HM-style plantation houses

[Datameister]

That's what I was thinking, too. The trickiest part is incorporating the stretching gallery, since it has to be directly beneath the cupola and still have room below it to stretch. I was considering placing the seance room on the first floor directly below the stretching gallery, so that the stretching would push the seance room underground and allow access to secret underground passageways. But in the ride, the seance room is on the second or third floor, adjacent to the ballroom. So now I must decide which option I want to take, or come up with an entirely new solution.

The trick is to keep the original feel of the mansion, preserve the interior and exterior appearances as much as possible, and NOT OVERDO IT. I could pull a Hogwarts and make the mansion an impossibly huge residence with innumerable rooms and passageways, but that's not exactly what the ride is about.

I'm also trying to decide if I'm going to use the entrance hall from the movie. It's a lovely set, and it's derived from early sketches for the ride, but it's not actually in the ride...so I have to decide if I want to use the DL foyer, the movie entrance hall, both, or a combination of the two.

[Aura of Foreboding]

I think that a combo of the two would be a good idea, since old Mansions always usually have foyers. The problem with the Disneyland foyer is that it is not big enough to be the foyer of a large Mansion. For the facade, the small foyer works well, but for a large Mansion, it needs to be much bigger.

[speederscout]

Ah, but does the stretching gallery "actually" stretch, or is it just a supernatural experience? Just as it not having any "doors or windows". Same as the endless hallway. For all practical purposes in a real house the portrait gallery, hallway of doors, and endless hallway are the same location.

Also, not all old "mansions" are mansions as we think of them today. Many actually had fairly small rooms. And would it actually have a "master" bedroom? And remember, they didn't have bathrooms as we do today.

Now I'm thinking of how I'd lay it out...

[Datameister]

Is this haunted room actually stretching? Or is it just your imagination, hmmm?

That's the trick, ain't it. How much of this mansion do I want to set in stone (so to speak), and how much do I want to say "Okay, sometimes there's a secret passage right here" or "This area doesn't show up in the floor plans, it's kind of a limbo." That's what I'm figuring out.

Oh, and I've decided to use the movie foyer, not the ride foyer. I have dear memories of that delightfully spooky room in the ride's queue. But practically speaking, the larger entry hall used in the movie makes more sense. And that design was going to be used for the ride...before they opted for the smaller design.

In the movie, the first-floor corridor leading from the entry hall to the ballroom is the armory. But I've decided to replace that with the corridor of doors, from the ride. It will still lead into the ballroom, though.

Aura of Foreboding, I rented the HM movie today (again) and started mapping out their version of the mansion. You're right, they placed the ballroom at the very back of the mansion. You can see lightning flashing through the windows in the back. But all that's between the ballroom and the front of the house is the entry hall and the armory. That would make the dimensions of the house very odd. I'm a bit disappointed with that.

It's interesting--the whole left-rear corner of the manor is never explored in the movie. Whenever we see the mansion's interior, it's always the entry hall, armory, ballroom, bedrooms, library, conservatory, attic, and the series of secret passages that Jim wanders through. None of these areas are on the left-hand side of the house, which leads me to wonder...what's over there? Ooh... (I think on the upper story there are just more bedrooms, etc. But the lower floor, I couldn't say. There's a whole library-sized area we never see in the film.)

I disagree about the corridor of doors, portrait gallery, and endless corridor being one and the same. A large mansion can have multiple corridors, don't you think? As I said, I intend to place the corridor of doors between the entry hall and the ballroom. The portrait gallery will be directly above that, I think. Now the endless corridor...that's tricky. I think I'm going to draw it as a finite hallway on the floor plan, but say that you could keep walking its length forever and never get to the other end.

Does anyone know if full blueprints for the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California were ever drawn up? After the construction was over, I mean. That would be very, very interesting to see.

[Datameister]

Actually, the portrait gallery will NOT be above the corridor of doors, because the portrait gallery has windows on the left-hand side. This needs to be on the side of the house, not in the center.

In other news, I've decided what to do with the stretching gallery. It will be located on the second floor, at the beginning of the central upper corridor. This works because it's directly below the cupola, and we assume Master Gracey hanged himself in the cupola.

My map of the Haunted Mansion is beginning to take shape. The hard part will be figuring out how to incorporate secret passages and so forth.

[DCACM]

http://www.boingboing.net/2003/12/01...11000_sqf.html

[Datameister]

That guy is crazy. It would cost so much less to just rent out the "real" mansion a few times a year.

Heh, I just found the Windows 95 program "3D Home Architect" in my closet. Now I'm using it to draw up Haunted Mansion floor plans. It's actually not too bad, even though the software is 10 years old. Speederscout, I can send you images of my work so far.