Beyond the Bride: The Other Changes in 2025

 When "classic Mansion" finally returned in 2025 after an unprecedented absence of approximately a year and a half, we found a lot more than a reimagined attic bride. Now that we've dealt with her (see previous post), it's time to review the rest. Some of the new stuff is very good, and some of it is . . . not. 

But before all that we need to point out one more thing about the New Connie:

 

She's Still a Baddie, Not a Saddie

It seems that when they redid the hubby portraits in order to eliminate their insufficiently sensitive decapitations, no one on the team had enough presence of mind to realize that they also needed to redo Connie herself in the "Constance & George" portrait, because as things stand she is still indisputably identified with the Widow portrait in the stretching gallery. I've put up this montage before, more than once:

 

The 2005 team clearly went to great lengths to make the identification as explicit as possible. The 2024 team did nothing to undo it.

 

LA Times

 

So there's no way around it: Connie is still the Widow, and if so, it's still the case that she offed George with a hatchet. And if she did in husband #5, it's a cinch she offed the previous four as well. Sorry, Kim Irvine. Until this damning linkage is broken by altering or simply eliminating the last portrait, all that talk about a sad, bewildered bride ghost searching for her lost love(s) is contradicted by the ride itself. Like it or not, Kim, as things stand the New Connie is still a cold-blooded killer.

 

Now let us turn to other things.

 

Graveyard Wraiths and Blue Mist

The ghosts projected on the scrims in the graveyard are greatly improved. No more spinning wheels. They now vary in speed and direction and you find here and there a subtle waving motion. This is a 100% positive improvement. Well done. (vid and stills: WDW News)

 

By the same token, we have nothing but praise for the improvements in the floating blue mist effect, both in the Limbo load area and in the graveyard. Besides the improved projection effect itself, in the load area it looks like they noticeably expanded the blue mist to cover a larger area of the screen.

 

 

Look also behind the Royals in the video clip above. With regard to Limbo, there's also a new exit/entrance in it for wheelchairs and scooters. At great expense, Disneyland added a more ADA compliant elevator entry and exit system. (This was the main reason for the prolonged shut-down.) The huge new mausoleum in the expanded queue area, as most of you know, houses the new elevator. There are plenty of videos out there giving tours of this new feature. The Mansionification of the halls and elevators is superficial and not very atmospheric. Despite a random set of Marc Davis concept sketches hanging on the walls of the passages, it doesn't quite feel like part of the Haunted Mansion, but I view it as purely utilitarian. It does what it's supposed to do with enough decoration added to at least take the raw edges off the break in illusioneering.

 

VicariousCorpse

The Bat Cage Returns

This item appeared in 2023 for a couple of days near the Endless Hallway and then vanished.

 

Jeff Baham

It appeared again during the last Haunted Mansion Holiday in the Corridor of Doors. Now it has stayed behind for classic Mansion.

My sources say it's still on trial. If it doesn't go over well, they may reserve it for HMH alone. Some people don't like it, but I have no problem with it. (Someone somewhere is making a note: "Long-Forgotten says it's cool.") Why? Well, it fits in well enough with my read of the ride's narrative. To recap, I think that when we were downstairs the spooks were toying with us, trying to scare us off. There were paintings that appeared to stretch and change, not to mention the walls themselves. Other paintings flickered foreboding images with the lightning flashes. Busts appeared to follow our moves, but stopped moving when we stopped. A whole room seemed to open into an "eerily lit limbo of boundless mist and decay." The Ghost Host had taunted us with a dilemma: are these hallucinations or actual metamorphoses? They're messing with our heads, leaving us wondering if these haunted happenings are actually taking place or "just our imagination." It's a false dilemma, since it's also possible the ghosts can manipulate the very fabric of the building and its furnishings in some sort of real/unreal way.

When we get to the second floor, where even the staff fears to tread, the gloves are off. No more hide and seek. Now when they manipulate the fabric of the building, they leave it that way, and they make a lot of noise too. In the COD, the wallpaper and the "family portraits," which presumably would have been normal-looking before we got there (like the downstairs furnishings), have become grotesque and distorted, with no return to "normal" to leave us wondering if we're seeing things. They're done with that flickering-back-and-forth rubbish. They want you to know they're real, and that perhaps you shouldn't have come this far.

The bat cage fits this environment fine. What was probably a bird in a cage before we got there (or more likely just an empty cage) now seems to have a gruesome little bat in it. If it had been downstairs, it would have been out of place, but in the COD it fits the environment satisfactorily.

 

The "Rolly" Chair is Back (But Still No Rotting Fruit)

No big thing, but the "Rolly" chair is back, the one they added in 2021 to the Séance Circle's airborne flotilla and later removed. At the time I suspected that since they had used a commercial design, maybe they had failed to get proper permission. Well, either they got the necessary permission or that was never an issue.

I wish they would restore the Purply Shroud over there, especially now that they've removed his twin brother in the graveyard crypt. I also wish that in the Ballroom they'd turn the rotting fruit effect back on. I can't help thinking it's basically just a light switch somewhere that people have forgotten about. It's one of those cool minor effects you only notice on your fiftieth ride or so.

 

Digital Hitchhikers

We all heaved a sigh of relief when the cartoon antics of the Orlando hitchhikers did not reappear in the Anaheim mirrors when they went to digital imagery. Instead we got a slavish reproduction of the original rod-puppets. I understand that they created these images from photos of the original figures rather then de novo using CGI. Good. Clearly they wanted everything to look the same as it always has. For this, THANK YOU, team. There has been criticism about the sharp cut-off line at the bottom of the figures, but that was an irritating feature of the old system too. My main worry was that the figures would look flat, since the old figures were genuinely three-dimensional, but the feedback I'm getting has been entirely positive, that they don't look flat. Also, they fade in and out at the beginning and the end of the line, "materializing and dematerializing," in ghost language.

It leaves you wondering why they bothered changing it at all. I presume it's a maintenance issue. The ghosty-go-round was a big, clanky, mechanical contraption requiring diligent upkeep. Barring electronic glitchery, there's now a lot less to go wrong. I regret the disappearance of the Victorian-era magic trick technology that went with the original, but I appreciate the effort to make the change not look like a change.

 

The Caretaker's Shed

This thing is not really part of the "new queue" but a way of camouflaging something utilitarian that apparently needs to be there. It's not bad looking.

 

 

But what's this? A human femur in the dog's dish? Here is an example of how shallow and obtuse the thinking of these guys can be. The Caretaker is presumably also a grave digger (note his shovel), and his dog has evidently been munching on human bones. It's a macabre joke, see? Well, what this "joke" utterly ignores is the character of these characters.  Both he and his dog are utterly without guile, completely sincere and innocent, and a bit cowardly to boot. There is NOTHING sinister about the man or his dog. Does anyone need to be told that? Both of them would be absolutely horrified at the gruesome suggestion here. This is like seeing Winnie the Pooh tell a dirty joke. It's something that would never happen.

This little tableau also ignores the fact that the Caretaker is the caretaker of the public cemetery next to the Mansion, not the caretaker of the Mansion. That can be seen most clearly in the Collin Campbell artwork for the "Story and Song" album, which follows the Imagineers' intentions scrupulously.

The New Queue

Again, we breathe a sigh of relief that we didn't get anything like the Orlando "interactive" queue, known around these parts as PLQ (Pepe le Queue). What this labyrinth of creamy walls and mostly off-the-shelf artwork most resembles is the Fastpass garden it displaced. In fact, most of the statuary from the latter has been retained here. A lot of this mundane "artwork" came from commercial catalogues of outdoor decor, and it shows. There is no uniformity of style, and with few exceptions, it lacks any spark of life. Some of the pieces are borderline kitsch. For example, more than one commentator has been put off by those garish bowling balls. I haven't seen anything down at "pink flamingo" level, but too much of this stuff is only a notch above "garden gnome" level. 

Something that really puzzles me is the color palette. The warm, creamy surfaces—almost yellow—are anything but chill and foreboding, and with that red brick trim it almost has a "California Mission" feel to it, which is totally wrong here.

Why didn't they go with the sombre gray hues of the old queue? Disney used to have the best colorists in the business (Mary Blair, John Hench). What has happened?

I'm withholding judgment to some degree, because the place will no doubt look better once the plants have a chance to fill in. We shall see.

There are traces of wit here and there. Did you notice the skull face?

There are also doors left open for future development. No one knows yet what this safe is for:

But with that lighthouse on it, it's possible we're going to be seeing a tie-in with the S.E.A. master theme, although Kim Irvine associates this area with "Gracey."  Huh? Make of that what you will.

 

 

The book on the table was published in 1917, which is pretty awkward, but I doubt we're supposed to know that. John Paul Jones hails from in the Revolutionary War period. Plausibly, he would have been of interest to the Mansion's original builder around the time of the War of 1812, if they're trying here to keep the old "Sea Captain" business alive in some way. I can't see this prop lasting very long as it doesn't look waterproofed and it's outside. What's with that? This has to be a temporary situation.

 

I suppose you could read a seascape into this glasswork as well. Note that the ironwork has eyes (albeit a bit too obviously), which is the sort of thing we find frequently around the Mansion. There's plenty of this sort of thing in the new queue if you're looking for it.

Music is playing throughout the queue, very reminiscent of Phantom Manor, but for some reason it's more upbeat. I'd rather not have it, but it doesn't bother me much. Music is playing outside at DL just about everywhere, and in this case you could justify it as helping to mask all the other noise around you, stuff that you must screen out in order to maintain the illusion that you are at a haunted house in New Orleans. I suppose that for many people, the new music helps them get into that mindset. If I want, I can just screen it out like all the other noise.

 

 Graveyard Lite?

Maybe there are plans to add more to it later (fingers crossed), but as things stand, the berm graveyard has been considerably abbreviated. The "great eight" set, paying tribute to the original Imagineers (plus Phineas Pock) is currently incomplete, and one of the four stones paying tribute to the 2016 team that brought back the graveyard is also missing. What's there looks pretty bad at present, but when the plants have had a chance to grow up it will no doubt look better. At least the stones all look like they could actually have a grave in front of them, which was a major beef I had with the 2016 incarnation. Maybe someone actually listened? If so, thanks.

So much for the queue. Architecturally, I don't get any New Orleans, ante-bellum vibes from it. It's not criminally bad, but it's not ominous or spooky, and your Long-Forgotten administrator finds it uninspired and uninteresting. It's Fastpass Gardens spread over what seems like half an acre. I will definitely miss the spacious and far more beautiful area it has replaced.

 

It's Time to Despond

Lastly, we have this Turdasaurus Rex. If you want to know what I think of Madame Leota's Somewhere Beyond, check out the video by this guy. Brickey's not my favorite Disney historian and I don't recommend all his stuff, but he's dead right about MLSB, and he pulls no punches. In fact, he says it's the worst structure ever erected at Disneyland. Is he right?

Yes. Yes, he is.  See also this. Nobody likes this building. You hear "Home Depot" and "Tuff Shed" among the more family-friendly mutterings, and in fact it didn't take long for sharp-eyed Disneylanders to recognize it as a brazen knock-off of a pre-fab barn: Armstrong's Legacy Post-and-Beam model 4236.

It's supposed to be the Mansion's old "carriage house," but as Brickey says, it looks nothing like the sort of carriage house you'd expect to see alongside a New Orleans ante-bellum plantation house. It looks like it's brand spanking new (because it is), and it's dull as dishwater.

The biggest problem is that it's TOO DAMN BIG. They say that if Merchandising had had their way, it would have been even bigger. There is no forced perspective to bring it down to scale within its surroundings, and it makes both the Mansion itself and what was formerly called "Splash Mountain" look small.  That is criminal.

Compare the concept artwork with the actual thing. The painting gives you the impression that the shop will be a modest structure tucked away beneath the shadow of the magisterial Mansion. Instead we got this clumsy behemoth shoehorned into the available space and big-footing the view on that entire side.

The worst thing about it is what has been lost. One of the most beautiful vistas in the entire park has been destroyed, just so that they can sell a few more Jack Skellington mugs and tee-shirts. 

THIS is unforgivable:

Gone.  It's gone.

Look at it.  Look what they destroyed.  Shame on them. 

                                         Putting that building up was an act of vandalism.                                            The only way to atone for this crime is to tear it down.

One could just weep. Some people have said, "Well yeah, it's true, the exterior is disappointing, but at least the interior is good." I disagree. Again, was there nobody on this team with any instinct at all for color? The concept art featured a palette built around the familiar green-and-magenta combination that spells spookiness like no other:

 

 

But the actual interior is what one thoroughly disgusted senior Imagineer called a "dog's breakfast." The green-magenta interplay has been swallowed up in browns, yellows, blues. In fact there is no dominant color scheme at all. Some smiley-faced bright-siders say the place looks magical. I say it looks like some kid decided to use all 64 of her crayons.

No, I'm not done yet. For decor in the upper shelf areas, someone thought it would be cool to feature some of the instruments that float around in the Séance Circle, like the tambourine . . .

 

. . . and the trumpet . . . 

 . . . and the snare drum . . . .

When I saw that, my jaw dropped. It's a MODERN snare drum. To be precise, it's a PDP Concept Series 7x13 maple shell.

Call it "good-enough-ism." This is sloppy, cheap, and unworthy of a Disney production. Some say, "So what. Who will notice?" I respond, "How many guests does Disneyland have in a typical week? How many among those tens of thousands are probably drummers? How many are at least in bands and know what a modern drum kit looks like?" HUNDREDS of people are going to notice. How hard would it have been to have someone at the model shop whip up an antique-looking drum, or score one from a prop supply house? Here's what should have been there:

Disneyland and the other parks used to be known for their attention to detail, including historically accurate detail. This stupid snare drum may be a small thing in itself, but it's a symptom of a bigger problem as well as just one more log on this particular fire.

 

 I'm going to say it. Yes, I'm going to go there. If Walt saw this thing, people would be FIRED, and the bulldozers would be in there tomorrow.  Somewhere Beyond can go . . . somewhere beyond. It needs to be torn down.

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Here Comes the Bride, Part Six: Connie Loses Her Axe

 .

Los Angeles Times

Kid you not, within days of the debut of the New Constance (Jan 18, 2025), I began getting inquiries as to why I hadn't said anything yet. "Well? Where's the post??"  *sigh* That's how things go these days. Everyone wants instant analysis. But I say it's better to let the first wave of excitement/outrage run its course before taking to the keyboard. Otherwise, you end up saying things that look embarrassingly knee-jerky and outdated within a very short time.

We'll deal with all the other new stuff—the stuff outside the attic—in the next post. That will include not only the new queue and the execrable Somewhere Beyond, but all the other items as well. There are quite a lot of them, actually. Some are good, some are bad. You'll see.

 

What's New?

We had better begin with what was actually done and who did it. According to my sources, the new attic and all the rest of the new changes to the Mansion were done locally, at Anaheim, rather than by Walt Disney Imagineering. So don't blame WDI (at least not directly) if there's anything there you don't like, or praise WDI if there are things you do. I'm told this was done by Disneyland, and for good or ill, responsibility for the whole thing goes ultimately to DL's art director, Kim Irvine.

The New Connie is an odd combination of Pepper's Ghost and mapped projection onto a blank white mannequin. If the latter sounds a lot like the old Connie, you hear correctly. They put in a huge piece of glass at a 45º angle, tilting toward you. The reflected image in it is projected from a very shallow hollow in the floor. They evidently wanted a blowing fabric effect for the dress, which wouldn't have been very easy to accomplish if the reflected image were laying horizontally, so we've got this mannequin along with Pepper, which is strange, because it seems to defeat the whole genius and raison d'être of Pepper's Ghost: its magical transparency. The face is totally Pepper's, so there's no real reason why it couldn't be animated to some degree, and perhaps it will be in future.

 You can see the new diagonal beams on either side of her, put there to support and hide the edges of the sheet of glass, which is well-done, but in some videos, you can glimpse part of the figure in the floor.

One problem with Pepper's is that the large sheet of glass in use can inadvertently pick up reflections of irrelevant objects that happen to be in the wrong spot and are too brightly lit. Ever since Connie debuted in 2006, this has been an irritant, because the Ambrose portrait and other items in that attic tableau can be seen reflected in the ballroom glass as you scoot along. Alas, the same issue is found here, as a pile of brightly lit packages and dishware on the floor next to the Connie & George portrait can be seen floating upside down in the air near the attic ceiling while you're looking at the new bride.

 

VicariousCorpse

You've heard of the mystery of the haunted wedding gifts, haven't you? Some say they float along the ceiling upside down. Others say it's only a trick of the light.

Maybe they'll fix that. I'm told that they were still tweaking the thing until the last minute, and it shows. The bride's nose is all wonky in the early photography. (See the pic they released to the LA Times at the top.) Hopefully they will fix it. Of course, I kept saying that about the old Constance too. I'm also struck by the fact that the new figure is totally static. The older brides swayed back and forth and moved their candle arm. This one just stands there, stock-still.

They haven't changed the bride's name. "Constance" is still attested numerous places in the hubby-portrait tableaux, so we haven't got a new bride so much as a complete overhaul and reinvention of the old one. One has to wonder whether "Hatchaway" is still supposed to be her maiden name, since the pun is now inappropriate. It has been canonical these last 20 years, since it's on the marriage certificates that have been on public display in the attic (albeit a little irregularly), even though riders can't possibly read them.

 

But if those are gone now (yet to be confirmed as of this writing), "Hatchaway" may be considered gone as well.

So . . . why the change?

Technological Advances? 

If you check out the Tom Martens article about the new bride in the LA Times, you will be told that it involved, among other things, an updating of the technology.

According to the Times, the new bride utilizes "the latest in projection technology," and you're looking at a technological "advance." He got this rubbish from Kim Irvine, who told him the "projection technology on the prior figure had become so outdated as to necessitate regular maintenance," which is an odd thing to say since everything needs "regular maintenance."

What I'm told is that the projector in the floor is exactly the same projector used for the old Constance. So much for technological advance. Someone might point out here the gee-whiz magical effects that come with the new bride, those ghostly little orbs floating around her in three-dimensional space. Whatever else you might say, no one can deny that the effect looks very cool . . . 

 

. . . just like it did in 1957:

Matter of fact, if you check out the current incarnation of the Sleeping Beauty walk-thru, you'll see an array of impressive Pepper's effects beyond which the new Connie advances not a single millimeter.

Sensitivity Issues?

Kim sez: "The bride that used to be in there was an ax murderer, and in this day and age we have to be really careful about the sensitivities of people. We were celebrating someone chopping off her husband's heads, and it was a weird story." Not surprisingly, these kinds of comments have sparked a lot of mockery and indignation, but at the same time there's a kernel of truth in all that. As I argued years ago, the Connie story doesn't jibe well with the artistic statements of the HM, which are two: (1) the afterlife may be joyful rather than horrifying. However, (2) justice must be served. It was the attic's job to temper the Mansion's otherwise universal message by adding a detective story, brilliantly told in about one minute of actual time. The essence of all detective stories is that evil exists and the demands of justice must be met. That stern claim cannot simply be wished away. (It may be washed away by an act of atonement, but at that point we're talking about Christianity.) Anyway, as I pointed out, the Constance story does not fit either message: it was a story in which the devil wins, which is a common horror theme but foreign to the Mansion until 2006. So yes, however much wicked fun people got out of her, there was always something out of place with the Constance saga. Talking about "sensitivity" may not the best approach to the problem, but it does recognize that something smelt funny about her.

The Boring Truth?

It's possible I'm wrong about this, but if I am, there's an extraordinary coincidence that wants explaining. The original Constance character was brought to (after)life by two talented ladies, Kat Kressida and Julia Lee.

 

Kat provided the voice and Julia the look (although it's never been absolutely clear whether Kat as well as Julia contributed something to the heavily-doctored and digitized visual projection of Connie). Anyway, Connie debuted in May of 2006, so these gals most likely contracted with Disney in 2005.

Shortly after Connie's debut, Julia added a credit to her now-defunct website:

 

That "next twenty years" business is VERY strange. Disney normally owns outright the performances for which they contract, and yet it's hard to account for these comments unless they represent something or other in the contract. Can you think of any other way to explain them? Okay, well, do the math, people. 2025 is 20 years after the original contract with Julia (and presumably Kat?). Of course, Julia's visage still appears in the hubby portraits, but perhaps this "twenty years" business pertains only to the video imagery. Whatever. Until I learn otherwise, this will be my answer to the "why" question: Expiration date reached.

These are from one of the Julia Lee photoshoots:

 

Why the Why? What About the What?

Yes, let's do the real Long-Forgotten stuff. What is supposed to be going on with the new bride? Irvine has given out some blather about bringing back the sorrowful figure that the original Imagineers imagined, a bewildered bride searching for her lost husbands. A story of lost love. So sad.

Ugh. You can read the whole "Here Comes the Bride" series here at LF if you want to know what the original Imagineers were up to. It's true that in many ways the new Connie is a throwback to the old Beating Heart bride, but the original figure was the Corpse Bride, and she was scary.

 

Not only that, but the Hatbox Ghost made it pretty clear that she was a murderer who beheaded her victim. It's true that after Hattie was gone and Beating Heart continued to evolve (the Black-Faced bride, the Blue-faced bride), she became more ambiguous. I myself used the word forlorn in those discussions, so if Kim wants to claim that bride was sad, I can't say she's crazy to think so. Once the Hatbox Ghost was gone, the murder mystery was destroyed anyway, and people were free to read the bride in multiple ways.

However, Connie 2.0 is not the only new character in the attic. There is also a black cat at her side.

 

You'd look grumpy too if someone stuck a candy corn in your eye (pic: Mike Kindrich)

 

Is She a Witch?

As everyone knows, this feline friend of Connie's is a tribute to the unused X. Atencio concept, the One-Eyed Black Cat, and this, dear friends, is how tributes should be done: a subtlety found in something organically connected with the story, not a gratuitous addition put there just for the sake of having a "tribute." So kudos to Kim and Co. for that. But with that black cat there, the message I immediately receive is, "The bride was a witch." I've been told that the team responsible for the new attic weren't aiming for that. Irvine has explained the bride as something quite different, a sympathetic character. It is supposed that the black cat is adequately accounted for as a tribute to X and nothing more should be read into it.

But artistic intention only counts for so much if you're trafficking in cultural symbols and stereotypes. "Spooky woman with a black cat at her side" = she's a witch. I feel a little stupid defending that reading, because we are talking here about a pretty firmly embedded symbol in the collective (sub)consciousness of our culture, many centuries old. And besides, what was that One-Eyed Black Cat, anyway? The Atencio character was unambiguously a demonic figure who only appears as a cat. Look up "witch's familiar" if you really need help here.

Some have argued that since she doesn't LOOK like a witch (pointy hat, broom, etc), the assumption is shaky. A ghost with a black cat is not automatically witchy. Neither is a bride with a black cat. So I guess it's every interpreter to their keyboard, and we still have ourselves an open mystery. Fair enough. WITCHever you decide, one must allow that there is BROOM for more than one view. What the HEX, I don't need to SPELL it out any further.

By the witchy reading, though, the interpretation of the new attic is fairly straightforward. The successive husbands of this woman, all of whom mysteriously disappeared, did so because she was an evil witch who probably did them in. That also neatly explains why husbands two through five were increasingly imbecilic in that they did not suspect anything was wrong. It's simple: they were bewitched! Of course, if Connie 2.0 is still a baddie, it means that the attic still gives us an anomaly, a yet-unpunished and yet-unredeemed villain, that all they've done is replace an axe with a hex. (Hmm . . . no wonder they thought a tribute to X fit here.) Finally, I will point out that a sinister interpretation is encouraged by retaining the name "Constance" and her hubby portraits, in continuity with the previous 20 years of history, which unavoidably bring with them certain expectations about her that will continue to hang over the whole place. We have not been given a clean break. (This will be taken up further in the next post, so stay tuned.)

 

The Hatbox Ghost Disappears Again

The worst thing about this addition, in my admittedly subjective opinion? With the total expunging of the beheading theme, there is no longer any organic connection between the Hatbox Ghost and the attic. He's been standing outside the attic proper for ten years anyway, but now he really is outside; that is, he can no longer be considered an "attic character." I suppose he's become so famous that he's no longer seen as requiring some particular reason for fitting him into the Mansion, no more than, say, the Opera singers or the Royals. But the fact that henceforth he does not tie in with any known narrative with regard to the Mansion's imaginative history feels to me like the unkindest cut of all.

 

The Candelabra Floats

I don't mind in principle their attempt to expand the character's presence in the Mansion by matching her candelabra not only to the one in the Endless Hallway but also to a new candelabra in the graveyard, which replaces the purplish wraith in the crypt by the Opera Pair.

 

Like others, I think the ghost was much more interesting than the new candelabra, and I always hate it when a 1969 original effect is scrapped. But the idea itself is agreeable in that it deliberately raises questions which it doesn't answer, like any good haunted house should.

Influences

Since we're in the awkward position of denying what the Imagineering team claims they intended to do, there is no point in pulling up examples of stuff that may have influenced the new figure as a concept, but we can at least say a few things about visual influence. First of all, the new Connie looks a lot like some of the concept art for the old Connie:

The eerie flowing effect on her gown reminds me a little of the Falls of the Bride in Peru. It's possibly an influence, but I wouldn't press it. Otherwise, see the previous brides for visual influences.

One Last Mystery

I am reliably informed that there is a new coffin in the attic, across from the bride in the old, pre-Constance corner (also the original HBG spot). So far I've seen no photos of it or heard any comments on it. I'll hold a spot here for a future insertion.

Conclusions

The consensus to date is that the new Connie is visually an improvement over the old Connie, but that's a pretty low bar. The amount of money and effort that went into this new version hasn't produced anything like the hoped-for results. "Underwhelmed" is a word that keeps appearing, and I've encountered exactly that same reaction from die-hard Mansion freaks and casual park goers alike. Overall, an improvement, but it feels like a missed opportunity. Maybe more is coming?

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