Things You're Just Supposed to Know

Most of the time, Long-Forgotten assumes that readers are already familiar with basic facts
about the Haunted Mansion. If you wanna keep up with the big boys, I suggest you check out
first of all the website, Doombuggies.com. After that, the best place to go is Jason Surrell's book,
The Haunted Mansion: Imagineering a Disney Classic (NY: Disney Editions; 2015). That's the
re-named third edition of The Haunted Mansion: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies (NY:
Disney Editions, 2003; 2nd ed. 2009). Also essential reading is Jeff Baham's The Unauthorized
Story of Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion (USA: Theme Park Press, 2014; 2nd ed. 2016).

This site is not affiliated in any way with any Walt Disney company. It is an independent
fan site dedicated to critical examination and historical review of the Haunted Mansions.
All images that are © Disney are posted under commonly understood guidelines of Fair Use.

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Saturday, March 19, 2022

"With Love Affectionate" UPDATED

 A sequel and update to the previous post.

UPDATED March 27 and May 5. These items have apparently been there for years, but no one seems to have noticed them until recently.

During his last DL trip in March, my brother got lucky on his fifth Mansion trip and was pranky-spirited right in front of the new display, so we have a very nice photo of it:



We may have to wait for an obliging CM before we get a good look at the rest of it. Because there IS a "rest of it." The two floral arrangements to the right of this main one have small cards attached, and the banner on the wreath above "Affectionate" here has writing on it, as I suspected.


FIRST UPDATE: An acquaintance  of Jeff "the Chef" Baham was fortunate enough to have some pranky-spirit cooperation on his most recent DL trip and got a terrific photo of the Conservatory, which Jeff put up at the Doombuggies Facebook page:

Julia's boyfriend

The banner reads, "Dearly Departed Father."


Very authentically Victorian:


One of the smaller cards is an authentic Victorian funeral invitation:



"...The Coach to Attend at Half past Seven a Clock in the Morning"

SECOND UPDATE; Until now (May 2022), I have theorized that the "With Love Affectionate" card, the "Dearly Departed" banner, and the smaller cards were all part of the "enhauntsments" of April 2021 and that they were entirely overlooked until the "Love Affectionate" card was repositioned in a very conspicuous spot following the 2021-22 HMH. Here's the scene in April of 2021. It's all easy to miss:




But thanks to the eagle eye of MasterGracey, it seems that these items have been around for years. You can see what looks like the "Love Affectionate" card as well as a smaller card (unidentified) in the bouquet on top of the coffin in this 2016 video grab. (Incidentally, the presence of some sort of floral arrangement on top of the coffin has alternated with bare nothingness between the candlesticks over the years. The flux has been so constant and the floral arrangements have been so varied that it's not worth the bother to try to track it.)


The "Dearly Departed Father" banner is in the wreath to the right of the coffin, not visible in the above photo, but it IS visible in photos going back as far as 2011! Here it is on the right side in 2016 (top pic), and that's probably it also in 2011 (bottom pic). (I've turned the pix sideways to make identification easier:)

Adapted from pix found at Davelandweb


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8 comments:

  1. Still no comments? That's odd. If I had to guess, the word before Father is "Remembered". "Beloved" is also possible, but I don't see an ascender where the l would be.

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    1. I thought the second word was "husband", but "remembered" seems more likely ^_~

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    2. "Remembered" was my impression, too, but I hesitated to say anything because my eyesight is pretty poor.

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  2. The “with love affectionate” looks so cheaply made…like an 8.5 x 11 piece of printer paper with a simple design created on Microsoft Word. Disney usually does things that look more customized. Odd.

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    1. Unless that's what an authentic Victorian ... whatever it is ... looked like.

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  3. So, It looks like these additions to the conservatory were there as of 2016, completely unnoticed by everyone. In fact, it looks like there was a prominent tag on the flowers sitting on the coffin lid at that time that's since been removed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_6XXpA6mbI&t=327s
    (since It won't let me post an image here, here's a link to a video. The "Dearly Departed Father" is on the opposite side to where it is now. There is also a good image of it on Daveland's site).

    They may have added a few more during the "enhauntsments"? I haven't looked too far into it.

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    1. Good catch! And after sifting through more photos, it looks to me like "Dearly Departed" may have been there as early as 2011. I've revised the post to take into account this new info. Thanks!

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