Last night, the entire DisneyLies staff took the Disney’s Happiest Haunts Tour at Disneyland. The tour is a bit pricy at $600 (90% off with an annual pass or AAA discount), but it does include rides on many attractions and several treats over the course of its six hours, so the cost is justifiable (particularly if you are fabulously wealthy). We don’t want to spoil anything, but we thought we’d share a few highlights with you.
The tour provides guests with both “tricks” and “treats.” There are four Halloween-style treats over the course of the tour, including a “fun size” candy pumpkin on a stick, a “ginger-psycho” man cookie, a candy apple with a gummy razor blade in it, and a commemorative pin (exclusive to the tour and containing an actual piece of ectoplasm).
There were also several tricks. We don’t want to reveal them here, but we will say that there was something a bit unusual about one of the tour’s hosts. Here’s a picture:
See what makes one of the hosts different from the other? That’s right — she never smiles for the camera! Hilarious!
The most interesting and entertaining part of the tour, though, was the revelation of many Disneyland mysteries. Guests were taken to attractions and locations around the park, each of which had a “Halloween mystery” associated with it. They (and their associated mysteries) were:
- City Hall: Why do guests sometimes here echoes of ghostly gunshots in the distance?
- The Enchanted Tiki Room: What happened to Rosita?
- The Haunted Mansion: Why are the Doombuggies full of guests when they leave but empty when they return?
- Big Thunder Ranch: Why are we stopping here when it’s already closed for the evening?
- Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride: Why are we going on this instead of Snow White’s Scary Adventures?
- Chip ‘n’ Dale Treehouse: Why was it abandoned and left empty for all these years?
- Disneyland Monorail: Didn’t this used to stop at the Disneyland Hotel?
- Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy: What’s with the crabby space guy?
- Walt Disney’s apartment: Why can’t they turn off that lamp in the window, no matter how hard they try?
We learned a few interesting tidbits over the course of the tour, including:
- The Haunted Mansion only has room for 1,000 haunts, but it has accommodated many more since 2010 when it went timeshare.
- Ray Bradbury’s Halloween Tree in Frontierland was named after the famous author Ray Tree.
- Some cast members swear that, late at night when the park is closed and empty, they sometimes catch sight of a ghostly Peoplemover car sailing through Tomorrowland.
