Visiting Disneyland Resort is special anytime you can do it, but there's something extra special about doing it during the holiday season. While there's always something new at Disneyland to experience, there are also those traditional elements that return year after year that fans look forward to. And one of those is the Nightmare Before Christmas overlay given to the Haunted Mansion. It always arrives in time for Halloween and remains through Christmas. And with 2021 being the 20th anniversary of the addition, fans will get something special inside the attraction, in the form of a gingerbread house that pays tribute to every house that has come before it.
Every year the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland gets transformed into The Nightmare Before Christmas, and while most of the attraction is the same from year to year, one major change that occurs is that every season a newly designed gingerbread house is placed on the table for guests to check out. Today Disney unveiled concept art of what this year's house will look like, and in celebration of this being the 20th anniversary of the attraction overlay, the new gingerbread house will contain elements from all of the previous 19 houses.
2021 marks the 20th anniversary of the Haunted Mansion Holiday, and also the 20th gingerbread house design, since we didn't get one last year due to the attraction, and all of Disneyland, being closed. Still, it's great to see that the seasonal offering will be back. While there are a lot of Haunted Mansion purists that prefer the classic version of the ride, there's something special about the holiday theme, especially as you enter the hall with the gingerbread house and the smell of gingerbread fills the space.
And while the original soundtrack to the Haunted Mansion is one of the absolute best inside Disneyland, Danny Elfman's music from The Nightmare Before Christmas is also a classic. And when you get a Christmas themed version of "Grim Grinning Ghosts" that combines the two, it's utter perfection.
Seeing this special anniversary house will be fun for those that may have missed a previous iteration of the display. While there are probably some locals that have seen every gingerbread house ever constructed, there are likely a lot more that have only seen a few of them, if any at all.
Official Disneyland Halloween festivities are set to begin this year on September 3, and this version of the mansion will run, if past is prologue, until early January. Official Halloween festivities will run until Halloween itself, and then we can expect a fairly quick turn around to transform Disneyland and Disney California Adventure for Christmas.
