Disney has revealed that Haunted Mansion Holiday, the Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas-inspired overlay of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, will materialize later than ever in 2025. This post shares the official dates & details, plus rumored ride enhancements that are on the horizon ahead of Disneyland’s 70th Anniversary.
The official news from Disney comes via a website update to Haunted Mansion Holiday’s official page, which simply reads: “Take a tour of the eerie estate’s merry macabre makeover and meet some real holiday spirits—scheduled to return November 14, 2025, through January 7, 2026!”
Those dates coincide with Christmas at Disneyland, which means that Haunted Mansion Holiday will not run for Halloween this year. It’s unclear when the OG Haunted Mansion will close for conversion, but our guess is that it will probably close on November 1, 2025 to install the Nightmare Before Christmas overlay, before Christmas starts. That’s a quicker turnaround than normal, but we’d hazard a guess that Disney will want the regular ride open in October.
As some background context, the Haunted Mansion Holiday closed on January 22 last year and reopened on July 29, still as Haunted Mansion Holiday. That was about one month earlier than it otherwise would’ve debuted as part of an expanded Halloween Time at Disneyland Resort.
In a normal year, Haunted Mansion would close for conversion into Haunted Mansion Holiday in mid-to-late August. The ride would reopen as the seasonal overlay in the first week of September, and continue operating until early-to-mid January. It would then reopen as OG Haunted Mansion in late January.
Haunted Mansion Holiday just closed for refurbishment this week, and it is expected to reopen as regular Haunted Mansion on January 18, 2025. This will be the first time since August 2023 that the regular Haunted Mansion has operated at Disneyland Resort. So after a long absence, the OG Haunted Mansion will stick around for a lot longer this year. Ryan Gosling is finally getting his wish!
There are likely a few reasons for this, aside from Mr. Gosling’s glorious rant…
First, it’s been widely rumored that that alongside the newly expanded exterior Haunted Mansion grounds and Madame Leota’s Somewhere Beyond gift shop, the attraction itself would receive enhancements, including a new Bride Audio Animatronics figure–and possibly a completely new character and subplot (for lack of a better term).
Based on the rumors we’ve heard, all of which are second or third-hand, we’d stop short of calling this a reimagining. Enhancements and updates are the more apt term, and in line with what Disneyland did in the lead-up to the Diamond Celebration for the 60th Anniversary with Fantasyland dark rides. Of course, there was also the addition of Hatbox Ghost in Haunted Mansion.
If rumors are to be believed, this might be a bit more than that. It’s also possible that some of the enhancements are to draw attention away from modernizations that could be made that may not sit so well with Disneyland diehards. Again, we have not heard any rumors directly–this is all secondhand–but there have been rumblings for years that Disneyland might tone down some of the sensitive content in Haunted Mansion. (Just to be abundantly clear, I cannot verify the veracity of this–it’s hopefully wrong, but I don’t know.)
In any case, the rumor of a new Haunted Mansion Bride Audio Animatronics, at the very least, has been bolstered this week by the announcement of a new Haunted Mansion Bride sipper cup, which will be sold starting on January 14, 2025 at Harbour Galley and Stage Door Cafe for $35.
Rather than being made of gold, as one might expect for that price, the Haunted Mansion Bride sipper is a plastic cup. It features the figure holding a candelabra and bouquet, as her face lights up blue and her beating red heart glows in her chest. It looks cool, I guess, but this is fine china prices for a piece of plastic. But I suppose if you get enough of them, you could have quite the dinner party.
Anyway, the announcement of this Haunted Mansion Bride sipper seemingly corroborates rumors, which were previously bolstered by a piece of art appearing in the new gift shop. I took that with a grain of salt since other, since-removed art was generated by AI, but the Bride painting was definitely more distinct, and presumably human-made.
Anyway, I assume we’ll get confirmation of some of this directly from Disneyland very soon. It’s a bit odd that they posted the menu and calendar updates without a splashy press release about enhancements to Haunted Mansion as a whole, and the plan for this year. Expect that to drop in the coming hours or days…
Our Commentary
Extending OG Haunted Mansion’s run in 2025 makes sense from a strategic perspective. Around this time one year ago–months before anything was officially announced or rumored–we speculated that the regular Haunted Mansion would not return following its queue construction and grounds expansion. That Disneyland would save the removal and installation expenses, and simply reopen in the same form the ride closed, as Haunted Mansion Holiday.
Our reasoning was simple: The Disney Vault.
More and more, Disneyland has been adopting a Disney Vault strategy when it comes to its offerings. We noticed this first with Magic Key Annual Pass sales, which have been not-so-coincidentally been returning with a fairly consistent cadence and then all “selling out” at the same time.
On the substantive offerings side, the biggest use of the Disney Vault in the last few years at Disneyland has been the return of Fantasmic. No one really believes that it took them over a year to bring back that nighttime spectacular in b-mode without a brand new Maleficent dragon, right? It was a cost-savings measure and to get people excited for the return, despite it being a modified version of the show. And guess what? Give it another year or so and the exact same thing is going to happen with a real dragon (well, not a real one) in the climactic sequence.
Same goes for Wondrous Journeys largely disappearing last year and Mickey’s Mix Magic taking its place. Now the former makes its triumphant return for Disneyland’s 70th Anniversary after a year-plus hiatus. Magic Happens Parade won’t be presented this year, but you better believe it’s not gone for good–its return will likewise be treated with fanfare in 2026 or whenever. This is actually nothing new when it comes to entertainment, even if I think Disneyland has started using the Disney Vault in suboptimal (charitable term) ways in the last few years.
In the past, the Disney Vault was deployed to rotate fan-favorite fireworks shows, rather than for cost-cutting and to generate artificial excitement. This worked well, and ensured we got to see the seasonal shows for Halloween and Christmas, but also ‘Remember… Dreams Come True’, Disneyland Forever, Fantasy in the Sky, and even Together Forever. I’m choosing to remain optimistic that we’ll see a reimagined and expanded RDCT for Disneyland’s 75th Anniversary.
Point being, this is partially the reverse side of the Disney Vault strategy for Haunted Mansion. Since Disneyland diehards were deprived of it last year, it makes sense that Disney would extend the original’s run in 2025. There’s absolutely going to be localized pent-up demand for the attraction, and I’m fully expecting its wait times to trend above-average.
This is doubly true when paired with the Disneyland 70th Anniversary Celebration, since Haunted Mansion is an iconic attraction. It’ll be triply true if the rumored enhancements materialize in Haunted Mansion, as guests will want to see them (good or bad). Hatbox Ghost was an incredibly popular addition during the Diamond Celebration, and although I don’t have wait times data to support that, I recall lines being longer.
The data does show significantly elevated wait times for Haunted Mansion at Magic Kingdom in the months after Hatbox Ghost’s much more recent installation there, and that was done in a fairly hamfisted way. But it was a new AA and an addition, so it’s unsurprising that fans beat down the mansion’s doors to see it.
Anyone expecting Haunted Mansion Holiday to only get a less than two month run going forward might want to adjust their expectations. This is probably not the new normal, but instead a one-off in light of all of the above.
Haunted Mansion Holiday is incredibly popular at Disneyland during the duration of its normal ~4 month run. With Halloween getting progressively longer each year, I wouldn’t be surprised if Haunted Mansion Holiday does debut later (perhaps post-Labor Day?) in the future, but I’m skeptical it’ll become a Christmas-only overlay.
To that point, the other upside to this from Disneyland’s perspective is that it’ll create pent-up demand for Haunted Mansion Holiday during Halloween 2026. Not running Haunted Mansion Holiday in August through October means it almost certainly won’t be shown during the months when ticket deals are offered, so locals will either have to buy pricier admission during the holiday season, or wait until the following year. Consider this a scaled-back form of the Disney Vault approach.
Honestly, the biggest surprise here to me is that Disneyland is doing Haunted Mansion Holiday in 2025 at all and not further embracing the Disney Vault strategy. It’s a pretty involved overlay for less than 2 months, and unless Disney is going to scale it back this year to allow for a quicker turnaround time, the attraction will be closed almost as long for installation and removal as the overlay will be displayed.
Even as someone who recently wrote that Walt Disney World is Wrong About Seasonal Ride Overlays, citing Haunted Mansion Holiday as a prime example, I have to admit that the detractors do have a point in questioning whether the upside of the overlay is worth the downside of the downtime. Four months is one thing, but ~7 weeks is another entirely.
Personally, I still think Haunted Mansion Holiday is “worth it” for only Christmas, even with the downtime. And I think Disneyland’s approach in announcing this so far in advance is admirable, as guests have plenty of time to plan around it. So from my perspective, kudos to Disney for both running HMH this year and providing plenty of notice. This is exactly how ride closures should be communicated!
As for the rumored enhancements to Haunted Mansion, I’m going to withhold commentary until details are made official, or perhaps until I can ride myself on January 18 to experience it firsthand. My perspective on this could vary pretty widely based on what does and does not change. If it’s just the Bride, I’m probably on board–the now-old, once-new tech in that Audio Animatronics has not aged well, to the point that the still-old Bride at Tokyo Disneyland now looks better than the ones in the domestic parks.
I’m also curious about a potential subplot, which sounds eerily similar to Phantom Manor at Disneyland Paris–I rather enjoy the storytelling approach to that attraction. But it all depends on execution and the whole package of changes to the ride. This is a lesson I learned with Hatbox Ghost at Magic Kingdom, as announcement versus implementation were two very different things. And these changes at Disneyland haven’t even been officially confirmed yet!
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Your Thoughts
What do you think of Disney shortening the run of Haunted Mansion Holiday in 2025? Do you think it makes sense for this year given the anniversary, rumored enhancements, and how long it’s been since OG Haunted Mansion last materialized? Hope this is the new trend, or do you like having HMH for ~4 months each year? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions? Hearing your feedback—even when you disagree with us—is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
