Haunted Mansion trufans party after hours in Disneyland

LA Weekly sent a reporter (and Disney trufan) to the Doombuggies.org tenth anniversary after-hours party at the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland. The event looks like just about the coolest thing evar.

We are like kids running through that graveyard on the ride by ourselves, away from the maddening crowds in a mostly deserted park in the middle of the night. It's strange, thrilling and genuinely scary to glide through the mansion under these conditions, with animatronic spooks popping up from behind gravestones and eerie talking busts, followed by all those empty DoomBuggies; decades ago, Gurr imagined them as a "chain of elephants" moving through the space.
Yet there is always something new to catch the breath, some creature crawling up the leg of a table, some creepy face peering out of the wallpaper. Asked about the process of designing the Gothic southern-plantation mansion, Walt is rumored to have said, "We'll take care of the outside, and the ghosts will take care of the inside."

Link (Thanks, Mark!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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ZioStefano

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pork musket

It always makes me stop and think when I see Disney-related articles on here, considering the company’s far-reaching effect on copyright and public domain.
alainsane

Tip: For these (and most all LA Weekly) pictures, if you view a picture path, replace the integer shown near the end (e.g. the “56″ in 1979112.56.jpg) with 32 and you’ll get a larger size shot of the image in question. This works especially well for pictures in portrait orientation. Cheers!
mcgringostarr

thanks, pork…you beat me to it. The Disney fixation is one of the rare things on here I feel uncomfortable with.

Disney are flat-out thugs in many respects when it comes to business.
Tgg161

Minor correction: it’s doombuggies.com. The .org site is one of those lame google-ad sites.
ste3ve

Yeah, as TGG161 said, that’s Doombuggies.COM. Sorry you couldn’t make the party, Cory – we hope you can come to the next one!
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

Pork, McGringo: Disney’s attitudes on copyright suck. Disney creates some amazing artifacts and installations. Both these statements are true.
pahool

Thanks Teresa,

I think that’s a widely acknowledged dichotomy that a lot of us Disney fans feel.

I would have loved to have gone to this. I just couldn’t really justify the expense.