B. Creative Design & Services created the concepts, designed, sourced and fabricated the sets, art directed, led the installation, and returned to lead the dismantle. The event was a success and contributed to the El Capitan being the #1 grossing theater in America for Haunted Mansion all four weekends of the run.
The customer requested custom Haunted Mansion themed displays for their opera boxes to promote the upcoming film. Brenda watched a screening and collaborated with friends in Disney’s Asset Management Department to secure real props from the movie. They provided six oversized busts and several iconic gargoyle candelabras.
We presented haunted library scenes for each of the opera boxes, featuring the busts in front of candlelit walls of old books. The busts would be on platforms with hidden motors so they could slowly pivot back and forth. Aged, cobwebbed props would add to the look while the gargoyle candelabras hung over the edge, looming over guests’ heads.
Then we presented a few extras. The left and right substages would be filled with dusty antiques inspired by the movie’s attic scenes, including a few Easter eggs. We offered to transform their Wurlitzer into the Haunted Mansion’s Grand Hall Organ by adding pipes, candles, and a hand-sculpted replica of the bat-style music stand. We would even costume the organists in glowing coats, capes, and top hats so they could resemble the ghost of Herr Victor Geist. The customer agreed to the additions and added more, a lot more. They asked us to dress the main lobby to feel like the Disneyland attraction, and requested we design a prop and costume exhibit in the lower lounge.
A mural wall running the length of the lobby became the Corridor of Doors, complete with Staring Wallpaper, Rolly Crump Portraits, aged props, dark wood wainscoting, and door frame designs inspired by the attraction. This wall included a genuine Disneyland Doom Buggy photo op, thanks to WDSSE. For a larger double photo op, they provided two more Doom Buggies that we placed in front of a 20-foot-long sculpted wall representing the Hall of Mirrors at the end of the ride. Throughout the theater, dimmed lights were flickering and everything from the chandeliers to the candy displays got aged, dusted, and thoroughly cobwebbed.
For the lower lounge, we reached back out to Disney’s Asset Management Department and were able to secure several large pieces of art from the film to create a portrait gallery. They also provided an amazing collection of props and costumes for a behind-the-glass exhibit we designed and styled for the event.
The historic theater, for all its grandeur, is teaming with odd shapes, sizes, asymmetrical architecture, and custom curiosities. We had to do a lot of measuring. Background flats for the opera boxes had to be custom designed and constructed in sections to slide under the untouchable historic plaster features. We made them with pre-installed pick points and cord pass-throughs, fabric graphics, and no-tool hardware to ensure the most efficient installation and dismantle. Plaster gargoyles needed to be secured overhead without adding any holes or hardware to the existing architecture. The art gallery in the lower lounge was on an original wood-paneled wall that cannot be touched and has no lighting, so, we had to produce our own system of easels and portrait lights to make it work. Doom Buggies, outside of their normal environment had hard edges, exactly at guest shin level. There are now at least 102 uses for pool noodles.
We appreciate the trust and cooperation we received across several departments to bring this concept to life.
