Thought we could stay at Magic Kingdom again today…but take a sharp turn on tone. I’d mentioned it was quiet at Magic Kingdom over the weekend—which led to a posted wait time at Haunted Mansion of just 13 minutes. Like the Tower of Terror, a cheeky 13 minute posted wait time is the lowest Haunted Mansion ever goes.
So we rode. And I captured this. It wasn’t exactly what I’d planned to grab while we were in there, but sometimes plans go awry in the best possible way—because instead we got this.
If you thought a functioning Yeti was the single loudest absence in the Disney Parks, the Hatbox Ghost says to hold his, well, hatbox? First appearing in the Disneyland version of the Haunted Mansion in 1969, he became notorious less for this than his later absence. Because the tech wasn’t quite there yet at the time, the illusion wasn’t as convincing in action as Imagineers had hoped…so he was quietly removed after only a few weeks.
For decades, he became something of a Disney myth. He appeared in early promotional videos. Some guests swore they’d seen him. Others thought he was just an urban legend.
But no good idea ever really dies here. Even the undead ones. And so, in 2015, nearly 46 years later, he made his triumphant return to Disneyland. This time the tech was there and he worked beautifully.
We got our version here in Disney World a bit later. In 2023. And while the placement is a little surprising, with him appearing near the knight’s armor and grandfather clock before the spirits are properly summoned, the impact is still there.
He represents a lot of things, I think. The ambition of early Imagineers to test the limits of then-current tech. The power of the fandom to bring him back. The fact that sometimes technology needs a minute to catch up with our imaginations. And that sometimes our stories will haunt us until we see them through.
This was taken with an eye toward nothing but framing him perfectly and drinking in every ounce of available light. Settings were 50mm, 1/50 second (lowest I could go in a moving vehicle), f/1.2, and ISO 10000. I probably could have taken that ISO even higher, but didn’t want to lose any of the detail in the glow.