I spoke with a Disney Imagineer about the new Haunted Mansion illusions

In the 1960s, a legendary Disney Imagineer dreamed up a Ghost Fish Tank, where eerie skeleton fish would swim alongside living sea creatures. In 2024, Disney finally has the technology to make this vision a reality.

Entertainment companies like Disney are constantly looking for ways to make their experiences so immersive that they influence our spending/vacation decisions. One of these opportunities came on board Disney’s newest cruise shipthe Disney treasurewhere Imagineers have designed the new Haunted Mansion Parlor, a place that completely envelops guests in another world – the world of a creepy haunted ship, which is now part of the lore. Beloved Disney attraction The Haunted Mansion.

Disney hasn’t skimped on the details even though it’s not a complete ride: an eight-act saga unfolds while you sip themed cocktails like the sparkling purple Ghoulish Delight and watch ghosts dance around you. It emulates the Haunted Mansion ride in the Disney Resort parks with scenes like a tarot reading by Madame Leota, a ballroom filled with dancing ghosts and a graveyard performance performed by the Phantom Five minstrel.

But what sets it apart from a traditional haunted mansion is that guests will get up close and personal with the apparitions, and will be able to sit next to them, see some of them from 360-degree angles and even touch them.

My colleague Bridget Carey Saw the Haunted Mansion Salon On board the cruise ship while it was docked in New York last month. “You have to pay attention to everything on the walls—the whole room transforms and tells a story,” Curry says of the space. “And you can get up close to study everything, which is very different from riding. The best thing is to try and discover the giant aquarium that contains the ghost fish.”

A few weeks later, I talked to… Visualizer Daniel Joseph About its beginning. While staying close to the motto “The magician never reveals his secrets,” he provided insight into the technology, science and engineering that goes into creating Disney’s greatest illusions.

“My team will mainly be discovering and sometimes inventing new technologies and technologies to create illusions for our theme parks around the world,” Joseph told me. “This was like the ultimate call to action, like, ‘You guys have to figure out a way to do something that couldn’t have been done in the 1960s in a brand new setting in the Haunted Mansion.’”

The Haunted Mansion was one of the last rides that Walt Disney himself had a hand in designing. He first appeared in 1969 at DisneylandAfter his death in 1966. It can also be found on Walt Disney World in OrlandoFlorida and Tokyo Disneyland, and there are similar tours in Disneyland Paris (Phantom Manor) and Hong Kong Disneyland (Mystic Manor). The ride is so popular that it was featured Two films In 2003 and 2023, in addition to A Halloween puppets In 2021.

the Disney treasureThe Haunted Mansion Parlor is “the next chapter in the Haunted Mansion saga,” according to Disney.

Imagineers worked on the Haunted Mansion Parlor for five years, and on the Ghost Aquarium, which the original Imagineer envisioned Rollie CrumpHe’s already made a big impression. It features real fish as well as “ghost” fish swimming back and forth, the spectral sea creatures standing up to scrutiny with their noses pressed against the aquarium’s glass.

For this, there was a need for knowledge of new science and technology.

“We played with some different materials — it’s a real liquid out there — and we played with some things that work with index of refraction and liquids and water, and how light bends and passes through liquids,” Joseph says.

Read more: Every ride and land at Disneyland and Disney World is planned for 2025 and beyond

Another highlight of the lounge is the Picture Gallery, which features paintings in the artistic style of another original imagineer, Mark Davis. The images appear to dissolve or fall away to reveal strange new images. The first “images of change” first appeared with the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, and were invented by another original Disney Imagineer, Yale Graceywhich he had Haunted Mansion character It was named after him.

I asked Joseph if melted “paintings” used a similar technique Samsung frame tvwhich has a matte anti-reflective screen that you can use to view digital copies of paintings and photographs. A framed TV looks like you have a real work of art hanging on your wall when you’re not using it as a regular TV. Joseph laughingly denied it was the same concept, but did elaborate on what new advances in technology had allowed the images to come to life, saying they were, for all intents and purposes, real paintings.

“We wanted to do something that, because you can get very close to it, has the real feel and texture of an oil painting,” he said. “You can see the actual brush strokes in this thing, and you can see different changes in the materials, and there are areas that are just canvas, and there are other areas that still have the matte medium, the gesso, the texture of oil paint and the actual paint on top of it. And as you move left and right, you’ll notice it changing “Just like you would in a museum where there are overhead lights.”

Technology and science make magic

Although technology is probably the last thing you think about when experiencing the magic of Disney, it’s at the forefront of Imagineers’ minds. Joseph said he attends technical fairs such as CES For ideas on what is being developed and how it could be “misused” by Disney.

“As an illusion inventor and developer here at Imagineering, I have my finger on the pulse of consumer technology, as well as the professional technology out there in the world, because it changes so quickly,” Joseph said.

But while most companies use CES to demonstrate the latest advances in technology and electronics for their own benefit, Joseph said he sees it all “through the lens of, ‘How can I abuse this and make it do something that, a, the original inventors of that technology probably didn’t think about what It would give Disney a new edge on this technology, but B, how can I do something with this technology that maybe I wouldn’t have been able to do normally if others had looked at it? ”

But it’s not always about using the latest and greatest technology. For the scenes playing out in the mirror behind the bar in the lobby, the imagineers chose not to use “a super high-end game engine, or something high-tech with characters that are in there that are CGI and that are designed to look in the style of analog, authentic animation,” Joseph said.

Instead, they shot high-resolution, high-ISO footage of the original audio animation graphics used on the Haunted Mansion rides throughout the Disney parks.

“There’s a 1969 aesthetic that we wanted to really keep in the parlor… (so) why don’t we just photograph the actual characters that are in our mansions? And I think bringing them back there is really great to see and it has that high quality but it also keeps us true to the mansion tradition.” “original.”

And while Imagineers continue to keep their finger on the pulse of technology, one thing they’re not touching is… Amnesty International.

“We haven’t used any AI at all, really, in any of the things we do,” he said. “I don’t know what the future holds for AI, but not yet.”