4. Phantom Manor
Image: Disney
Location: Disneyland Paris
AKA in the USA: Haunted Mansion
Video: YouTube
When the Haunted Mansion opened at Disneyland in 1969, it stunned audiences with its otherworldly special effects – both groundbreaking and time-tested – hidden within the walls of a stately white plantation house in the park’s New Orleans Square. Years later, Magic Kingdom in Orlando got its own version, there placed in a red-brick New England mansion in the park’s Liberty Square. Tokyo’s mansion resembles Florida’s, but is located in Fantasyland – a response to Japanese culture's understanding of ghosts.
When the time came for Disneyland Paris to get its own spooky haunted house attraction, it got the same treatment as the rest of the French park: a romanticized, story-driven, European and detail-filled twist. Here called Phantom Manor, the ride is located in Frontierland and tied to the story of the land as a whole: the miserly Mr. Ravenswood – founder and president of the Big Thunder Mining Company – who built an elegant frontier manor on Boot Hill overlooking the land’s red peaks, misty geysers, and the town of Thunder Mesa.
Image: Disney
While it features many of the Haunted Mansion classics (a séance, a dinner party, and a graveyard), Phantom Manor is a dark ride that explicitly tells the story of Mr. Ravenswood’s daughter, Melanie, who is forever cursed to await the return of her groom, murdered by a mysterious phantom on her wedding day. The ride also includes a whole new finale including a trip through the earthquake-destroyed village of Boot Hill.
With additional scenes, new music, and a full story, Phantom Manor may even best the original Haunted Mansion, which is why it, too, earned its own in-depth Modern Marvel: Phantom Manor feature.
5. Pooh's Hunny Hunt
Image: Disney
Location: Tokyo Disneyland
AKA in the USA: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
Video: YouTube
If you’ve ridden The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh dark ride at either Magic Kingdom, Disneyland Park, or Hong Kong Disneyland, you’ve see the lovable Pooh Bear’s stories brought to life as a classic dark ride in the style of Fantasyland’s originals. As your cart proceeds through black light scenes, you see Pooh nearly get blown away on a very blustery day, celebrate his birthday, and fall into a nightmare of Heffalumps and Woozles.
Image: Disney
When it came time to import Pooh to Tokyo, Disney Imagineers had a brilliant idea. Instead of a typical dark ride, Disney utilized a much newer ride system. In Tokyo, you step into oversized “hunny” pots that do not ride on a track! Four hunny pots at a time proceed into a full audio-animatronics dark ride. With no track, the four pots line up, separate, travel down separate paths, dance around each other, and come within inches of colliding as they spin and frolic – the same mind-blowing technology behind the Modern Marvels: Mystic Manor and Ratatouille: L'Aventure in Hong Kong and France, respectively.
Pooh’s Hunny Hunt isn’t a simple, classic dark ride like its American cousins – it’s a major E-ticket using a cutting edge technology, and it’s easily one of the park’s most mindblowing draws.
6. Big Thunder Mountain
Image: Disney
Location: Disneyland Paris
AKA in the USA: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Video: YouTube
In the shadow of Phantom Manor is Mr. Ravenswood’s literal gold mine, Big Thunder Mountain. A re-organized park layout in Paris also gives Big Thunder Mountain a unique placement, essentially replacing Tom Sawyer Island. That means that the entire coaster is located on an island surrounded in water, as the park’s giant sailboats grace the waters around it.
The ride itself is also unique, with a layout that deviates from the cloned versions in Tokyo, Orlando, or Anaheim. It includes a washed out trestle, rusty aged trains (to match the time period of Phantom Manor and the rest of the land), and unique animal encounters along the route. The highlight of the ride, according to many, is the last drop, which unexpectedly plunges down into a mine for the return trip under the Rivers of the Far West and back to the station.
7. Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune
Image: Disney
Location: Disneyland Paris
AKA in the USA: Space Mountain
Video: YouTube
Remember Paris’ Discoveryland, based on the retro-futuristic ideals of great European thinkers? A stark, white, Googie-styled Space Mountain wouldn’t do in a golden, organic version of Tomorrowland. So Space Mountain in Paris looks quite a bit different. When it opened in 1995, the ride was appropriately named Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune, based on the novel of the same name by Jules Verne (the author behind 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, also celebrated in the land). In that book, explorers are blasted into outer space by the enormous Columbiad Cannon.
Maintaining that fantastic storyline, Space Mountain in Paris takes on the steampunk style of a copper mountain covered in rivets, golden plates, and iron towers with the elaborate brass Columbiad Cannon leaned against it, leading to a giant red aiming scope along the mountain’s top. As you might imagine based on the story, Space Mountain is a launched roller coaster that blasts riders out of the cannon and into space, complete with three inversions, some one-of-a-kind effects, and an entirely unique story. It masterfully fused Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon with the groundbreaking, 1902 Georges Méliès film it inspired.
Unfortunately, a few ill-concieved redresses mean that Paris' Space Mountain is a beauty on the outside, but a Star Wars thrill ride inside, just like every other Space Mountain on Earth. And that's a shame! You can catch up on the entire in-depth story in Lost Legends: Space Mountain - De la Terre à la Lune.
And yes, when Disneyland in California "borrowed" Discoveryland's styling for its ill-fated 1998 re-do, it included painting the Californian ride's exterior brown and green – a mind-boggling, brief state captured by our friends at Yesterland. Like the rest of the dingy, dark overlay to Anaheim's Tomorrowland, the look was utterly out of place given the land's Space Age origin and architecture, and the fact that once guests stepped inside the awkward, brown mountain (or any of Tomorrowland's earth-toned facades) they were once again firmly in the Space Age future the land had always been about.
Across the Pond
The fact that Disney gives even "clones" of its classics new personalities across the globe is a great thing. It means that even if you think you know the Haunted Mansion, there's something new to see elsewhere in the world. New stories, new characters, even new ride technologies bring even the most well-known and well-loved rides to life in a new way.
We've got to ask - which of the reborn "classics" above would you be most interested in experiencing for the first time? If you've been across the world, do you think the Paris or Tokyo version of any these rides is better than the U.S. original?
Comments
I'm frim tge netherlands and visited paris often. In 2006 i visited wdw and was riding space muntain and was so disappointed. It didn't had the loopings and it was slow. In 2014 i visited dl anaheim and noticed their space mountain was diffrent....no idea why but that one makes me sick. Last september i did space mountain at wdw again and noticed it was going faster and has more light effects then 9 years ago. They did a good job but the one in paris is still my favorite!