The room is hung with art from both the film and the ride. One of Marc Davis’ watercolor concepts for the Mansion’s portrait gallery - created in 1964 - hangs directly above Nathan Schroeder’s concept for the medieval suits of armor film’s Armory set - created in 2002 - realizing that the work of one generation of movie makers is truly built upon the work of their predecessors crafted more than 30 years before.

There is a comforting continuity of creativity in that. With the art hung so closely to each other, it’s easy to see that the styles created for the attraction by Sam McKim, Ken Anderson, Claude Coats and Marc Davis were carried through to the design of the film’s Gracey Manor. The film’s creators took a cue from Walt Disney who noted, “We’ll take care of the outside and let the ghosts take care of the inside.�?, as they also looked to America’s grand homes, including Hearst Castle, for inspiration.

Into the gallery’s merchandise area, where guests can purchase items from the new park-specific Haunted Mansion core merchandise line which take the attraction’s classic characters and design elements and created a new t-shirt graphic and a very cute Hitch-Hiking Ghosts bobble-head sculpture. The new merchandise seems to be selling quickly as do the new items created for the Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay - more than 60% of the overlay merchandise is new for 2003. The PoD order screens are also in this area as much of the vintage Haunted Mansion concept art is available to print. The hallway is hung with a selection of PoD display prints on both paper and canvas.

The larger of the gallery’s two display galleries is dedicated to the images and props from the Grand Hall’s Ballroom scene, containing some of the larger props from the film - three wonderfully creepy ballroom gowns. When you’re able to get within a couple feet of these creations it’s amazing to see how detailed and yet delicate they really are. Also in this room is more of the original concept art, including many images from Imagineer Rolly Crump’s Museum of the Weird, which he created in the early 1960s when the Haunted Mansion was to be a walking tour. We learn that as the attraction became a ride the museum was scrapped, but many of the design elements were incorporated.

This gallery also has a case featuring a few of the maquettes sculpted for the ballroom effects which were sculpted by Jack Ferges and Joyce Carlson in 1968. It’s always fun to see some of the founding sculptures that would later become Audio-Animatronics characters we know so well. We also get to see a new spin on some old friends as there is a digitally generated image by six-time Academy Award winning Make-Up Effects Designer Rick Baker of Madame Leota created in 2002. She is clearly inspired by Marc Davis’ vision, but with a Baker touch. It’s as though each facet of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion has been given new cinematic life.

Across the Gallery’s courtyard and into the smaller of the two display rooms, we learn that the movie has a great deal more to do with the attraction than just a title. Here, in a room dedicated to the Mansion’s residents both old and new, we learn that the ride’s more playful spirits will be joined by a cast of more fearsome zombies created by Rick Baker. A small display case houses two masks of the more frightening ghouls. There are more original attraction maquettes here as well, some sculpted by Blaine Gibson, Jack Ferges and Joyce Carlson in the late 1960s, from the swinging wake and graveyard.

The film’s inhabitants look to be an homage, a true tribute to the men who created the attraction. There will also be a wonderful tribute to two actors who have become irrevocably linked to the Haunted Mansion, voice-artists Thurl Ravenscroft and Paul Frees. The likenesses of Ravenscroft, the Mansion’s Uncle Theodore, the lead-singer of the graveyard’s Phantom-Five broken bust singers, and Frees, voice of the attraction’s Ghost Host, will be featured members of the group as they appear in the film. The busts of Ravenscroft and Frees are wonderful artifacts from the film. The exhibit also serves to pay a sort of homage to the ins and outs of the creative process.

Walking through the gallery’s display rooms you’re able to follow the strange synchronicity of the evolution of the Haunted Mansion - from walk-through attraction to motion picture - in looking at the work of Marc Davis, Claude Coates, Blaine Gibson, Joyce Carlson and Jack Ferges in one room and then wandering into another to see the work of Rick Baker. His take on the Mansion’s most well-known inhabitants - created decades earlier - is that of a care-taker to the characters he’s been given. You can so clearly see the ideas sketched by Marc Davis come digitally to life in Baker’s hitch-hiking ghosts - there is a reverence for the Mansion that has been carried to the movie. You can see the care taken to keep the Haunted Mansion in the realm of Disney and not take it to camp.