Haunted Mansion Holiday

 Good tidings! Baby M here with another spooky Disney post! This time about every Halloween blogger's favorite Disney ride: the Haunted Mansion.

Now while we love the classic Haunted Mansion, Disneyland revamps the ride every September/October into a Nightmare Before Christmas Takeover. They are the only Disney park that does this!

They do an incredible job transforming the mansion and the ride into a wonderful Creepy Christmas adventure. The outside is very fun!

The inside is also incredible!

I especially love the room with the portraits that grow! 

My friend and I wanted to be able to enjoy the ride instead of focusing on getting pictures so she actually recorded it on her GoPro. The videos are below if you'd like to watch.

If you happen to be at Disneyland in September/October, I highly recommend waiting in line to do this ride, especially if you are a fan of the Nightmare Before Christmas.

Be sure to head over to the Countdown to Halloween Blog for more Halloween reading.

[Secrets Revealed] Haunted Mansion Disneyland

This is just a super video of the Haunted Mansion behind the scenes secrets.  I learned so much fun stuff such as: 

1. What the original concept art was and where it is incorporated into the mansion
2. The muse for Madame Leota
3.  All about Constance Hatchaway and her husbands
4.  The progression of the ride and some of the theories riders hold.

It's long but hang in there because it's good.

Cemetery Dawgs....

Oh boy, Danny is coming for a visit today.  He is a dog who had spent his youth living among the tombstones in a cemetery.  He's a good little dogs except when he is in the company of a smaller, fluffier dog. Then his instincts harken back to the tough days of making a living in the grave yard and he tries to snack.

Dogs have a long history in cemeteries.  Whether they are just hanging around waiting for their loved ones corpse to be reanimated like Gryfriars Bobby, serving as a psychopomps in a burial chamber, or making a living out of one.

If you are not familiar with the story of Greyfriars Bobby,   it tells the tale of a little Skye Terrier who spent 14 years guarding the grave of his beloved master John Gray. We visited this grave last time we were in Edinburgh.  This tale also spawned a Disney movie, a book, and a pub!

A psychopomp guides the newly deceased soul to the afterlife.  In Mayan and Aztec cultures, this was a little dog.  Here be Magic has an excellent blog about this from 2017.

Dogs also guard the underworld as in the case of Cerberus, the three headed hound of hell. In Greek and Roman Mythology, He keeps the dead from leaving and the living from entering.  It is also a kick ass microbrewery in Old Colorado City (Looking forward to seeing them at the Heritage Brew Fest next week).  

If you did not read my blog about Dante's Inferno, the Infidel 753 had this to say:

"There is a claim that the name Cerberus comes from the ancient Indo-European word kérberos meaning "spotted". If so, the King of the Underworld literally named his three-headed dog "Spot"." 

So welcome to Danny and his human companion who happens to be my sister. Perhaps we will hang out in a cemetery for old times sake.