We continue our celebration of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion anniversary with a picture of the gate to the Fastpass distribution area. If you’re a regular, you probably know that this area is really only in use during the Christmas season for the Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay. Jack and Sally (and Christmas, of course!) draw big enough crowds to warrant the need for fastpasses, I guess.
For most of the year, this area tucked between the Haunted Mansion queue and the New Orleans Square train depot, is as peaceful as can be. Most people pass right on by, not knowing what it is. It’s one of my favorite spots in Disneyland for this reason. I’ve never been to Savannah but I imagine it to be like this based on some of the pictures I’ve seen, the threshold to a historic cemetery in a densely wooded garden.
This brings me to my inspiration for this picture — the book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I still remember the first time I saw the cover — a green tinted black and white image depicting the statue of a young girl holding bowls like scales in a setting much like this. I couldn’t describe it then, the feeling I had. I’m not sure I could describe it now. It just made me feel something deeply. Almost as if it had awoken some unknown part of me. That is the best sort of art. The kind that makes you aware, for the first time, of some connection you have to it that has inexplicably always been there.
This Haunted Mansion picture brought that feeling back for me.
