offerings, with treats, Halloween trivia, and some appropriately spooky rides — including the Haunted Mansion, which can have waits up to two hours during the Halloween season. But for all it offers, it’s a pricey tour at $80 — though annual passholders, Disney Visa cardholders, and AAA members can get a discount — which makes it difficult to recommend for any but the serious fan of both Disney and Halloween. Still, if you’re looking to make this Halloween extra special, it’s hard to go wrong with a tour of Disney’s Happiest Haunts, especially if you pair it with Mickey’s Halloween Party.
Happy holidays, everyone!
