History
Two similar overlays - Country Bear Christmas Special and It's a Small World Holiday - had already been successful for some time when Haunted Mansion Holiday was developed. Initially, Disney considered doing a retelling of A Christmas Carol, but decided against it due to the attraction's setting in New Orleans Square and the incongruity of bringing Santa Claus into the eerie environment of the Haunted Mansion. Instead, they decided to base it on The Nightmare Before Christmas after considering which Disney character would celebrate Christmas in the Haunted Mansion, should Santa Claus ever land there on his journey. Steve Davison took the idea and worked with Walt Disney Creative Entertainment to develop the overlay.
One issue Disney had to deal with was the fact that all the key performers in the original attraction - Paul Frees, Leota Toombs, Eleanor Audley, Thurl Ravenscroft, the rest of the singing busts, and almost all of the original voice actors - had all died years earlier. Paul Frees was replaced in his role as the Ghost Host by Corey Burton, who had done voiceover work with Disney before. Leota Toombs' daughter, Kim Irvine, resembled her mother and was thus chosen to perform in her place as Madame Leota. Susan Blakeslee (whose voice resembles Eleanor Audley) provides the voice of Madame Leota. The singing busts were topped with Jack-O-Lanterns and given computer-animated singing projections. New voice actors were picked for the graveyard ghosts that sound similar to the originals. (with the exception of the Headsman Trio; The Knight now has an English accent instead of the German accent he normally has, and the Prisoner sounds nothing like Candy Candido)
Haunted Mansion Holiday opened October 3, 2001 and quickly became popular with guests, leading to the attraction's FastPass machines being activated during the overlay (They are normally inactive). The Tokyo version props were intended for Walt Disney World, but when the park abandoned plans to install the attraction, Tokyo (which features a carbon copy of their Haunted Mansion) received all the props.
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