Phantom Manor
| Phantom Manor | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disneyland Park (Paris) |
| Land / area | Frontierland |
| Type | Dark ride (Omnimover) |
| Opened | April 12, 1992 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Height req. | None |
| Status | Operating |
Phantom Manor is a dark ride in Frontierland at Disneyland Park (Paris) at Disneyland Paris. It is the Paris version of the Haunted Mansion attractions at other Disney parks, but it is darker in tone and, uniquely, has a complete storyline of its own — one that ties the manor directly to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and to Frontierland itself, presented in the park as the mining town of Thunder Mesa. It opened with the park on April 12, 1992.[1]
Story
Henry Ravenswood, a settler who struck gold in Big Thunder Mountain, founded the Thunder Mesa Mining Company and grew rich from it. He built a grand Victorian manor on Boot Hill, overlooking the mine and the town, where he lived with his wife Martha and his daughter Melanie. Melanie became engaged to a train engineer who planned to take her away from Thunder Mesa. The wedding never happened: the groom was found hanged, and Melanie waited in the manor in her wedding dress, growing old as the house decayed around her. An earthquake later killed Henry and Martha, and the Phantom — revealed in the current version of the ride to be Henry Ravenswood himself, unwilling even in death to let his daughter go — haunts the house still. In the refurbished storyline, portraits in the stretching room show four suitors of Melanie, each of whom met an end at her father's hands.[2]
History
Because Frontierland in Paris was given a unified backstory — the rise and fall of Thunder Mesa — the Imagineers designed the manor as part of that story rather than as a free-standing haunted house, and gave it a more sombre, Western-gothic character than its American counterparts. The house stands apart from the town, visibly neglected, with its gardens overgrown.
Actor Vincent Price recorded the Phantom's narration in English, but French requirements meant the operating attraction used a French narration, performed by Gérard Chevalier, with only Price's maniacal laugh retained. Price's recording survived and was released on disc, becoming one of the best-known pieces of unused Disney narration.
The attraction closed on January 8, 2018 for the longest refurbishment in its history, and reopened on May 3, 2019, following soft openings from April 30. The work restored and upgraded effects and lighting, clarified the story — firmly identifying the Phantom as Henry Ravenswood — replaced the stretching-room portraits with the four doomed suitors, and, as Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald had confirmed in advance, restored parts of Vincent Price's original English narration, including previously unused material, alternating with a new French narration.
Experience
Guests approach the manor through its gates and gardens, enter the foyer beneath a portrait of Melanie and her father, and are ushered into an octagonal stretching room where the Phantom introduces the story. A lift effect lowers the room before guests board continuously moving Doom Buggy vehicles — the Omnimover system used by the other Haunted Mansions.
The ride passes Melanie on the grand staircase, a ballroom, a conservatory and the Phantom in the attic, before the vehicles descend into a crypt and out into a ghostly, half-ruined vision of Thunder Mesa itself, where skeletons and phantoms replay the town's fate — a finale with no equivalent in the other versions of the attraction. Melanie, still in her wedding dress, appears throughout, less a villain than a prisoner of the house.
See also
- Frontierland (Disneyland)
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
- Disneyland Park (Paris)
- Disneyland Paris
- Mystic Manor