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doombuggy wrote:

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I usually post this list each week on our sister site....can you spot the anniversary on this list?

http://tellnotales.yuku.com/topic/3937/master/1/

Yes I do, and what's more, it's wrong. It's the 40th anniversary, so I have some excuse for being a tad anal and bringing this old subject up. There may have been a soft opening for the public on Saturday August 9th following a successful soft opening for CM's Thursday and Friday nights, but practically by definition a soft opening is not an official grand opening. The sneak preview for the press was Monday night, the 11th from 10:30 to midnight. That's what they're talking about in some of the following quotes when they mention ghosts moving in at midnight, etc.

For those who like their myth-busting hammer a little less disorganized, I've put the relevant media quotes together into a tidy list:

"Ghosts, ghouls, witches and bats-all swaying and screaming to the eerie tune of "Grim Grinning Ghosts"-moved into Disneyland's new Haunted Mansion at midnight."

-Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Tuesday, 8-12-69, p. A-6



"Disneyland gets a bit spooky starting today-the new Haunted Mansion is opening at the edge of New Orleans Square." Picture caption: "A ghost resident of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, which opens to public today, plays a haunting melody."

-Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, 8-12-69, p. A-1



"So the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, which opened with appropriately spectral rites at midnight Monday, is a horrifying delight...." Picture Caption: "The $7 million scare treat opens its creaky doors for the first time Tuesday."

-Malcolm Epley, The Long Beach Independent, Wednesday, 8-13-69, p. B-1




"After more than 10 years of planning and development, Disneyland opened its Haunted Mansion Tuesday."

-Keith Murray, Pasadena Star News, Wednesday, 8-13-69, p. 6




"Employees were given a creep preview August 7 and 8, between the bewitching hours of 7 p. m. and Midnight, before the attraction opened to the public. Official opening of Disneyland's 53rd major attraction was Tuesday, August 12."

-Disneyland Inside, vol. 4, no. 9 (September 1969). DI is a Cast Member newsletter.




"Came across your site [Doombuggies.com] recently - I thinks it's excellent! We were visiting LA in '69 and talked our parents into staying an extra day for the grand opening of the Mansion. It wasn't easy, as our mom was absolutely freaked out by the Tate murders that had occurred just a day or so earlier. Just a bit of trivia for you..."

-Jeff Hines, Elk Grove, IL; From a letter to the Doombuggies.com webmaster. Sharon Tate was murdered early Saturday morning, August 9, 1969.

williamtaylor1969 wrote:

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Well, I was there on Saturday, August 9, 1969, and if that was a "soft" opening, you could have fooled me! My girlfriend and I rode the ride all day long, and there was a TON of people there, all enjoying the ride. A line from "Ocean's 13" really fits this situation "A 'SOFT' opening? HEY, the "Sands" was closed one day, and opened for business the next!"
I agree with that! If the ride is closed, then nobody goes thru the ride, if the ride is open, then people go thru it! I don't recall all this trouble when "Pirates" opened up!

William (the Bloody)

I'm not following your train of thought. A soft opening (for the public) is simply an unannounced and unexpected early opening. If it lasts all day, and word gets around the park, you can get a crowd. But in view of the mountain of data pointing to the 12th as the official public opening, whatever happened Saturday the 9th could not have been anything more than a soft opening. Sunday is totally unknown, but I doubt it was open Monday, since the "sneak preview" for the press (which is very well documented) would have looked pretty stupid if people had been riding all day.

williamtaylor1969 wrote:

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Well, my train of thought is very black and white, a situation HAS to be one or the other! Now, the basic question is, what was the FIRST day that the Haunted Mansion was open to the public? The ONLY train of thought answer has to be "August 9, 1969" I've seen supermarkets that were open to the public for WEEKS before the "official" grand opening! Either the store is open to the public, or it's not! All this positioning about nothing happened PRIOR to the grand opening is so much political banter, and total rhetoric! IF the first people, who were normal paying visitors to the park on August 9, had walked into the Haunted Mansion, then THAT'S the day it was opened! I guess that someone could say that it was really opened on the 8th or the 7th, but that was only to VIPs and employees, etc. The first day that normal paying customers were allowed to enter the mansion was August 9th, and that is the only opening day, logically!
And, Mr. Olsen, if you are going to base your "Facts" by what you see in the newsprint, you are really going to be in for disappointment in the future!

William (the Bloody)

Nowhere have I stated that the HM did not open until the 12th. Nowhere. I am referring to the official grand opening. If you read my posts carefully you will see that. Claims that the official opening, the ribbon-cutting thing, took place on the 9th are almost certainly false. As a matter of fact, there is no real proof that the HM was open at all on the 9th. The "soft opening" theory is just a good explanation of how the confusion may have started, so I accept it as a reasonable conjecture. I do not accept anyone's 40-year-old recollection alone as proof of anything, not yours, not mine. Please do not feel insulted if I think your stated recollections of August 9th need some sort of documentation before they can count as counter-evidence. I have lots of clear recollections of the HM from its opening days, but I never offer any of those memories as evidence unless I have some objective corroboration to go with it, because "memory is the most convincing of all liars," mine as much as yours or anyone else's.

Explain to me how you can have a sneak preview for the press two days after the official ribbon-cutting grand opening. And this is not just a case of uncritical reliance on the newspapers, as you suggest. For one thing, all of the papers say the same thing about the date. For another, many of these reports are from reporters who were actually there on the 11th. And I think it is extremely unlikely that the CM newsletter, Disneyland Inside, would have forgotten when the actual date was, less than a month after the opening. Disneyland Inside, was produced by the managers and CM's who actually worked at DL. Most of them probably still had their paystubs laying around for that period.

williamtaylor1969 wrote:

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Okay, faulty memory aside, how about PHOTOS? I took alot of photos that day?


William (the Bloody)

It depends upon whether you can establish from the photos that the date was the 9th of August.

Jester wrote:

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The official opening date of the Mansion at Disneyland is August 9, 1969.
There was a soft opening for castmembers, August 7th and 8th from 7:00 P.M. until midnight.

http://doombuggies.com/history6.php

I don't know why this is so complicated. "This week in Disney history" is the topic of the original OP. When Disney puts forth a date as the "official opening day," there is an implicit historical claim involved. Any "soft openings" that may have occurred before that date are off the record. They don't count. They don't exist, "officially" speaking. It's a Jedi mind trick. These aren't the openings you're looking for. The implicit historical claim is that the "official opening date" is the day when the big public event occurred, usually with a bit of fanfare, ribbon-cutting by park officials, photographers on hand, etc. My ONLY point in all of this is that the implicit historical claim made by Disney with regard to the Haunted Mansion's official opening day is false. The thing that they are talking about when they say "official opening date" happened on the 12th, not the 9th. If someone wants to disagree, that's fine, but they need to explain all the evidence that points to the 12th.

shirleyfilms wrote:

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Dan,

I am curious to know your opinion as to why Disney is trying so hard to change the official date of record. If, as you say, there is a great deal of evidence to support that the official opening day was the 12th... then why is it that Disney is so insistant upon changing history to claim the 9th as the anniversary?

Thanks,
SF

Well, IMO, they aren't "trying" to do anything at all. There's a good chance that there was a soft opening on the 9th. It may have been a great success, and some weeks or months later some DL executive simply goofed, confusing the soft opening on the 9th with the grand opening event on the 12th. Just a dumb mistake, but it was recorded in the official records (whatever those would be), and since then no one has had any particular reason to question it, so it lays there unexamined. Now it's holy writ that the HM's official opening day was Aug 9, and they have no incentive to engage in revisionist history.

Whoa, we've got us a bombshell, folks. Chef? You'll want to see this.

Looks like we can all be friends, folks. A fellow named Todd Hackett got wind of these noisy claims I've been making and posted a reply to me on a thread at Micechat, as well as sending me a private message. Mr. Hackett informs me that he was an employee of Marc Davis for over 14 years. He kept copies of the two HM opening ads drawn by Marc as they appeared in the LA Times. The first is a full-page ad from the LA Times for Saturday, August 9, 1969:





There's no date on the scan, so it's a matter of taking Mr. Hackett's word for it. There's no reason not to, however, because the second ad, from the LA Times Calendar Section, August 10, 1969, does in fact have the date on it (look in the middle).





Mr. H also says: "The Disney Annual Report writes that the official opening date was Tuesday, August 12, 1969, but that did not stop Disneyland from opening the attraction to the public on Saturday August 9, 1969 with a full page ad in the L.A. Times..."

So Disney was apparently speaking out of both sides of their mouth from the get-go. Mr. H thinks the August 12 "official opening date" was most likely a "day and date" release allowing the press to review the ride in much the same way as they would a movie premier.

This is the first and only contemporary documentary evidence I have ever seen that actually supported the traditional opening date, but it is conclusive. The Haunted Mansion did indeed open to the public on August 9, 1969.

My personal reaction? I'm happy. It answers all questions. I'm not embarrassed that I argued the case that I did (well, maybe a little). Based on the available evidence it was a reasonable position. Besides, if I hadn't been so public on the topic, this new information might not have ever come to our attention. It's all good.