how was Disney’s Haunted Mansion adapted for different cultures?

also digitainability and unmotivational quotes

Author

Becca Kennedy
April 05, 2024

The original Haunted Mansion attraction is located in California’s Disneyland. The facade is a well-maintained antebellum New Orleans estate, and guests ride an omnimover Doom Buggy through different rooms of the mansion and graveyard. The first half of the experience leans toward spooky, and the back half goes in a sillier direction, with ghosts playing out gags to the tune of the jaunty “Grim Grinning Ghosts” earworm.

Since the first Haunted Mansion ride opened in 1969, there have been four additional versions brought to life (and afterlife) in other parts of the world. The five Haunted Mansions provide a fun case study for how cultural context should influence how we design experiences.

A view of the outside of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, through the front gates of the ride

Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion in California depicts a New Orleans estate.

Expanding to Florida and Tokyo

Despite not being a huge cultural shift from California, when creating a Florida version of the Haunted Mansion in Walt Disney World a few years later, there were a few tweaks. Given Florida’s proximity to real Louisiana, the attraction was no longer located in a New Orleans-themed land. Instead, the facade became more of an East Coast-style gothic mansion located in the area of the park called Liberty Square. Inside, the ride is really similar, but with a few extra scenes.

A view of the exterior of the Florida Haunted Mansion

The Florida and Tokyo Haunted Mansions are a different architectural style, reflecting mansions along the American East Coast.

The first non-US Haunted Mansion opened in Tokyo Disneyland in 1983, and it’s roughly a carbon copy of the Florida version. This makes sense because the Japanese audience wanted a genuine American theme park experience for the park overall — and that’s what they got. The primary difference is that narration dialogue is in Japanese.

A spookier version for Paris

The next version of the Haunted Mansion opened in 1992 in Disneyland Paris. The history of this park is a huge story for another day, but the short version is that the Disney company wildly miscalculated how poorly received an American-style park could be to Parisians’ sensibilities. (And again, that’s why you have to adapt design for different cultures, or know when to maybe not design or build something at all, if we’re being honest.)

Anyway, the crown jewel of the park is Phantom Manor, the French version of the Haunted Mansion which depicts a tall, ominous, cursed house in the American old west. 

The exterior of Phantom Manor, surrounded by fog at nightt

Phantom Manor in Disneyland Paris is a distinct, moodier experience.

There are a few things I love about Phantom Manor. It has many similar scenes to the prior Mansions, but a distinct story with a phantom, bride, and earthquake creates more of a throughline. Here’s what makes it interesting from a cultural design lens:

  1. “Phantom Manor” was so titled because it’s in English, to fit the environmental theme of the American frontier, yet it’s understandable by French speakers too. Both “Phantom” and “Manor” have French cognates “fantôme” and “manoir.”

  1. Only about half of Disneyland Paris visitors are French. Many are English speakers, and a lot are from the UK. In-ride dialogue alternates between French and English — often line by line — to accommodate both languages. Rather than repeating a full spiel in multiple languages (which is necessary for safety information), the narrative dialogue is written so that you can follow the full story even if you only comprehend half of what’s being said.

  1. The graveyard scene is swapped for guests going underground into catacombs.

  1. The tone, compared to the American versions, c’est très dramatique. The score is the same motif from the other Mansions, but orchestral, and more sweeping and almost desperate. The titular Phantom is frightening, and a sad bride narrative is woven into several scenes. Vincent Price (and a francophone sound-alike) is also the narrator.

  1. Phantom Manor also carries more of a literary bend, making it feel a little more sophisticated. It subtly references The Pit and the Pendulum and The Tell Tale Heart, and has one particular mirror scene that feels extremely Phantom of the Opera.

A mystical version for Hong Kong

The biggest departure from the original Haunted Mansion script and score happened in 2013 for Mystic Manor in Hong Kong Disneyland. Ghosts aren’t a good match for Chinese culture, where the dead are honored and not feared. (In fact, there is no Haunted Mansion at all at Shanghai Disneyland.) Instead, fantastical, light-hearted elements make up this experience  — including a new character, Albert the mischievous monkey.

Albert the animatronic monkey

Albert is the star of Mystic Manor in Hong Kong.

I haven’t been on Mystic Manor, but YouTube videos are plentiful and it’s a fun watch. The trackless ride vehicles and Danny Elfman score accompany scenes of a magic dust bringing items in the house to life — creating a wholly unique experience for this park and audience.

Cultural design

How do you adapt an existing experience to a new culture? Here are some of my thoughts.

  • Do real research. Immerse yourself in that culture. Be critical of your assumptions. 

  • Co-create with the target audience. Design with people, not just for people.

  • When possible, consider language as supplementary, with context as the guide. Just like you shouldn’t have to read text to understand a safety symbol, redundant visual information can help create inclusivity.

  • Sometimes separate experiences (or products, or services) make more sense than adapting what exists if the expectations and needs are drastically different.

miscellany

  • I spent some time recently absorbing Scandinavian wisdom (and pastries). I was lucky enough to host a workshop at Booster Conference in Bergen, Norway, which was a really cool opportunity! I then went on to visit Oslo and Copenhagen with a friend. And I closed the journey by attending the UX Copenhagen conference on sustainability and degrowth, where I learned about the concept of digitainability. (Did you know that our digital activity is drastically increasing CO₂ emissions, and AI is making it wayyyy worse?)

  • I decided to search for the opposite of motivational quotes to ride big waves of inspiration and demotivation. It’s a small way to fight back against toxic positivity. Anyway, my favorite from Despair, Inc.: “Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk.”