WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.130 --> 00:00:03.350 And now for something completely different 00:00:03.350 --> 00:00:11.460 When hinges creak in doorless chambers, and strange and frightening sounds echo through 00:00:11.460 --> 00:00:13.080 the halls. 00:00:13.080 --> 00:00:18.550 Whenever candle lights flicker where the air is deathly still. 00:00:18.550 --> 00:00:23.009 That is the time when ghosts are present. 00:00:23.009 --> 00:00:28.780 Practicing their terror with ghoulish delight. 00:00:30.970 --> 00:00:35.520 The Haunted Mansion is a beloved attraction found at Disney parks around the world. 00:00:35.520 --> 00:00:41.670 The original version of the attraction opened on August 9, 1969 at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. 00:00:41.670 --> 00:00:45.290 Now, lest you worry that I’m getting all Disney-nerd on you here and am ignoring the channel’s 00:00:45.290 --> 00:00:50.060 focus on technology--well I assure you we’re talking about a very clever bit of engineering 00:00:50.060 --> 00:00:54.280 that seems somewhat of an open secret and yet no one really talks about. 00:00:54.280 --> 00:00:58.140 That, foolish mortals, is the stretching room. 00:00:58.140 --> 00:01:01.650 All versions of the Haunted Mansion, except for Mystic Manor in Hong Kong, begin with 00:01:01.650 --> 00:01:03.510 a pre-show in a portrait gallery. 00:01:03.510 --> 00:01:09.860 GHOST HOST: [Our tour begins here in this gallery, where you see paintings of some of our guests as 00:01:09.860 --> 00:01:14.640 they appeared in their corruptible, mortal state.] 00:01:14.640 --> 00:01:19.850 This large octagonal room is lit dimly on all sides, and features 4 portraits. 00:01:19.850 --> 00:01:24.100 After asking you to kindly step all the way in please to make room for everyone, our Ghost 00:01:24.100 --> 00:01:26.340 Host reminds us that-- 00:01:26.340 --> 00:01:29.679 [there’s no turning back now.] 00:01:29.679 --> 00:01:33.439 As you look back towards the door you entered, you notice that it is closing. 00:01:33.440 --> 00:01:37.560 And as soon as it’s closed, our Ghost Host makes the following observation: 00:01:37.560 --> 00:01:42.780 [Your cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding, 00:01:42.780 --> 00:01:47.619 almost as though you sense a disquieting metamorphosis.] 00:01:47.619 --> 00:01:51.229 As you look around the room, you notice that the ceiling is getting farther and farther 00:01:51.229 --> 00:01:55.719 away from you, and the portraits themselves are growing taller, revealing the humorous 00:01:55.719 --> 00:01:57.670 downfalls of their subjects. 00:01:57.670 --> 00:02:02.689 GHOST HOST: [Is this haunted room actually stretching?] 00:02:02.689 --> 00:02:03.689 Yes. 00:02:03.689 --> 00:02:04.689 Yes it is. 00:02:04.689 --> 00:02:05.700 And for very good reason. 00:02:05.700 --> 00:02:10.300 The stretching room does not exist simply to serve as an intriguing pre-show to the ride. 00:02:10.300 --> 00:02:13.420 Its original purpose is actually quite a bit more functional. 00:02:13.420 --> 00:02:17.500 You see, the stretching rooms at Disneyland (there are actually 2 of them) aren’t just 00:02:17.500 --> 00:02:18.500 an illusion. 00:02:18.500 --> 00:02:23.590 In fact, they are perhaps the world’s most elaborate and unique elevators, or lifts. 00:02:23.590 --> 00:02:27.080 Once the doors have closed, you may notice a very slight movement. 00:02:27.080 --> 00:02:29.760 The stretching room floor is beginning to descend. 00:02:29.760 --> 00:02:32.510 It moves very slowly which makes it hard to notice. 00:02:32.510 --> 00:02:35.920 I’d say it feels like little more than a tremble in the floor. 00:02:35.920 --> 00:02:40.190 The ceiling of the stretching room, on the other hand, does not move, instead you are 00:02:40.190 --> 00:02:42.270 descending farther away from it. 00:02:42.270 --> 00:02:44.210 But why does this need to happen? 00:02:44.210 --> 00:02:48.710 Well, Disney has always had an obsession with sightlines and illusion. 00:02:48.710 --> 00:02:52.920 When you are walking along the Rivers of America and see the Haunted Mansion, you see a quaint 00:02:52.920 --> 00:02:57.680 antebellum structure that can’t possibly contain the attraction itself. 00:02:57.680 --> 00:03:01.270 If you’re unfamiliar with the ride, it’s an omnimover system where you travel through 00:03:01.270 --> 00:03:05.610 many elaborate show scenes, including the massive graveyard scene. 00:03:05.610 --> 00:03:09.840 There’s no possible way that that attraction is in that little building, 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:11.230 and it’s not. 00:03:11.230 --> 00:03:16.320 All of the ride takes place in a separate show building on the other side of the railroad tracks. 00:03:16.320 --> 00:03:20.340 The Disneyland Railroad sort of defines the boundaries of the park, at least the boundaries 00:03:20.340 --> 00:03:22.350 of what guests are supposed to see. 00:03:22.350 --> 00:03:27.260 It’s built on a berm, and with the aid of trees and shrubbery, guests inside the park 00:03:27.260 --> 00:03:31.050 generally cannot see anything outside of the railroad perimeter. 00:03:31.050 --> 00:03:35.620 While great for immersion, the railroad sort of encapsulates the park and means that any 00:03:35.620 --> 00:03:38.990 expansion must be done outside its boundaries. 00:03:38.990 --> 00:03:43.350 If you look at satellite imagery of the park, you can see the mansion itself and the railroad 00:03:43.350 --> 00:03:44.550 immediately behind it. 00:03:44.550 --> 00:03:49.080 It’s a little hard to see, but it is following this curved path through New Orleans Square, 00:03:49.080 --> 00:03:53.420 behind the mansion, through Splash Mountain, and then you can see the tracks again here 00:03:53.420 --> 00:03:54.620 in Critter Country. 00:03:54.620 --> 00:03:59.380 You’ll notice that the railroad slips between the mansion’s facade and another building. 00:03:59.380 --> 00:04:04.340 That large warehouse-like building is where the actual ride of the Haunted Mansion takes place. 00:04:04.340 --> 00:04:08.860 Now when you’re waiting in line, you have no idea that that building is even there. 00:04:08.860 --> 00:04:12.740 You can even see the area behind the mansion, and as far as you know there’s no connection 00:04:12.740 --> 00:04:17.060 between the mansion facade and the show building out of view to the left. 00:04:17.060 --> 00:04:22.090 Somehow you as a guest need to get from this side of the railroad to the other, and yet 00:04:22.090 --> 00:04:24.270 there’s no apparent path to take. 00:04:24.270 --> 00:04:28.730 That’s because the path you take is a tunnel heading under the railroad tracks and into 00:04:28.730 --> 00:04:30.300 the show building. 00:04:30.300 --> 00:04:35.560 Somehow guests need to be brought fairly far underground to the level of that tunnel. 00:04:35.560 --> 00:04:40.210 One fairly seamless way to do so is to use an elevator and lower guests into the ground, 00:04:40.210 --> 00:04:42.460 just like you would a casket. 00:04:42.460 --> 00:04:45.660 But that might ruin the illusion that you’re in the mansion itself. 00:04:45.660 --> 00:04:47.900 And so the stretching room was born. 00:04:47.900 --> 00:04:51.700 Now for those that hate it when someone spoils the magic, the following is my best guess 00:04:51.700 --> 00:04:54.560 at how this effect is done in Anaheim. 00:04:54.560 --> 00:04:58.850 There are some blueprints you can find online and there are some other explanations, and 00:04:58.850 --> 00:05:03.650 what follows is my most complete amalgamation of these sources and my best understanding 00:05:03.650 --> 00:05:04.900 of what’s going on. 00:05:04.900 --> 00:05:08.710 I may not be completely correct, and please chime in below if I’ve gotten something 00:05:08.710 --> 00:05:13.160 wrong, but just know that I’ll be spoiling this beloved scene. 00:05:13.160 --> 00:05:16.900 When you enter the stretching room, pay close attention to the gap in the floor. 00:05:16.900 --> 00:05:21.120 This is pretty much the only sign that you are boarding an elevator. 00:05:21.120 --> 00:05:24.250 Once inside, well that’s when things get weird. 00:05:24.250 --> 00:05:29.790 The stretching room is simply a large, octagonal hydraulic elevator with a very elaborate cab. 00:05:29.790 --> 00:05:35.300 The floor sits atop the piston of a hydraulic cylinder, and when fluid is released the floor descends. 00:05:35.300 --> 00:05:40.560 The walls are stacked, sort of like a telescoping antenna, and are key to the illusion. 00:05:40.560 --> 00:05:44.370 The stretching rooms at the Haunted Mansion are perhaps the only elevators in regular 00:05:44.370 --> 00:05:48.360 passenger service that don’t really have a ceiling. 00:05:48.360 --> 00:05:52.550 The wood paneled walls that lie below the portraits are able to slip behind the upper 00:05:52.550 --> 00:05:54.450 half of the stretching room. 00:05:54.450 --> 00:05:58.920 The cornice that the gargoyles sit atop is attached to the wallpapered portion and hides 00:05:58.920 --> 00:06:01.139 the gap between the two. 00:06:01.140 --> 00:06:04.980 As the stretching room stretches, only the false ceiling is stationary. 00:06:04.980 --> 00:06:06.500 Everything else is moving. 00:06:06.500 --> 00:06:11.310 You yourself, in the bottom half of the stretching room, are descending at full speed. 00:06:11.310 --> 00:06:16.400 The top half descends at only half speed, and as it does so it stretches the portraits. 00:06:16.400 --> 00:06:20.240 The tops of the portraits remain next to the stationary ceiling, but the bottom is being 00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:23.050 pulled down by the gargoyles. 00:06:23.050 --> 00:06:27.210 Only when the portraits are fully extended do their tops pull away from the ceiling. 00:06:27.210 --> 00:06:31.140 Having been transfixed by the illusion, you may not have noticed what our ghost host is 00:06:31.140 --> 00:06:32.540 about to tell us: 00:06:32.540 --> 00:06:35.560 [This chamber has no windows, 00:06:35.560 --> 00:06:38.460 and no doors. 00:06:38.460 --> 00:06:40.140 (sinister laughter) 00:06:40.140 --> 00:06:46.440 Which offers you this chilling challenge; to find a way out! 00:06:46.440 --> 00:06:49.780 (tormented cackling) ] 00:06:49.920 --> 00:06:55.640 In perhaps the most grim, un-Disney like fashion, our Ghost Host informs us that his way out 00:06:55.650 --> 00:06:56.910 of this chamber? 00:06:56.910 --> 00:06:58.960 Well, exit by hanging. 00:06:59.700 --> 00:07:03.780 [Of course, there’s always my way.] 00:07:03.780 --> 00:07:06.020 (Thunderclap) 00:07:06.020 --> 00:07:10.550 The lights go out, and the ceiling (which is really a cloth scrim) disappears to reveal 00:07:10.550 --> 00:07:13.680 the skeleton of our host dangling by a noose. 00:07:13.680 --> 00:07:15.860 (Screaming, followed by a crashing noise) 00:07:16.280 --> 00:07:19.040 That’s right, it’s the happiest place on Earth. 00:07:19.050 --> 00:07:23.490 Anyway, that thunderclap is timed with the stopping of the elevator which again makes 00:07:23.490 --> 00:07:28.240 it very hard to notice, and once the lights come back on, a second door opens revealing 00:07:28.240 --> 00:07:29.640 the path to the ride. 00:07:29.640 --> 00:07:34.130 It’s at this point that you are in a tunnel walking under the railroad tracks. 00:07:34.130 --> 00:07:38.889 What makes this illusion so disorienting and hard to nail down is the use of vertical stripes 00:07:38.889 --> 00:07:41.800 in both the wallpaper and the wood paneling. 00:07:41.800 --> 00:07:45.500 This is very effective at hiding the fact that the walls are moving. 00:07:45.500 --> 00:07:50.060 The only really obvious thing is that the paintings are being unrolled as you can clearly 00:07:50.060 --> 00:07:52.020 see the curve at the bottom. 00:07:52.020 --> 00:07:55.290 But everything else is really, really difficult to grasp. 00:07:55.290 --> 00:07:59.900 Unfortunately, the wallpaper tends to get damaged over time, but the upside is that 00:07:59.900 --> 00:08:01.509 it reveals what’s happening. 00:08:01.509 --> 00:08:05.100 You can see that the walls are descending away from the ceiling because you have this 00:08:05.100 --> 00:08:07.190 point you can focus on. 00:08:07.190 --> 00:08:11.169 This also reveals that the portraits are on a separate piece that’s not yet moving 00:08:11.169 --> 00:08:12.940 --otherwise they wouldn’t stretch-- 00:08:12.940 --> 00:08:15.949 but once they’re extended, they too descend with the wall on 00:08:15.949 --> 00:08:17.040 either side. 00:08:17.040 --> 00:08:21.550 To hopefully help illustrate what’s happening, I made this little mockup in tinkercad. 00:08:21.550 --> 00:08:25.220 The yellow octagon is representing the stationary ceiling scrim. 00:08:25.220 --> 00:08:28.420 Notice that the walls are both extended above the ceiling. 00:08:28.420 --> 00:08:32.090 Now, unfortunately I can’t make this move smoothly like it should, but I can move it 00:08:32.090 --> 00:08:33.330 in steps. 00:08:33.330 --> 00:08:37.950 You stand in the brown portion, and both it and the upper tan portion descend together, 00:08:37.950 --> 00:08:42.029 but for every length you drop, the tan walls fall half as much. 00:08:42.029 --> 00:08:46.220 The combination of an enclosed space, the vertical design elements, and the dim lighting 00:08:46.220 --> 00:08:50.760 almost perfectly disguise the fact that you’re only here because you need to descend into 00:08:50.760 --> 00:08:51.760 the basement. 00:08:51.760 --> 00:08:56.290 Now, it’s very hard to see on video because, well, it’s hard to convey scale this way, 00:08:56.290 --> 00:08:59.980 but the stretching rooms at Disneyland stretch a TON. 00:08:59.980 --> 00:09:04.620 The room becomes much, much taller, almost to a frightening degree. 00:09:04.620 --> 00:09:09.710 That is after all kind of the goal, it disorients you, makes you feel small, and in general 00:09:09.710 --> 00:09:11.610 is just sort of creepy. 00:09:11.610 --> 00:09:16.160 By the time the stretching is done, you’ve descended almost 2 stories into the ground. 00:09:16.160 --> 00:09:20.880 The blueprints I found, linked below, suggest the descent is a little over 18 feet. 00:09:20.880 --> 00:09:24.740 A somewhat humorous side-effect of the scale involved here is that the doors to the chamber 00:09:24.740 --> 00:09:26.690 are comically large. 00:09:26.690 --> 00:09:30.190 The low light makes them near impossible to see on video, but the doors themselves are 00:09:30.190 --> 00:09:33.790 probably around 15, maybe even 20 feet tall. 00:09:33.790 --> 00:09:37.130 After all, they got almost 10 feet longer during the stretch. 00:09:37.130 --> 00:09:40.801 Going back to our model, you can see that even the entry door must be as large as the 00:09:40.801 --> 00:09:47.410 exit, even though the actual opening from the foyer is no larger than your average door. 00:09:47.410 --> 00:09:51.380 What I love most about the stretching rooms is that they were born out of necessity. 00:09:51.380 --> 00:09:56.160 The imagineers could have chosen any number of ways to get guests under the railroad tracks, 00:09:56.160 --> 00:09:57.690 but they went with this. 00:09:57.690 --> 00:10:01.930 And that my friends, I think, is just beyond cool. 00:10:01.930 --> 00:10:05.700 The stretching room effect is so well liked that it was copied for future iterations of 00:10:05.700 --> 00:10:06.700 the attraction. 00:10:06.700 --> 00:10:11.270 However, except for the Phantom Manor at Disneyland Paris, the other versions of the stretching 00:10:11.270 --> 00:10:13.580 room are not elevators. 00:10:13.580 --> 00:10:17.370 Specifically at the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, the park was designed without space constraints 00:10:17.370 --> 00:10:20.770 and the entire attraction is within the boundaries of the railroad. 00:10:20.770 --> 00:10:25.770 There was no need to move guests underground, but the stretching room was still replicated. 00:10:25.770 --> 00:10:29.850 In these versions, the ceiling simply moves up and away from you. 00:10:29.850 --> 00:10:34.360 One unfortunate side-effect of going this route is that the scrim tends to visibly move 00:10:34.360 --> 00:10:38.000 when the ceiling stops, which somewhat ruins the illusion. 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:42.060 And I’m pretty sure it doesn’t stretch quite so much as the Disneyland version. 00:10:42.060 --> 00:10:43.280 And now for some trivia. 00:10:43.280 --> 00:10:47.490 I had a hunch that the stretching rooms at Disneyland may very well be the world’s 00:10:47.490 --> 00:10:48.959 largest passenger elevators. 00:10:48.959 --> 00:10:53.970 To satisfy my curiosity, I googled “world’s largest elevator”, which is actually for 00:10:53.970 --> 00:10:59.430 boats at the Three Gorges Dam in China, but I sad Passenger Elevator, and found that to 00:10:59.430 --> 00:11:01.310 supposedly be in Japan. 00:11:01.310 --> 00:11:07.530 This elevator carries 80 passengers and its floorspace is 11.15 feet by 9.2 feet. 00:11:07.530 --> 00:11:11.340 That would give it an area of 102.58 square feet. 00:11:11.340 --> 00:11:15.390 That seemed a lot smaller than the stretching rooms, and to assure myself I wasn’t wrong, 00:11:15.390 --> 00:11:20.800 I used my friend Google to find the area of an octagon with sides of 6 feet, which seemed 00:11:20.800 --> 00:11:22.120 about right. 00:11:22.120 --> 00:11:24.740 That would be 173 square feet! 00:11:24.740 --> 00:11:26.450 That’s much bigger. 00:11:26.450 --> 00:11:30.620 But I wanted to find out how many people could fit, and thanks to the wonders of YouTube, 00:11:30.620 --> 00:11:34.740 someone was able to ride the stretching room back up, and the cast member told them that 00:11:34.740 --> 00:11:40.080 the elevator is only strong enough to bring 12 people up, but it can handle bringing 90 00:11:40.080 --> 00:11:41.280 people down. 00:11:41.280 --> 00:11:46.709 90 is bigger than 80, so ladies and gentlemen I do declare that the world’s largest passenger 00:11:46.709 --> 00:11:52.640 elevator by both size and capacity is not in Japan, but rather is at Disneyland. 00:11:52.640 --> 00:11:55.170 At least when going down. 00:11:55.170 --> 00:11:58.860 Apparently riding the stretching room back up isn’t that out of the ordinary--guests 00:11:58.860 --> 00:12:02.290 in wheelchairs often go this route to exit the attraction. 00:12:02.290 --> 00:12:06.800 Although the attraction didn’t open until 1969, after Walt Disney’s death, the mansion 00:12:06.800 --> 00:12:08.940 facade was built years earlier. 00:12:08.940 --> 00:12:13.720 One source, linked below, says that the mansion itself was completed by 1964, and that the 00:12:13.720 --> 00:12:16.430 stretching rooms were built with the facade. 00:12:16.430 --> 00:12:20.110 The attraction was originally conceived as a walk-through attraction, and although Walt 00:12:20.110 --> 00:12:25.010 Disney died in 1966, nearly three years before the attraction eventually opened, he may very 00:12:25.010 --> 00:12:27.130 well have seen the stretching rooms. 00:12:27.130 --> 00:12:31.580 However, other sources disagree, so we’ll call that a firm maybe. 00:12:31.580 --> 00:12:36.769 The really awesome link down below has pictures from 1964, showing the backside of the mansion 00:12:36.769 --> 00:12:38.640 and the tunnels under the railroad. 00:12:38.640 --> 00:12:41.660 I highly encourage poking around down there if you’re interested. 00:12:41.660 --> 00:12:45.240 And I’d like to leave the video by giving credit where credit is due for the existence 00:12:45.240 --> 00:12:46.820 of this attraction. 00:12:46.820 --> 00:12:50.040 There are lots of great links down below if you’d like to learn a little more about 00:12:50.040 --> 00:12:54.820 the history of the Haunted Mansion, but specifically for the stretching room, we have Rolly Crump 00:12:54.820 --> 00:12:59.940 to thank for its concept, Claude Coats for his woodworking skill, and Yale Gracey who 00:12:59.940 --> 00:13:01.620 made the mechanics. 00:13:01.620 --> 00:13:04.760 And the Ghost Host was voiced by the legendary Paul Frees. 00:13:04.760 --> 00:13:08.500 Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed this look into the fascinating stretching rooms 00:13:08.500 --> 00:13:09.940 of the Haunted Mansion. 00:13:09.940 --> 00:13:13.690 A few months ago I made a different theme park-related video about blocking systems 00:13:13.690 --> 00:13:17.400 in roller coasters, so if you haven’t seen that and are looking for something else to 00:13:17.400 --> 00:13:19.370 watch, look for it in the end screen. 00:13:19.370 --> 00:13:22.840 Of course, thank you to everyone who supports this channel on Patreon! 00:13:22.840 --> 00:13:26.260 Patrons of the channel have made a huge difference for the future of this channel, and starting 00:13:26.269 --> 00:13:29.240 this week it’s officially my full-time job. 00:13:29.240 --> 00:13:31.400 Thank you for making that possible. 00:13:31.400 --> 00:13:35.560 If you’re interested in supporting the channel as well, please check out my Patreon page. 00:13:35.560 --> 00:13:38.080 Thanks for your consideration, and I’ll see you next time! 00:13:38.480 --> 00:13:44.680 GHOST HOST: [Our tour begins here in this gallery, where you see paintings of some of our guests as 00:13:44.720 --> 00:13:48.360 they appeared in their corruptible, mortal state.] 00:13:48.440 --> 00:13:51.360 CAST MEMBER: [Ladies and Gentlemen please step away from the walls to the 00:13:51.360 --> 00:13:52.520 dead center of the room.] 00:13:52.720 --> 00:13:54.960 WOKE DUDE: Dead. Center.