Triumph of the American Imagination

Today is the 107th anniversary of Walt Disney's birth.



Walt was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 5, 1901. Little did Elias and Flora Disney know at the time that their son would go on to redefine the fields of television, film, especially animation...and go on to create a new field of the entertainment industry...

The theme park.

Happy Birthday, Walt!

Foundations: Expedition Everest, the Legend of the Forbidden Mountain

The attractions of today; in fact, everything done after 1967, when Pirates of the Caribbean finally opened its doors at Disneyland, follows similar models. There are notable exceptions (and not-so-notable ones, too). The Great Movie Ride operates on a similarly inherent contradiction, and employs basic narrative, but also relies on a plot that hangs heavy in the air, and is never resolved. Part of the reason not to include plot as a story-telling device is because in an experience versus a two-dimensional medium, resolution can be difficult.

Every major attraction, commonly referred to since The Matterhorn as “E-Ticket” attractions, follows similar methods to Pirates and Mansion. These were the pioneers in their forms, nearly a decade after Disneyland opened. The Jungle Cruise does some of these things, but the extent to which Montage, Contradiction, Surprise & Suspense and the power of narrative over plot are practiced is nowhere more apparent than in New Orleans Square at Disneyland.

The major attractions, up until the 1990s, followed suit with these ideas. A major return to form was made with Expedition Everest in the new millennium, but that attraction proved difficult due to its nature: a roller coaster is offered as a continuous experience, where a cut can be much harder to achieve, and far more terrifying for the riders.



This is one of the reasons Rock N' Roller Coaster is a very short experience, like the blast from Marty McFly's amplifier at the beginning of Back to the Future- we don't have the mechanics to stop, and if we did, we couldn't achieve the speed within such a confined, indoor space necessary to match the high adrenaline in the music.



Still: We approach a high mountain, at the far edge of a small, provincial Nepalese mountain town. In the town itself, contradiction helps tell the story. Generations and regions and traditions all clash and mingle within the architecture, where an internet café sits peacefully next to a gear shop, and a we travel through a traditional courtyard and follow it up with a gift shop, and then a museum. Finally, a Tea Train approaches (our contradiction). We have come to this mountain in search of the Yeti. We wish to see him, in his natural habitat. Brilliantly, the “plot”- the false front that the attraction puts to guests, provides another major contradiction. The “plot” here tells us we have come to climb Everest, and that the tea train will take us to Everest Base Camp.

Almost always, the "plot" is used as a false front in themed design, and often doubles as the hook. Mansion and Pirates are probably still the only attractions bold enough to operate without the pretense of a false front: from the beginning, we accept our reasons for being there. We know we are boarding a batteau that will carry us deep into the mischievous realm of the pirates, and we know our "Ghost Host" has brought his carriages to give us a tour of this strange, haunted mansion. These stories are rooted so firmly in the collective conscious that they need no further introduction.

At Everest, the subject matter is far less universal to its audience, and so the basic premiss must be derived from what our audience knows: they see a large mountain, purportedly the largest in the world, and expect that if they are invited into the area, they will in one way or another experience the climbing of said mountain because they know that this is the thing people do with large mountains.

We move first through a climbing shop, but we dispense with that idea rather quickly, and we find ourselves waiting the majority of the queue out inside a museum space dedicated to the Yeti. There is a little bit of Hitchcock in this attraction; the voyeurism, the cast (us) being interested in the wrong thing, and the other side giving in and offering us the chance to do something terrible (see the Yeti), which we view as being a “disruption” to our trip, though we (and they) all know, why we are really here is to see this Yeti.



We know this not because of our immediate connections with the Yeti or his legend upon first sight of the majestic mountain; (those are instead reserved for the "climbing" pre tense that draws our guests into the story), but we know this from the clever marketing. The bottom line is that in all great theme park attractions, something usually goes horribly wrong. We are confronted by some major apparition or monster or fear - and have to escape. We know this in the same way we know that if there is a mountain, chances are something related to climbing it will be explored.

Another attraction that uses this concept very well is Revenge of the Mummy at Universal Studios Florida. Here, we find ourselves along New York Street, and before us is the front of the Museum of Antiquities. This being a backlot, is it a film set? It is...but our immediate visual associations with the material provide our minds with the idea that this is a museum. We see Mummies in a museum. We don't expect them to be alive, and we don't expect them to attack us- yet the whole time, we know full well that this is a story in a theme park, and there is always something that goes wrong, because thats part of the fun- so, our subconcious mind validates the idea that there are mummies in the museum, and that the museum itself could be a film set based on the surrounding area and the structure of the story the park is telling, and we then accept that we know, in reality, what we are coming to see.



This suspension of disbelief, this willingness to believe that inside we will likely be menaced by a mummy or some other as-of-yet unseen force- is what drives us to want to experience a theme park and its "attractions". Its a unique form of storytelling where we aide the audience in every way we can to make the decision to believe, and yet at the last moment it is ultimately their own decision to do so.



The tea train is a contradiction because tea trains do not travel to high altitude. It’s not so much what they do not do as what we do not perceive them to do, and we do not perceive that trains can travel on Everest, because it is infinitely too high in our imaginations to accommodate trains- yet, here it is. This train will take us to Everest Base Camp, though we will be interrupted on the way by the fearsome growl of the creature. Notice how this moment always brings a smile to guests’ face, even though we all know its coming. We knew it the second we saw that foreboding mountain, and if not then, certainly when we entered the Yeti museum- not surprisingly the very last room of consequence in the waiting area before we board our tea train.

Now, we journey chronologically through the lowlands, up through a mountain monastery and into a high and icy mountain pass. Unlike Mansion and Pirates, Everest does not use montage to tell its story. The reason for this is that its constant forward motion cannot be denied: the ride system has been associated with moving forward from the beginning, where as in a fully controlled “dark” environment the system itself may move forward, but the viewpoint may move sideways (as in the library scene in Mansion) or even vertically (as in the final scene of Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland).

Although we follow a linear progression from the time we leave the station onward, the story itself- the moments that are being chosen for us to see- can utilize montage. Moving up the mountain pass, we are menaced by the destroyed track and the yeti’s growl, and the only way to go is backwards – and down. In moving backwards is not only a surprise, which is built by the suspense of not knowing where we are going to go, or what we are going to see- and down. Moving down makes sense; because we have reached the highest point that the track can reach, because the Yeti has destroyed the route to “Everest Base Camp”.



This is the moment when our minds place together those disparate elements we have been mulling since our approach: we are here to climb Everest, the tea train will take us to base camp, yet there is something strange happening in "them" showing us all of this Yeti-related information. If we hadn't put it together yet, now it will be impossible to ignore. This is the part the guests love, because it confirms what they wanted to see happen: We all traveled up that mountain wanting to see this creature, wanting to experience the raw power of nature, and now we may just get that chance.

The tea train catapults backwards in the dark- it seems to have become a runaway train. Here is another small element that separates Everest’s narrative from its plot. Once we leave the station, the plot of us traveling to base camp is no longer pursued. One device that may have bordered on a plot point would have been the idea of a driver.

This train, apparently, is automated. How did it get that way? Is it possible to fold this kind of complicated automation into such old technology? If not, then do we have a driver at the beginning? If so, does that driver abandon us high on the mountain after seeing the twisted remains of the track to base camp, and why do we not see or hear this happening? Because it is a detail that is not important to the scene. What is vital is, we are as high as we can go. We know that the train cannot come back down the way it has come up, because from the ground the ascent and descent moments are visible to everyone passing by in Anandapur.

So, we all know that the train must be able to escape somehow, or else the forward motion of this narrative would be impacted. Just as when a slightly too logical person asks of a character in a film why he or she did not choose a particular action, the unavoidable answer comes up: “There wouldn’t have been a film.”

In this case, if we did not know that the train would and must continue to move, “there would not have been an attraction.”

So, Everest is full of inherent contradictions. The next moments in the attraction use montage in terms of the story, but not in terms of the physical movement like Pirates and Mansion. Here, we come to a stop in a dark cavern, and in front of us the shadow of the Yeti rips apart another length of track and lets out a menacing howl.



We find ourselves outside the mountain and then back inside very quickly. The tunnels of the first (backwards) drop are pitch black, while after our second encounter with the Yeti, there is light, and we can see the narrowness of the icy caverns twisting all around us as we fly down through them.

Here, the use of lighting to tell the story and partially confuse the audience is the illusion that has been chosen.

Because we begin our journey in the shade, move into sunlight, into brighter sunlight and then into pitch black after we first hear the Yeti, then into a minimally lit environment in the second show scene where the Yeti rips apart another length of track, and into broad daylight, we have covered a wide variety of lighting setups that match our emotions for each of those moments. The pitch-black backward moments are exactly how me might feel after an encounter with the Yeti- or just the sound of him, echoing off the ice. The daylight after the shadow scene is our moment of escape, the Yeti growling menacingly behind us, we must move forward into the light.

But the mountain has other ideas- just when we have reached the lit safety of the ground; we are twisted back up into the darkness. This time, we are given some light, but it only reveals the extremely narrow and twisting tunnels our tea train is navigating.

This subconsciously tells us that we are not finished- that there must be another encounter of some kind up ahead, less why would we need to move back into the mountain, the darkness, the tunnel? We wouldn’t, unless we are going to see the thing we have really come to see, in full, for the first time.



With so much time in Everest’s preshow dedicated to putting the Yeti into our minds, it would be treason for him not to be revealed. The “story” of Everest- the point of making the attraction, much as making a film, is that the Yeti is not a creature to be feared. He is the protector of these lands, protecting them from us- for the first time in a Disney attraction, mankind becomes the enemy. We interpret the Yeti as frightening because we cannot possibly understand him, and we fear that which we do not understand.

This ideal is the through-line of our experience. We go to Pirates of the Caribbean because we want to see pirates and have an adventure. We visit the Haunted Mansion because we seek ghosts. We board our tea trains because we want to see the Yeti, but also because we know we should not. We know that the tea train is polluting the Yeti’s environment, and we know that the reason he is angry is not because he is a blood thirsty beast, but because we have ventured onto the sacred heights of the world’s highest mountain and its neighboring peaks- the land that he protects in traditional Nepalese folklore.

We know the tea train is “polluting” because of the all-to-important puffs of steam it emits when it cycles back into the station. The steam serves as the “Fire & Water” element- the train, remember, in our psyches, should not be taking us to base camp, because trains cannot do such things- but there is the steam, to prove to us its reality. The steam serves a dual purpose as the “Fire & Water” and evidence of the contradictory statement- that we are threatening the Yeti’s sacred lands in order to catch a glimpse of him.

Now, finally, we see him: he is massive and terrifying, lit like a monster in a horror film. This is yet another contradiction, since we are being told he is the “protector” of the highlands, but he is shown to us here exactly the way we want to see him: as a monster, as a giant and terrifying beast attacking something he cannot understand, where we are really the ones not understanding him.



His overall appearance, especially his fur, is another piece of fire & water. Animals have fur. Yetis are not real, just as pirates are not real, yet here is one with real fur! Pirates are not real, yet here is one spitting water, or with hairs on his leg that appear very real. Ghosts are not real, yet here is one actually seated next to us.

Our encounter with the Yeti is brief, but does him justice because he is gigantic and very close. The same reason that the dinosaurs in Animal Kingdom’s other “E” Ticket attraction appear so frightening and realistic is taken in similar approach here. The dinosaurs and the Yeti are both viewed for a very brief time, like a flash memory or an image from a dream or nightmare, and both are massive creatures.

Another element that proves vital to Expedition Everest is an idea we haven’t discussed much, and that is the Surprise and Suspense element of design. Everest, time and again, builds suspense with situations and movement and then offers us surprise as to the solution. Most of the time, we are put in peril and the surprise is how we are removed from that peril. We find ourselves without a place to ascend. The Yeti’s sounds are all around us, and he may appear over the rise at any moment. Where are we to go? Backwards, and down. It seems improbable, but that is usually the solution.

It’s the one thing we don’t want the train to do- indeed, it cannot do, because this is a roller coaster, and those (our subconscious is screaming) can only move forward! Wrong. Typically, the surprise element is the one thing we have dismissed as entirely impossible, because our minds tend to impress logical and physical limitations of time and space and gravity on such things as thrill rides or themed entertainments.



In his wonderful and bible-like "Designing Disney", Imagineer extraordinaire John Hench discusses the danger of contradiction. When I talk about the "Inherent Contradictions" present in many of the modes of themed design that allow our story to move forward, its not exactly the same kind of contradiction. Hench talks about the Long Shot, and how the close-up (the details) must never betray what our guests experience in the long shot (the big picture). An inherent contradiction might better be described as "our brains taking a right where in normal, everyday life we might take a left". These are the flourishes, often in major experiences the modes of transportation, that enhance the reality our guests have come to experience. These are the carriages moving through the houses, the batteau departing from a quiet bayou and suddenly finding itself in the middle of a pirate showdown- these are the contradictory statements that we as designers work so hard to make real.

If we can make them believe that the carriage is really traveling through the mansion, we have achieved our goals, and their reality has been enhanced. Now, if we can tell a great story that people can relate to within that frame, we've achieved a part- albeit a very small part- of the Disney Magic.




This is the beauty of Expedition Everest: The Legend of the Forbidden Mountain. This is an experience in the grand, narrative tradition of Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion. We have a false front that draws us into the experience, we have a menacing character study that is at once mysterious and powerful, natural and yet removed, and we have a mode of transportation that is inherently impossible and yet it exists before our eyes- and we end on "ah" (that is to say, an open note, which allows guests to question the experience much as we might question a dream).

We question the ghosts in the mansion because as we exit we are confronted with a series of silent crypts. We question the pirates because we have returned to the above-ground world where we started, in the quiet, pirate-free bayou. We question the Yeti because we saw him so briefly, and this is what draws us back: we have a desire to see and experience these things again not only for their value as pieces of entertainment, but because we want to know if we really, truly saw these things that cannot possibly exist.

Next on Foundations:

Editors Note

**Editor's Note: Please remember that none of the information posted on this site is in any way related to the actual process of story development used at Walt Disney Imagineering. While the "Foundations" series of articles and others here may contain information that is accurate, they may also contain information as viewed from the perspective of me alone.

That is to say, these are only interpretations of the story designs. They are not, and are not intended to be, the actual, "official" manuscripts about the rides, shows and attractions featured here.**

Foundations: Pirates of the Caribbean

If The Haunted Mansion is archetypal in its themed design, and it set the standard for the themed show, then Pirates of the Caribbean was that in a more common, understandable form.

We enter what looks from the outside like a wax museum- an unassuming structure on the outside, set in the center of the road from Adventureland to New Orleans Square, and boldly announcing that guests are about to enter a new story environment, far different from the last one they encountered. Since the last element of Adventureland is the treehouse, there is a psychological connection made with a point of lookout, in this case over the Rivers of America. There are certain things in America that are associated with water- namely, boats, ships and all manner of mariners and seafarers, including pirates.

This house is situated in a way that not only overlooks the river, but it also could have been a manor house or governor's mansion in its previous life.

The building resembles a museum because that was exactly what it was intended to be. On one end of New Orleans Square, we have a Haunted Mansion, a giant, gothic structure pristine on the outside, but certainly amiss on the interior. Here, we have a building that boldly announces its intentions, but relates thematically to the Mansion because both present false fronts: Inside Pirates’ façade, we will find not a wax museum nor a provincial manor house, but the embarkation point of a live bayou.



Inside the Mansion, we will find not a charming gothic dinner party, but a haunted house filled with references that never pay off- so the theme of the false front is very important to New Orleans Square, a feature that was more or less irrellevant after Walt Disney learned what he did at the World’s Fair of 1964 and 1965.

Inside, we find ourselves immediately in belief of our surroundings. We are deep in a bayou, though we have just come from a quaint New Orleans riverfront sidewalk, and we are also stepping constantly back in time. The riverboats that take us into the bayou are old-fashioned enough, but unassuming. They lead us past fireflies and a shack where a banjo player picks “Deliverance” on his strings. We wind into what appears to be a back-street (Claude Coat’s concept of anonymous background really shines in the final scene before the first waterfall), and here we are presented with yet another shining contradiction.

A decorative skull, hung above a pitch-black archway, begins to speak directly to us. Until this point, the environment we have encountered within the show building has been seamless- now, there is something amiss. The skull serves much the same purpose as the narration in The Haunted Mansion, and combines the narration with the use of the fading portrait; however, where the Mansion sets up our journey through audio only, Pirates uses visual elements and audio to explain, in a thesis statement moment, what is about to occur.

Because of the lighting in this scene, the skull is a focal point that fades away into either blackness or the anonymity of brick surroundings, and we are focused intently on the piece and what it is telling us. These subtle methods of directing our attention have not been adhered to in later attractions there is an impression that the public cannot pay attention to anything that does not demand it. What must be given its due credit is that the skull IS demanding our attention: we simply are not aware that it is doing so, because we are being tricked by the lighting. If we only could pay attention to demanding sets and themes, guests today would not believe they are in the bayou after stepping THROUGH what was essentially an Eisensteinian cut- from a New Orleans sidewalk directly into the Bayou.



Montage has been prevalent in entertainment for so long that it has literally become our second nature, and we no longer notice it. That does not mean we are not paying attention to it, or affected by it being there- we simply accept it as normal and move on.

Down the waterfall we go, and we find ourselves in what amounts to the overture of the attraction. The montage effect shines in the caverns because we are being shown the aftermath of what we are about to experience. Here are the mounds of treasure and the skeletons of the pirates- the aftermath, indeed, of the sacking of the town, so that now we are effectively traveling backwards in time.



Davy Jones is a character invented entirely for cinematic purposes, but actually fits quite well into the structure of the attraction. He is timeless, because he is undead, and has survived an unspecified number of years waiting for his bride to return to him.



He appears in the caverns to tell us that, in fact, Dead Men DO tell tales, which is both in contradiction with what we have just seen in the caverns (the skeletons, NOT telling tales, but being dead) and in tune with what we are seeing because if we are moving backwards through time, then someone must be telling us that tale. That’s what stories do, isn’t it? The thesis of the attraction is that we are seeking “Salty Old Pirates”- the alive or dead piece of the puzzle going unspecified.



Now, we find ourselves in a terrible hurricane. Perhaps the thing that laid the pirates into the treasure caves where they expired, we now see a previous scene in reverse order: perfect anti-chronological montage.



For now, we will skip over a few “scenes” and immerse ourselves directly into a pirate battle, where, apparently, Barbossa is looking for Captain Jack. Not only do we move from the thematic ending to the story, we also jump back physically to the outskirts of the town. This is not a setting we have seen before, but it is one that must exist within the context of the story to give it an anchor.

Plot and story must be kept separate. When we use the word “story” in the context of themed entertainment, we refer to three things: Montage (Eisenstein), Surprise and Suspense (Hitchcock) and visual elements strung together with a common theme (John Ford). Combining these things with a basic through-line will give us our “story” in the context of themed design.

So, in order to anchor our story, our narrative structure, we need this physical place. The Mansion provides its own, because the structure it is housed in contains nearly the entire attraction and its narrative.

Pirates could not contain anything, because the building was designed to house an attraction that was modified heavily from its original intentions. Therefore, within the environment, we must allow several locations to act as coat hangars- places we can string along our narrative. This is where the believability factor really starts to play a key role.



We have come to see pirates. To see them, we must understand that they are no longer alive, and therefore must journey backwards to find them. We must “drop down” into their world, and once we are there, we are absorbed by a typical pirate event: the ransacking of a town. The archetype that makes everyone understand what is happening is the logic of the ransacking in a totally illogical sequence of events.

At home, to get to the kitchen we must walk through the dining room. To get to the dining room, we must enter the house. To enter the house, we must walk up the driveway and through the front door. These are logical sequences of events so built into our lives that we no longer consider them for any length of time.

In a themed environment, we have the ability, much as in film, to move from seemingly unconnected places and events to other places and totally different events without ever feeling as though we have been cheated of something in between. The audience only knows what we give them, and our minds, due to the conditioning of years and years of logical sequences and events fill in the gaps. That was why Claude Coates wanted to fill The Haunted Mansion with all that black nothingness. Our minds hold the possibility of all things, as does all that blackness, and just as with scene transitions in films, we are able to instantly fill in the gaps in a sequence. Because this feels natural to us, we believe that the experiences offered in a designed environment are only presented as linear- certainly they seem that way- but they cannot be linear.

Linear events are also held down by time: we know that pirates and ghosts do not exist in the world we occupy. Because subconsciously we associate linear forms with reality, these things cannot exist within reality, and neither can linear forms. If we started our boat journey at the edge of town and moved into the fort and saw a linear progression of scenes presented as chronological moments in time, we would not only be bored but we would be unable to comprehend what was happening. Here was reality, like a documentary in filmmaking terms, but pirates do not exist in reality.

Though our minds are powerful enough to grasp that we are seeing this happening and its not real, because its in a theme park, the upshot would be us not enjoying the experience for reasons we couldn’t understand, but that our subconscious could not place together into a montage of images. This is the essence of the themed design: we occupy a space but move through it as freely as a film that uses montage.



So, if you think of five places you would expect to find pirates (When they existed), perhaps you would come to similar conclusions: A Bay outside a Spanish town, the bayou, mysterious caverns, a prison and a treasure room. Each of these locations then serves a different thematic purpose within the context of the show, but the narrative structure is similar to that of the Mansion. The main difference being that the latter begins outside, while the narrative of pirates itself begins as soon as we have boarded our vessel.

We float through a bayou, expecting and wanting to see pirates. It seems the place itself has become aware of our intentions, and offers us the chance we seek in the form of a talking skull. We plunge into a dead man’s cavern, filled with pirate treasure and skeletons of passed seafarers. We are informed by Davy Jones that Dead Men DO tell tales, which is of course what we have come to see.

Next, we find ourselves in a bay- that promise immediately fulfilled (Pirates do not exist any longer. Here are pirates!), and the scalliwags are ransacking the town, apparently in search of Captain Jack Sparrow and “the key”- our MacGuffin. The pirates grow increasingly upset and end up burning the town- a tremendous contradiction because they may have burned the key. The surprise is that like the pirates, they key is already in the jail. If they had been more noble and attempted to expunge their own from the cells, they may have found what they wanted.



Now, there is a scene in which the abbreviated Walt Disney World version (more on that momentarily) lacks entirely, but is exceedingly vital in context. The pirates move to the distillery, and engage in a heated gun battle in which we are placed directly in the center. This scene is vital because, much as the hitchhiking ghosts in the mansion, there has yet to be a payoff to the never-ending succession of the narration.



So, we come wanting to see Pirates, we see pirates, and then the pirates place us directly in the center of a battle. The fact that these pirates may or may not have escaped from the prison and the first thing they wanted was rum, while the pirates ransacking the town were so full of rum that they only wanted the key, which was subsequently in the jail with the pirates that wanted the rum- is a wonderful circular gag.

Now, using our montage, we make a jump to a possibly related event: Captain Jack in the treasure room. Now, did the key unlock the treasure room? Or was the key to a box that contained the treasure and Jack has gone off to find it with the key? Are there, in fact, two separate keys: one that Jack holds, with the treasure map, and the other with the dog in the jail*? We may never know, because all are irrelevant. What matters is that the succession has paid off: Captain Jack has gotten the treasure. There is an ironic twist here, too, in that we have already seen what happens to similar treasure rooms, and the visuals from the caverns and the final scene now connect in our minds to form a circle. Jack may have his treasure, but for the narrative to continue endlessly, he must die, in order for there to be a cavern, where dead men like him tell tales, so that the tale of his finding the treasure can be told, so that he can die, and on and on forever.

*In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, the dog actually holds the key in its mouth to the Pirata Codex, being the code of the pirates. Its an interesting though unanswered connection that the reason the pirates may want the key is not to unlock the cell, but to open the book and prove their innocence using the law that they have come to despise due to the actions of the enemy.

And so the narrative of Pirates weaves its web. We are moved with montage through the story in reverse, first seeing the aftermath of the events we will witness later, and the ending actually is the beginning, so that the black space between the end and start of the attraction holds all the answers, much as the void of the mansion holds its answers.



It is interesting to note that between the beginning of the attraction and its end in the original Disneyland version of the show, we actually are given a physical object that does, indeed, hold the answers: a treasure map. This is also the first actual show piece in the attraction, viewed as guests are entering the indoor queue area, which is also the last piece we see.

The metaphoric value of the treasure map is two fold: The first and last image of the attraction are the same, but we see it as the last piece with new knowledge and new experience. This, in many ways, is what prepares us for the next experience within the narrative structure of the entire park: we see an object, experience a story and then see the same object again but with its meaning changed.

The second value of the treasure map is the image itself: what would a pirate story be without one?



Pirates and The Mansion hold the keys to designing such experiences. Interestingly, both play on archetypes of America, which is what Disneyland is really about, and that both employ the same basics as any carnival spookhouse: Come! See the ghosts! Come! See real pirates!

The hook that so many search for in vein is that these radical visions actually exist inside each of the attractions, and that you can actually see them. What isn’t revealed is that you are going to be put through a narrative, much like watching a film, and then you will interact with the very elements you have come to see.

The methods of motion are also vitally important. While it wouldn’t make too much sense to put the mansion on the water or pirates on an omni-mover, it makes sense that both are constant flowing motion-based feelings, and that both have the ability to direct your attention wherever they see fit.

The idea of contradiction is also apparent in both The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean- and it is what drives our narratives in place of a traditional “plot”, as would be found in film. The contradiction in Pirates being that pirates do not exist any longer- to our child’s mind, they are much as dinosaurs. They are relics of a past long forgotten, and yet here they are, right there in front of us. Some show elements- the water being spit out by the magistrate in the first scene after we enter the town, and the fire during the ransacking- are there because without them, we might believe that we are seeing an illusion. These elements bring us back to the reality of the scene- fire and water, no matter what else is happening around them, are elements and are therefore perceived by us as real regardless of the context.

In The Haunted Mansion, the idea of ghosts strikes us much the same as pirates. A skeptic might scoff “Sure, but no one has actually seen a ghost”. True, they have not. They have not seen a dinosaur, a pirate, a ghost, a concert put on by Mickey Mouse, or the inside of a spaceship- yet all of these things, thanks to techniques brought from the cinema, are there and available for us to see. The Mansion’s “Fire & Water” is the house itself: we are all immediately familiar with it, because we understand the idea of an old house as an archetype on the cultural level. We get that the house is real, because it appears real: the set designers have designed it to appear to be a real old house, and (next door) a real Spanish-colonial styled village, or a real cavern, or a real jail of the period. What happens inside leaves room for the fantastic, because if we believe the setting, we can more easily place the events there, no matter how fantastic.

The set design is, in itself, a massive contradiction: WHY on Earth would be believe that ghosts would occupy a house simply due to its appearance or its purported age? Because stories about just such places have become ingrained in our very DNA. The contradiction in place of plot is what drives our story forward through each section of the narrative within these settings.

We come expecting to see Pirates, but pirates do not exist- so, we must travel backwards (by way of a waterborne vessel, which can only travel forwards with the current of the water) to find the pirates. We are moving forward, with the current, but backwards in the sense of time and story. We are riding inside a complete contradiction of natural laws, and yet there it is before us. The idea of elements confirms the contradiction: “But, there’s fire and water there, so it must be real!”, we shout, though the entire thing is nothing more than an illusion, just like all of entertainment.

Walt Disney liked his guests. John Hench, often called the “guru of Disney Design”, remarked, “Liking the guests is the key to everything we do.” Because of the somewhat frightening nature of the pirates show, there was another element that the designers wove into the web of story in order to soften the idea of traveling back in time to witness something as frightening as the sacking of the town.

The treasure, we are told from the very beginning of our experience, is cursed. For some reason, the pirates that have sailed these treacherous waters before us have not made it out, where we pass by. We are observers to their participation, although we are participating ourselves (floating through the middle of the battle between Barbossa’s Wicked Wench and the fort). We are told three times that the treasure is cursed, first upon our entry to the bayou (in the queue, on the sandbar), secondly by the visuals in the ghostly grottos and third (and through audio) in the transition tunnel before the waterfall.
By including all these warnings of cursed treasure, we gain an advantage: Walt and his talented designers have given us information the pirates we are about to see are not yet privy to. They are after the treasure, which (we know, but they do not) will ultimately lead to their demise. It makes us fun for the guests to watch, as the show progresses, the pirates coming increasingly closer to their watery graves- and we have already witnessed their fates. This is perhaps the element that moves the show from merely entertaining to real fun.

The Mansion offers a similar contradiction: We move through a house onboard a carriage? *



*At Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, the narration of Paul Frees as the Ghost Host makes it apparent that the “Doom Buggies” are “Carriages”, approaching “To take us into the boundless realm of the supernatural”. At the Magic Kingdom Park in Florida, no such mention is made, and thus the contradiction must become apparent without aide from the attraction itself.

That is impossible, or at the least a very rare occurrence, and yet here it is, happening, not around us, but actually involving us in it!

In this way, the movement itself- the actual method of transportation- becomes the thing that moves us forward through the story, at once a practical solution to hourly capacity for these major-draw attractions and an indispensable story device!



The idea of the contradiction in these thesis shows is perhaps better titled an “opposite conclusion.” Where reality would make a left, Disneyland makes a right, and combines things that the logical mind would dismiss as being uncombinable. In short, Imagineers often make the “opposite conclusion” of what their logical minds would tell them to do, thus providing a unique experience through allowing the viewer to think as though in a fantasy, or, as it is commonly referred to, “through the eyes of a child.”