I don’t know why I’ve just thought to ask this, unless it’s the fact that Halloween is approaching. But for those who have been through the Haunted House at Disneyland, how do they do all those great effects? The faces that seem to follow you with their gaze. And especially, when the little “buggy” takes you upstairs and you look down on a ballroom full of dancing ghosts, how do they make that happen? It looks pretty damn realistic, especially considering that the attraction goes back to the 1970s.
Can anyone answer this, or point to a good website? I’ve done a cursory googling of “Disneland Haunted House Effects”, but it didn’t help much.
well just a WAG here but i know theres an old theatrical trick involving projecting an image on a mirror the bouncing it from there to a pane of glass that looks pretty cool… dont know if they use it, but sometimes the oldest tricks work the best.
I know part of this question! The dancing ghosts are done by video projectors underneath the track played on a very clean piece of glass. If you look closely you will notice that the woman are leading (or somthing like that).
The faces I think is a common optical illusion. You see it alot in paintings were the eyes are looking forward and they seem to follow you. Not very high tech.
A good book to read is Mousetales. It has a lot of information about disneyland secrets and inner workings.
Some of the ghosts are indeed projected onto a plate of glass in front of where the doom buggies ride. Contrary to popular belief, there are no holographics.
When you sit in your doom buggy looking down at the ballroom it is down and in front of you. That has all the furniture in it.
Directly beneath you is another room. This room has the ‘ghosts’. They are the animitronic characters. When a light shines on them, their image is reflected so that they appear in the ballroom. That is how the dancing ghosts appear to go through the table.
The faces on the busts in the main hall that seem to follow you is a pretty neat and simple effect. Imagin taking the bust and ‘turn it inside out’. So that instead of coming out from the wall it goes into the wall. With the way it is lit it appears to come out and as you go by it appears to move.
Oh, I have blue prints for the Haunted Mansion hanging in my living room.
The Haunted Mansion has the honor of being host to the largest implementation of the “Pepper’s Ghost” illusion, that being the ballroom dancing room… Fully explained on http://www.doombuggies.com/secrets_ballroom.htm
