The Black Widow Bride in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion who had a dark habit of beheading her husbands has traded in her axe for a new backstory that softens her murderous tendencies and makes her a more mournful and lovesick figure.
Walt Disney Imagineering will introduce a new ghostly bride using projection technology in the Haunted Mansion’s attic scene when the classic dark ride returns today, Jan. 18 after shedding its annual holiday overlay.
The new Haunted Mansion bride with a beating red heart and flowing gown appears to levitate in front of a shattered window while holding a three-pronged candelabra.
Haunted Mansion riders will hear the sounds of her beating heart and see the ghostly flames flicker on the candelabra as they pass through the attic scene.
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The new storyline turns the attic bride from an axe murderer who beheads her wealthy husbands for their fortunes into a brooding bride mourning the loss of her husbands and filled with the overwhelming dread of lost love.
Disney Imagineers heightened the saddened, lovesick and grief-stricken look on the new bride’s face, Imagineering creative director Kim Irvine told the Los Angeles Times.
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“We thought, what if we change the story back a little bit to the original story that the Imagineers had about a lost bride in the attic mourning the loss of her husbands,” Irvine told the Times. “It was a sad thing. It was a story about lost love.”
The new Haunted Mansion attic bride will be surrounded by portraits of past grooms who gradually vanish — leaving the reasons for their departure more to the imagination instead of her murderous intentions.
The old Black Widow Bride, known as Constance Hatchway, showed up in wedding portraits with a series of husbands who lost their heads in the Haunted Mansion attic scene.
The Hitchhiking Ghosts imagery that appears in the mirrors during the ride’s finale has also been updated during the removal of the Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay.