The Haunted Mansion at WDW - Jan 26th 2008

My boyfriend and I spent a week at Walt Disney World during the last week of January 2008. Our truly wonderful vacation just reinforced our opinion that Disney World isn't just for kids. Yep, we are two thirty-something's who spent 7 days/6 nights at Disney World and had the time of our lives.

We attended the Magic Kingdom's Pirate and Princess Party on Saturday the 26^th. We arrived at the park around 5:30 even though the party didn't start until 7pm. We enjoyed the red carpet that Disney had laid out for the party entrance and the accompanying fog from a fog machine. We basked in the feeling of royalty for 2 seconds and then moved on to the gift shop to buy ponchos. Florida only has a 20% chance of rain in January. Of course that 20% chance happened the whole week we were in Florida. But we didn't let the rain dampen our spirits. We are from Missouri. We live by the motto; if you don't like the weather, wait twenty minutes. Sure enough, it quit raining in 20 minutes.

We slowly walked towards the Haunted Mansion for our first ride for the evening. We both had read on the internet that the Haunted Mansion had gone under refurbishment so we were looking forward to seeing the changes. The sun had already set in Florida so as we walked towards the Haunted Mansion, we got the proper spooky feeling that is sometimes ruined by the blaring daylight hours.

We entered the queue and noticed immediately that there was no one else in line. It was a very strange feeling because we were used to lines at Disney. We slowly walked through the queue up to the mansion entrance. I have never been to the mansion entrance without anyone there so I was momentarily confused. The main entrance is two double doors without a handle. Silly I pushed on the door to no avail. After two minutes of just standing around in confusion the doors opened to reveal a Haunted Mansion host.

The Haunted Mansion host ushered us into the stretching room. He was excellent with his spooky demeanor and unwavering stare. Robert and I stood around looking at the newly refurbished stretching room, assuming more guests would be joining us soon. Nope, no one else came in. The Haunted Mansion host closed the door and the stretching room scene began. I have never been scared by the ride before but there was something about that fact that it was only Robert and I in the room that made me a little scared. I quickly glued myself to Robert's side and listened to the spooky ghost host. Robert and I assumed we were the only ones that were in the stretching room. We forgot about the Haunted Mansion host. He snuck up behind Robert when the lights were completely out and just stood right behind him. When the lights came back on, Robert jumped out of his skin. It was very scary for him but funny for me. If the host would have accepted tips, I would have slipped him a $20 because he made the moment perfect.

We were ushered to the loading area with me laughing and Robert giving me dirty looks. I stopped laughing because the host was still giving us that spooky stare and really starting to creep me out. We were ushered to the doom buggies and again I was struck with the fact that we were completely alone besides the Haunted Mansion host and another host manning the doom buggies.

We quickly got on our doom buggy and enjoyed riding through the Haunted Mansion by ourselves. It was nice not hearing screaming kids and loud teenagers during the rides. It was wonderful not being distracted by rude guests taking flash pictures. The changes in the ride are quite noticeable and wonderful. The graveyard scene seemed unchanged but still made us jump when the ghoul's head popped out behind the gravestone. As we waved goodbye to the ghost bride, we just smiled at each other with the knowledge that we just experienced a once in a lifetime moment, Disney style.