The Haunted Mansion: A Poetic Ride-Through
If you ask my daughter, the Haunted Mansion is one of her favorite rides. She loves when the ghosts try to come out of the doors, and she laughs and sings along with them. She is completely unafraid. Inspired by her love for this ride, I wrote the following poetic ride-through. Beginning in the interactive queue line and following the doom buggies throughout the ride, this poem traces the journey from beginning to end. If you've never been on the ride or enjoyed the queue experience, check out the video ride-through below; the full experience is approximately 18 minutes long. Enjoy (and remember, there's nothing to fear!).
“The Haunted Mansion”
Welcome foolish mortals!
Walk beneath the iron gates, the awning red as blood
Go past the haunted hearse,
past the spirit horse,
busts of people long since gone,
gravestones inscribed with mournful rhymes.
Play notes upon the composer’s tomb, long after he has met his doom.
Ravenscroft the organ says, airy notes its keyboard plays.
Peer over the gates onto toppled stones,
poems mark their deaths.
A sailor unburied soaks instead – “What shall you do with a drunken sailor?”
rings out from beyond the grave.
Shelve the books, volumes of phantasmagoria, but beware the ghostly readers.
Then, a séance, the medium’s disembodied voice implores for a missing rhyme.
Finally,
the ghost host bids us enter; his portrait decays, though his spirit remains.
Packed like sardines into the stretching room –
striped wallpaper and eerie candelabras illumine the darkness
as the portraits grow and stretch to reveal
the precarious situation we are all in.
We face a chilling challenge: to find a way out.
Then lightning flashes and a piercing scream –
a body hangs and we walk forth to our doom….
buggies.
Down dim passageways where eerie eyeballs gaze from weird wallpaper,
paintings reveal their true nature: catwoman, the flying Dutchman.
Marble busts in a library of ghost stories,
glowing footsteps walk upon Escher’s stairs,
suits of armor clank and clunk,
banging doors hint at ferocious interlopers,
the man trapped in the box tries to get out,
doorknockers echo down hallways lined with skeletal portraits.
Madame Leota’s floating head implores the spirits to awaken:
music plays and a bell rings.
The happy haunts know we mean no harm and invite us to join their revelry.
Dinner is set upon the tables,
and grim grinning ghosts spin wildly across the dance floor.
In the attic, the ghost bride awaits her next wedding day
as we fall out the attic window and into the graveyard below.
The man and his dog stare bewildered and afraid
as the grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize.
They pop up from cemetery graves,
sing from animated busts,
belt operatic tunes to mournful bagpipes.
Hitchhiking ghosts wish to accompany us home,
perched atop our doom buggies.
As we return to the land of the living, we are implored to hurry back -
but only if we bring our death certificates with us.
There’s always room for one more!
Welcome foolish mortals!
Walk beneath the iron gates, the awning red as blood
Go past the haunted hearse,
past the spirit horse,
busts of people long since gone,
gravestones inscribed with mournful rhymes.
Play notes upon the composer’s tomb, long after he has met his doom.
Ravenscroft the organ says, airy notes its keyboard plays.
Peer over the gates onto toppled stones,
poems mark their deaths.
A sailor unburied soaks instead – “What shall you do with a drunken sailor?”
rings out from beyond the grave.
Shelve the books, volumes of phantasmagoria, but beware the ghostly readers.
Then, a séance, the medium’s disembodied voice implores for a missing rhyme.
Finally,
the ghost host bids us enter; his portrait decays, though his spirit remains.
Packed like sardines into the stretching room –
striped wallpaper and eerie candelabras illumine the darkness
as the portraits grow and stretch to reveal
the precarious situation we are all in.
We face a chilling challenge: to find a way out.
Then lightning flashes and a piercing scream –
a body hangs and we walk forth to our doom….
buggies.
Down dim passageways where eerie eyeballs gaze from weird wallpaper,
paintings reveal their true nature: catwoman, the flying Dutchman.
Marble busts in a library of ghost stories,
glowing footsteps walk upon Escher’s stairs,
suits of armor clank and clunk,
banging doors hint at ferocious interlopers,
the man trapped in the box tries to get out,
doorknockers echo down hallways lined with skeletal portraits.
Madame Leota’s floating head implores the spirits to awaken:
music plays and a bell rings.
The happy haunts know we mean no harm and invite us to join their revelry.
Dinner is set upon the tables,
and grim grinning ghosts spin wildly across the dance floor.
In the attic, the ghost bride awaits her next wedding day
as we fall out the attic window and into the graveyard below.
The man and his dog stare bewildered and afraid
as the grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize.
They pop up from cemetery graves,
sing from animated busts,
belt operatic tunes to mournful bagpipes.
Hitchhiking ghosts wish to accompany us home,
perched atop our doom buggies.
As we return to the land of the living, we are implored to hurry back -
but only if we bring our death certificates with us.
There’s always room for one more!